Unscientific Observations about Creators’ Finances. Part One (of Three)
Creators During Covid: Lost work, creative fundraising, bright spots and burnout.
A Money Bootcamp member reached out to me to ask me to share my observations about creators, since I sit at a vantage point to see what happened to so many people’s financial situations. As I wrote, I realized that these observations are so numerous that it would help to split them into three categories: General observations from our Covid Hell-Year, Observations about the effect of the Covid stimulus bills, and a more evergreen set of observations about creative people’s financial situations more generally. So with that, here is the first in a three-part series about my unscientific conclusions about creators’ finances. Part One: Creators During Covid: Lost work, creative fundraising, bright spots, and burnout.
People lost work. During a single work week in April 2020, 15 out of 16 of my tax clients had just become unemployed. This may be an unscientific sample, but nonetheless, it was staggering. I spent that weekend in a tailspin worrying about the implications.
Performers suffered. Of all my creative clients, performers suffered the most as a group during Covid. This is logical. Covid stopped all group gatherings, so anyone used to performing in front of groups was clearly stopped cold. But it wasn’t just that they could no longer perform in front of audiences. The double blow for them was that many performers have “day jobs” in the restaurant and service industries. So while many actors and musicians saw their scheduled performances cancelled, they simultaneously lost their jobs in restaurants and bars.
A bright spot: murals. Of all my clients whose creative work not only survived but thrived during Covid, the brightest star was the muralists. This makes sense, and you probably observed it, too. Murals are one of the most straightforward and inexpensive forms of public art to propose, approve, and fund. And as people drained out of public spaces, many public and private organizations paid to have murals painted to activate and enliven those empty spaces. I bet anyone reading this now can name three local murals that went up in your area during Covid.
Another bright spot, albeit with far more varied results, was people who were able to take their work online. People who taught online classes did well. There were bored people at home and people looking for entertainment for themselves and their children, and many people took up new hobbies like baking, figure drawing or even skill-building for their job searches and transitions. Still others had visibility from the increased attention to social media. One potter had her best year ever because she figured out a way to teach socially-distant pottery classes to children in her driveway, and advertised effectively on social media. A visual artist and illustrator with colorful, timely, activist/progressive messages went viral on social media and sold a record number of stickers.
Creative fundraising. One thing that impressed me during Covid, the 2020 election, and the activism around trans rights and Black Lives Matter/police protests was the creativity and energy that creative people poured into fundraising for causes they care about. Artists designed and printed T-shirts to promote and fund their preferred political candidates. They donated portions of their artwork sales to activist causes such as racial justice, climate justice, and trans rights. When they received stimulus payments, many creative people gave that money directly to others in the form of mutual aid.
As a tax expert, I want to point out that very little of this activity benefitted the donating artists themselves in any financial way (although let’s not discount the karma, happiness, and sense of agency it gives one to give money to causes you believe in). Tax law rewards large donations to charitable organizations, but only for taxpayers who itemize. This represents only 10% of the taxpaying public, and skews toward the wealthy. Congress did allow a temporary $300 deduction for charitable contributions during 2020 and 2021 for taxpayers who do not itemize but take the standard deduction (ie, the other 90% of taxpayers). But even so, much of the fundraising activity I witnessed in my practice was not directed at organizations that count for this purpose. Only money donated to non-profit organizations are tax-deductible. Mutual aid and political contributions don’t count.
My last unofficial and unscientific conclusion on the 2019 and 2020 tax seasons is that Covid exhausted people. Worry, isolation, and trauma--both historic and immediate--pervaded. Parents were stretched to the breaking point. Our tax conversations were interrupted by young children. Mourners suffered alone. Historic traumas rose to the surface and stayed there. Financial stress was everywhere.
As we emerge from the darkest days of Covid, I want to acknowledge how exhausting this all has been for everyone. Burnout is pervasive. I personally dealt with my Covid year by throwing myself into work and ignoring everything else - my family, my health, my artistic practice, ugly politics, and any sense of balance or fun. So if you, like me, need a break from work (or whatever you threw yourself into), I hope you take whatever space you can. I know I am feeling a deep need to reconnect with my family, my artistic practice, and basic rest and self-care. It reminds me of one of the things I teach about the reason to develop healthy financial habits and a savings cushion. The purpose is so that you can rest. And if Covid has been an emotionally, financially, spiritually and physically draining sprint for you, as it has for me, then let’s do something revolutionary right now. Let’s take pride in being humans, not machines. Let’s rest, reconnect and recover.