FORWARD

No one likes to think about death. Artists are no different in this regard.
Many of us have put off making a will. But we have to think about the
acres of objects, made by our own hands, which will be our legacy. As
Cynthia Carlson said, "If you don't make a plan, someone else will do it
for you."

The individual health insurance requirement is a complex thing to understand, so the best way to prepare for the upcoming changes is to get familiar with them today! Below are three things to know about the requirement and how artists’ access to health insurance is expanding in 2014.* Click on the questions (with arrows) to learn more! This page was last updated on March 12, 2013; stay tuned for updates.

*Springboard for the Arts is not a provider, agent, advisor or consultant of healthcare or health insurance. By using this service, you understand and agree that the information contained herein is not intended nor implied to be, and you will not use it as, a substitute for professional legal, tax, insurance or healthcare advice. This webpage is an online information service provided solely as a non-partisan source of information. The information contained herein been compiled thanks to Kaiser Family Foundation, healthcare.gov, the Journal of the American Medical Association, Families USA, The Advisory Board Company, The Artists Health Insurance Resource Center, The New York Times and the state of Minnesota.

Communities that pride themselves on the arts also know how to showcase the diversity of cultural life. Pittsburgh is one such place, with an abundance of arts groups and venuesplus a quilt of creative perspectives that represent assorted minorities.

Buses in Helsinki (Image via johnmartintaylor.com)
by Kyle Chayka on March 12, 2013

 There are plenty of ways to think about planning an artistic career. Are you aiming to be the enfant terrible, a young provocateur? Or are you playing the long game, sticking with your work until it gets recognized? In The Guardian, Oliver Burkeman outlines a new theory of creative growth that I hadn’t heard of before — the “Helsinki Bus Station Theory.”

The theory was first posed by the Finnish, U.S.-based photographer Arno Rafael Minkkinen in a2004 graduation speech. He explains that Helsinki’s bus map is pretty unique — many of the buses follow the same route out from the city’s central square, but after a while, all of the paths diverge, traveling to different neighborhoods. Minkkinen uses this as a metaphor for developing an artistic practice.

Webinars

Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation will offer free webinars to assist potential applicants to the upcoming grant round of the French-American Jazz Exchange in better understanding the program and completing the online application.

The French-American Jazz Exchange is a partnership of FACE ("French-American Cultural Exchange") and Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation designed to foster creative and professional development of jazz artists from France and the United States through support for collaborative projects that explore new musical terrain and provide exposure to new audiences and professional relationships.