For the region's individual artists and arts organizations, the ability to pivot during the pandemic was limited. Moving their work online was one option, and many did so in one form or another, but virtual platforms weren't viable replacements for the live, in-person experience of visual art, music or theater.
The most salient memory for Melissa Huggins, who was executive director of Spokane Arts until mid-2023, was "the sheer panic and dismay that everyone in the sector was feeling" when COVID shutdowns began.
"Our staff at Spokane Arts felt a tremendous responsibility to jump in and figure out how to help in whatever ways we could," Huggins says. "So Spokane Arts and the Arts Commission advocated pretty strongly to the city of Spokane to allocate both CARES and ARPA dollars."
One of the organization's biggest goals was to earmark 1% of the city's federal American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, allocation for cultural sector relief. But it took a sustained and concerted effort.
"What we saw during the pandemic was that everyone sought out some form of art. They started binge watching more shows on television, listening to more podcasts, playing more records at home," she says. "When certain other outlets for community and creativity were shut off to them, those were the things that everyone leaned on.
"And so for the cultural sector," she continues, "it was always so ironic to have to fight so hard to convince everyone that it's worth investing in the arts."
Over the course of the pandemic, Spokane Arts ultimately helped administer and distribute around $440,000 in funding from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, or CARES Act; $920,000 from ARPA; and around $990,000 in Spokane Arts Grant Awards. On top of that, the organization awarded roughly $137,000 in emergency and support grants from sources like the city of Spokane and the Downtown Spokane Partnership.
All told, 521 individuals, businesses and nonprofits in the cultural sector received some degree of funding from Spokane Arts to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. Huggins says that their resourcefulness and ingenuity magnified what the dollars alone were able to do.
"People figured out how to have backyard concerts that were COVID safe and to still make art and create community in even more innovative and DIY ways than artists in Spokane normally need to do," Huggins says. "That was really cool to see." ♦
