EVENT: Housing Affordability for Illinois Artists and Creative Workers
Friday April 7, 12:00 pm
Panel Discussion: 12:00pm – 1:00pm
Reception: 1:00pm – 2:00pm
Event Details and Registration
Illinois ranks 20th nationwide amongst states regarding the housing wage – to afford a modest two-bedroom home while working full time, Illinois workers need to make $22.80 per hour – an annual salary of $47,434. In 2021, the average self-employed artist working full time in Illinois – 4.6% of Illinois workers – made $31,275 per year. One in three Illinois households with an arts or creative worker paid more than 30 percent of their household income towards rent, and one in four paid more than 30 percent of their household income towards their mortgage.
In this panel discussion we bring together working artists, arts advocates, and affordable housing advocates to understand recent Illinois regional housing trends and to discuss how housing constitutes an important resource for the state’s artists and creative workers.
EVENT: Artists at Work: Integrating Artists and Creative Workers into Workforce Development
The creative sector and its labor force have been among the hardest hit by the pandemic, nationally and in Illinois. What are paths forward for immediate recovery and longer-term policy changes to help creative workers throughout Illinois? This public event will discuss vital aspects of how workforce policy works at the federal, state, and local level; what programs already exist that the arts can connect into; and ways to address immediate recovery needs and longer-term policy changes to bolster Illinois’ creative workforce.
Tuesday, February 8, 2022
Noon–1pm, online via Zoom
Speakers:
- Claire Rice, Executive Director, Arts Alliance Illinois
- Julio Rodriguez, Deputy Director at the Office of Employment and Training (OET) within the Illinois Department of Commerce & Economic Opportunity (DCEO)
Co-Hosts/Moderators:
- Dr. Andrew Greenlee, Associate Professor & Associate Head, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, College of Fine & Applied Arts
- Dr. Jennifer Novak-Leonard, Research Associate Professor & Research Director, Arts Impact Initiative, College of Fine & Applied Arts
Claire Rice is the Executive Director of Arts Alliance Illinois, a statewide service and advocacy organization that champions arts-supportive policies and funding opportunities to benefit all Illinois residents. Under her leadership, the Alliance recently received a nonprofit innovation award for their work managing the $8 million Arts for Illinois Relief Fund, a public-private partnership between the State of Illinois, City of Chicago, private philanthropy, and grassroots donors supporting the arts community in response to COVID-19.
Julio Rodriguez has been working in the field of human services for the last thirty plus years at the senior management level, and currently manages many of the Illinois programs related to the federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) that relate most directly to possible creative worker funding.
This research and panel are funded in part through the University of Illinois System’s Presidential Initiative: Expanding the Impact of the Arts and the Humanities.
Links Featured in the Discussion
Members of Illinois’ artist labor force—an estimated 89,280 workers—reside throughout the state, yet the sheer size and concentration of this labor force residing in the City of Chicago warrants a closer look. This brief extends the examination of the Illinois artist labor force provided in “The Artist Labor Force: a statistical look at Illinois in the context of the U.S.” (June 2022) by providing statistics on the artist labor force residing in the City of Chicago in a comparative perspective with ten other U.S. cities. View the Issue Brief.
Emma Walters, doctoral student in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, presented with Professor Andrew Greenlee on the UI Extension-funded project, “Central Illinois’ Cultural Assets: Mapping Resources, People and Meaning to Propel Community and Economic Vitality” on Monday, October 17, 2022 at the Illinois GIS Association Annual Conference.
Emma Walters and Professors Andrew Greenlee and Jennifer Novak-Leonard, working with UI Extension colleagues, comprise the core project team. The project is a collaborative effort between DURP and FAA’s Arts Impact Initiative.
This report, in the form of an issue brief, provides insights on the size, density, composition, and earnings of the artist labor force. The research team used new data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, which covers demographic information for communities throughout the United States, from 2016 to 2020. The report looks at the artist labor force in Illinois within the context of the U.S. View the full press release.
The Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) conducted a series of focus groups with scholars and higher education professionals in fall 2021. The resulting report provides a synthesis of insights from these conversations around pressing data needs for researchers and administrators, valuable data sources, and perspectives on the biggest challenges ahead for educational institutions training artists and designers. The report was prepared by a team led by Jennifer Novak-Leonard, PhD, who serves as the Director for Research for SNAAP and as a professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Department of Urban and Regional Planning.
Bigelow is a recent graduate of the doctoral program in Educational Leadership at DePaul University. As a poet and educator, Bigelow brings expertise in research about educational programming and pedagogy in the arts with the unique perspective of being both a creator and educator. Bigelow’s work as a postdoctoral fellow will focus on analysis and interpretation of data from the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP), an institutional partner of the College of Fine and Applied Arts. This new role will allow Bigelow the opportunity to continue studying the impact of the arts, artists, and art education, with a focus on advancing research and innovative methods to guide arts practice and policy.
Dr. Jennifer Novak-Leonard, an Urban and Regional Planning professor and research director of FAA’s Arts Impact Initiative, along with co-PI Dr. Rachel Skaggs, Arts Management professor at The Ohio State University, received a National Endowment for the Arts research grant. The grant will be used to examine the experiences of artists and arts alumni regarding racial inclusion in higher education and the impacts of the pandemic. Their research will generate a suite of reports examining the careers and lives of arts and design alumni, with emphasis on experiences of racial inclusion in higher education and impacts of the pandemic. The reports, utilizing the 2022 SNAAP data, will offer data-driven insights for policymakers, researchers, workforce experts, institutions, future arts and design students, and alumni to better understand the contemporary status of arts and design alumni.
A new study is the first to look at how perceptions of artists in local communities affect opinions toward public funding for artists. The study was led by Urban and regional planning professor Jennifer Novak-Leonard, who is the research director of the Arts Impact Initiative for the College of Fine and Applied Arts.
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded a three-year grant of $650,000 to Arts + Design Alumni Research, a nonprofit that manages the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP). The Mellon funding will enable SNAAP to plan and administer a 2022 national survey of arts alumni and support new collaborative partnerships and a more inclusive survey administration. Dr. Jennifer Novak-Leonard, research associate professor with the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the U of I, will serve as SNAAP’s research director.