Flamboyan Arts Fund and Mellon Foundation Announce $1 Million Puerto Rico Arts Emergency Relief Fund
San Juan, Puerto Rico, April 28, 2020 – To help mitigate the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the arts and culture sector in Puerto Rico, the Flamboyan Arts Fund has joined forces with The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with additional support from Broadway Cares, to launch a $1 million emergency relief fund to support individual artists and cultural organizations. The Flamboyan Arts Fund is a partnership between Flamboyan Foundation, Lin-Manuel Miranda, his family, and the Hamilton musical.
“In these times of crisis, we have turned to the arts as a source of entertainment, comfort, and education. This Emergency Relief Fund will provide much-needed help for the arts and culture sector, which is suffering from a dramatic loss of income due to canceled events, closure of venues, and inability to sell goods and services. We are honored that the Mellon Foundation and Broadway Cares have partnered with us to bring economic relief and support to Puerto Rico’s artists,” said artist Lin-Manuel Miranda.
“These grants are designed to ensure that we have strong arts programming to come back to post pandemic. Our commitment to our grantees -and the larger arts community- is unwavering and these funds will ensure that organizations can not only take their programming virtual during this time, but also ensure they can operationally survive this unprecedented health crisis,” said Carlos Rodriguez, Executive Director of Flamboyan Puerto Rico.
Emergency relief funds will be made available to support arts organizations and individual artists. These arts organizations can apply through a very flexible process for grants of $5,000 to $20,000 to use toward covering staff salaries, rent, and other basic needs during the emergency. Organizations can also use grant funds to cover the cost of creating or expanding virtual programming, including staffing and technology equipment and services. Grant sizes will be determined based on the need and size of the organization.
The Emergency Relief Fund will also partner with local organizations Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico and Km 0.2 to deploy grants of $600 to over 200 individual artists. These organizations previously launched efforts to provide micro-grants to artists, to overwhelming demand. These additional funds from the Emergency Relief Fund will match these micro-grants and provide funding to even more artists impacted by the emergency who had previously applied. There will also be limited funding available for artists who did not previously apply. Artists of all disciplines can apply for funding through either Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico or Km 0.2...