Many Pittsburgh artists and arts groups are still hurting from the pandemic. And Black, BIPOC and LGBTQ artists – and the groups they lead – believe arts funding here remains inequitable.
Those are two key takeaways from “Impact to Insight,” an arts community survey released Monday by the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council. The survey suggests the arts community still has a long road back from COVID-19, and many challenges before it reaches a place where everyone feels equally treated.
GPAC collected survey responses this past spring from 229 individual local artists and 136 arts administrators at area nonprofits of all sizes.
“More than two years after its onset, the pandemic continues to affect day-to-day operations and activities for artists, arts organizations, and their audiences,” according to GPAC’s report summarizing the survey results (available here).
The report stated that “immense loss and uncertainty” still surround recovery from the pandemic, which cost artists income and opportunities, and changed the habits of audiences, some of whom have yet to return.
GPAC conducts its community arts survey biannually, though it skipped 2020 in favor of other pandemic-focused research.
This year, 18% of individual artists who responded – nearly one in five – reported earning personal income under $10,000, up from 12% who reported that income level in a 2018 GPAC survey. The 18% figure is nearly twice the poverty rate in Allegheny County.
“We’re seeing that artists, particularly in the areas of income and being able to access basic needs, are really suffering in comparison to 2018, and in some cases in comparison to the rest of the Pittsburgh,” said Morgan Kasprowicz, GPAC manager of research and special projects.
While not all artists even before the pandemic earned large portions of their incomes from selling art, many lost income from other related sources, like teaching jobs, Kasprowicz said.
Some responses indicated the pandemic had allowed artists to spend more time making art. “For others,” according to the report, “increased isolation was not only emotionally challenging, but sometimes made artistic creation difficult or impossible.”
Meanwhile, 37% of arts groups who responded ended their most recent fiscal year with budget deficits, twice the rate in a 2018 survey. And Kasprowicz said it appears those deficits have grown larger: In 2018, the most common deficit measured between 1% and 10% of a group’s total expenses, while, in 2022, deficits were most typically between 11% and 25% of total expenses.
The problem was especially acute for performing arts groups, who have had a harder time winning back audiences than, say, museums and galleries. About 45% of performing arts groups reported ending the year in the red.
Groups also reported that they were relying more than before on contributed income, which had risen from an average 48% of budgets in 2018 to 56% this year.
Part of that equation is the loss of earned income from things like ticket sales. About half of groups surveyed said they don’t expect audiences to return to pre-pandemic levels until next year or later, if at all. On the bright side, 24% of groups said attendance had already returned to, or exceeded, 2019 levels.
The 2022 arts-community survey focused more than previously on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the arts.
While 57.5% of all individual artists said funding for artists here is “fair and equitable,” only 31% of Black artists and 41% of BIPOC artists agreed.
Likewise, for the first time arts administrators were asked whether grant funding for arts groups in the region is fair and equitable. 34% of all groups said “no” (and 38% of them said they were unsure), while 50% of BIPOC-led groups and 60% of LGBTQ-led organizations said “no.”
The report cautioned that although “this was our most racially diverse artist respondent pool yet,” the people who chose to respond to the survey might not be fully representative of the arts community as a whole. For instance, 13.5% of Allegheny County’s population is Black, but only 8.3% of survey respondents were Black. In addition, individual artists were paid $15 each for completing the five-question survey.
