Art Takes Work
Art Takes Work is a campaign led by Creatives Rebuild New York (CRNY) to raise public awareness about local artists and the work required for them to create and provide for our communities.
IndieSpace created this webpage to help support that campaign and share important resources with the indie theater community!
IndieSpace Programs
IndieSpace is dedicated to empowering independent theater artists and companies by providing vital support to help them thrive.
Our work celebrates and centers independent theater-making in New York City. We provide radically transparent, responsive, and equity-focused funding, real estate programs, professional development, and advocacy to individual artists, theater companies, and indie venues.
Creatives Rebuild New York’s Policy Playbook, ‘New York Isn’t New York Without Artists’
Our friends at Creatives Rebuild New York (CRNY) wrote a Policy Playbook with a detailed plan outlining steps New York State and local governments can take to implement policies geared toward supporting artists and creative workers in New York.
IndieSpace’s Itty Bitty Mini Guaranteed Income Program
IndieSpace is excited to have launched the Itty Bitty Mini Guaranteed Income Program in 2025.
We’re starting with a guaranteed income grant for one artist and hope to expand it to additional artists over time.
We spent a lot of time working in 2024 to ensure that this program best meets the needs of indie theater artists.
Fair Wage Standards
Fair wage standards for artists are essential, ensuring that our labor is valued and the arts sector thrives equitably.
Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.) is a New York-based nonprofit organization founded in 2008 by a group of visual and performing artists and independent curators.
W.A.G.E works to establish sustainable economic relationships between artists and the institutions that contract our labor, and to introduce mechanisms for self-regulation into the art field that collectively bring about a more equitable distribution of its economy.
Portable Benefits
Portable benefits are social benefits tied to an individual rather than a specific job or employer. This means workers can retain and access these benefits even if they change jobs, work for multiple employers simultaneously, or operate as freelancers or independent contractors.
Grantmakers in the Arts has done advocacy work in this area and explains the need and advocates for support here.
Universal Healthcare
Artists have been left out of the systems that protect most workers because their work is often not full-time or permanent.
Universal healthcare is particularly important for artists because it addresses the need for affordable, reliable, and comprehensive health coverage.
A new, free, comprehensive online guidebook for dramatists published by United Hospital Fund with support from Venturous Theater Fund can help theater workers navigate the often-bewildering health insurance landscape, find affordable coverage and care, and become their own best advocates. The guide also offers tips on how to avoid junk insurance scams and access discounted medical care and prescriptions when you are uninsured.
Freelancers Union
The Freelancers Union is a nonprofit organization serving as a support system for independent workers through advocacy, education, and benefits. They provide support and programs for 500,000+ freelancers in the United States!
Artist Worker Co-ops
Artist Worker Co-ops are cooperatively owned and democratically governed organizations created and managed by artists. Below are two based in New York.
Tribeworks – is led by artists who continually develop support tools that enable creatives and organizations that serve them to spend less time on administration and focus more on the important work they do.
Art.coop is a network of artists and groups who make the Solidarity Economy irresistible.
Mutual Aid Groups
Mutual aid groups are grassroots organizations that offer assistance to members of a very particular community, often run by volunteers from within that community. Many mutual aid organizations prefer not to publicize their work directly and instead rely on word-of-mouth within their communities - especially those that serve marginalized groups, such as undocumented individuals.
Mutual Aid NYC is a great central resource for mutual aid activities throughout NYC, and their site offers a database of local mutual aid organizations in all five boroughs.
Resource Guide for Theater Artists
Stress, crisis, and insecurity can affect not only our wellbeing, but our ability to fulfill our potential as artists and engage in the vital creative work that allows our community to thrive. As part of our mission to support independent theater artists, IndieSpace assembled this resource guide to help our community find assistance with difficulties they may face outside their work.