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Artists and cultural workers are falling through the cracks of our economy at a time when their work has never been more needed in society. Their ability to exist and thrive is threatened by the cost of living and housing affordability crisis, our increasingly precarious economy, and cuts to grant funding under the new administration. Many exist in a structural grey area between independent gig workers and small business owners. Their work is often episodic, making them easily left out of safety net programs like unemployment and healthcarethis is especially true for artists from historically marginalized communities. To address these challenges, we need new systems and solutions to increase economic equity and ensure that our communities have access to creativity and culture. One such area weve seen a wave of interest and experimentation around the potential of in recent years is guaranteed income. What is guaranteed income? It refers to unrestricted recurring cash payments that people can use however they see fit to cover their basic needs and reach their personal and professional goals. Guaranteed income programs can be focused geographically on specific cities, on specific communitiesfor example young people, entrepreneurs, or parentsor a mix of both. Springboard Executive Director Laura Zabel announces Guaranteed Income Pilot for Artists Expansion, 2025. [Photo: Thai Phan-Quang /courtesy Springboard for the Arts] At Springboard for the Arts, weve been delivering one of the longest running guaranteed income programs in the country since 2021, focusing on both urban and rural artists and creative workers in Minnesota. Our 100 recipients to date include painters, sculptors, hiphop artists, singers, composers, teaching artists, performers, and writers who are receiving $500 a month over a five-year period. This has given us the opportunity to reflect on what we’ve learned and what insights we can offer to others thinking about doing this work. Artwork by Alicia Thao, Artists Respond: People, Place, and Prosperity Cohort Member. [Image: courtesy Springboard for the Arts] Adapt each program to the historical, cultural, and economic extractions in that community At its best and most effective, guaranteed income is a tool for justice and repair by supporting populations who have been exploited by social, cultural, and economic systems in America. These programs should be tailored to a communitys needs by considering the connection points between the economics, culture, and physical design of our cities and the impact of policy and planning harms from the past. Both cities and rural places bear the generational impact of economies based on the extraction of natural or cultural resources including redlining, land theft, the interstate highway system, and placement of industrial infrastructure, like trash burners, that has caused generations of environmental harm and adverse health impacts. The results of these policy decisions fall disproportionately on American BIPOC communities and neighborhoods, particularly Native and Black communities. Artists Respond Cohort Member Briuana Williams live drawing at Basic Income Week 2025. [Photo: Thai Phan-Quang /courtesy Springboard for the Arts] For our work in Saint Paul, weve focused our efforts in Frogtown and Rondotwo neighborhoods that are culturally vibrant, resilient, and community oriented, yet that continue to be disproportionately impacted by historical disinvestment, discrimination, and extraction. Rondo, for example, is a historically Black neighborhood whose cultural and business corridor was destroyed in the 1950s and ’60s by highway construction, causing generational economic and cultural harm that residents deal with to this day. Our rural work is focused in Otter Tail County, in West Central Minnesota. This community, like many rural areas across the U.S., is in the midst of economic transformation, including the loss of major employers, lack of affordable housing, and increase in predatory businesses like dollar stores and payday lending. Here, guaranteed income can be a tool for attracting and retaining the creative people these communities will need to imagine a different future. The focus on artists and creative workers is rooted in the idea that, like caregiving and community work, cultural work is a form of labor that communities depend on to be healthy but is not adequately valued by our current economy. Artists Talk in rural Minnesota by Kandace Creel Falcón. [Photo: Brittanni Smith/courtesy Springboard for the Arts] Use artists to help change the narrative about guaranteed income programs While the idea of guaranteed income is gaining traction across the country, there are still embedded cultural and political beliefs that limit how far economic justice policy change can go. These are often harmful tropes like: Do people deserve it? How do they spend the money? Why dont they just get a job? One of the most effective ways of countering these questions is for people to experience the stories of these programs on a human level, which can transform pervasive narratives about inequality and poverty into belief systems of belonging, deservedness, and inherent selfworth. In this way, artistsparticularly those participating in guaranteed income programs and who are locally rooted in their communitieshave a unique role to play in guiding and delivering a narrative shift around guaranteed income. With this in mind, we created a project within our wider guaranteed income work, collaborating with a cohort of artists on Artists Respond: People, Place, and Prosperity. In this program, artists created public projects highlighting the root causes that lead to the need for guaranteed income, and its impact on families and communities. (These projects were supported separately and outside of artists’ participation as guaranteed income recipients.) Guaranteed Income is the G.O.A.T billboard by Kandace Creel Falcón. [Photo: Brittanni Smith/courtesy Springboard for the Arts] Artists have designed projects that range from podcasts and coloring books, to postcards, a public installation, and a collaborative performance/dance meditation made available on YouTube, all of which use messages that are reflective of their local communities. A billboard on rural Highway 210 by artist Kandace Creel Falcón looked at guaranteed incomes connection to rural values, with the message In Rural We Tend to the Herd as a way to root messaging in the collective values of that community and counter individualistic narratives that attempt to malign safety net programs. Artist and GI Pilot participant Mickey Breeze speaks during Basic Income Week at Springboard for the Arts, 2025. [Photo: Thai Phan-Quang /courtesy Springboard for the Arts] Cross-sector investment and collaboration are key Our original pilot was a cross-sector partnershipdesigned in collaboration with the City of Saint Pauls Peoples Prosperity Pilot guaranteed income program and supported by local and national funders including the McKnight, Bush, Surdna, and Ford Foundations. We recently announced the expansion of this work, which includes extending the Saint Paul pilot and adding additional participants to the pilot in Otter Tail County, Minnesota, totaling 100 artists across both locations and committing to five years. The majority of the pilots taking place across America have been 12 to 18 months, in part because that’s the amount of time that cities were able to raise and access relief funds during the pandemic. These are a great start, but to have the kind of longevity that will allow us to make a meaningfulnot just temporaryimpact requires bringing more and different kinds of partners on board and moving from pilots to policy. This is an area where philanthropy has an opportunity to be a true partner by seeding longer-term pilots in more geographies and by supporting advocacy and policy work. Artists Respond Cohort Member Kashimana performs during Basic Income Week 2025. [Photo: Thai Phan-Quang /courtesy Springboard for the Arts] Research and evidence matters When it comes to expanding the reach and impact of guaranteed income, research and evidence matters. Groups like Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, led by Saint Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, are integrating learning and research from local pilots into state and federal policy recommendations. Springboard for the Arts is working with the University of Pennsylvania Center for Guaranteed Income Research to collect data through community-led participatory research in both rural and urban locations, allowing us to understand whats working and how people are using these funds. Emergent themes from this research are compelling, with monthly income contributing to general financial stability; participants’ ability to do longer term planning toward healthcare, savings, business ownership and housing; and increasing financial security so artists can generate creative work for their community and stay in their neighborhoods. This money is going toward rent and supplies but its also being put to everyday expenses like fixing a car so that an artist can get to their job or buying snow boots for their children. Being able to point to these tangible impacts allows us to bring in more partners and more effectively advocate for policy. Even if it feels tedious, having a growing body of data will bolster all of our efforts for both individual programs and the movement as a whole. The experience with our pilot has shown us that guaranteed income works as a tool for supporting both an individuals economic security and their ability to contribute to their communities in creative ways. As our economy becomes even more stratified, there is an urgent need to advocate for policy innovations, like guaranteed income, that offer more Americans the freedom to take care of their families and communities and imagine and build a better future. The article was adapted from the chapter Artists as Allies in Economic Justice in the recently released Routledge Handbook of Urban Cultural Planning.
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Email: Its one of the more evil of the necessary evils. We all spend a significant chunk of our days wading through messages, to the point that it can feel like a never-ending task. Save us, artificial intelligence! The good news: AI is revolutionizing how we interact with our email. And the best part? Many AI email tools offer free tiers that are actually useful. If you’re looking to supercharge your Gmail experience, reclaim your time, and take a bit of work out of your workflow, look no further. Compose AI: Effortless email drafting Ah, the dreaded blank email draft. Thanks to AI, its days are fortunately numbered. The Compose AI extension integrates directly into your Gmail compose window and offers intelligent suggestions as you type. Simply provide a few keywords or a brief description of what you want to say, and watch the AI craft a well-written draft for you. Theres also a super handy one-click email-reply feature, which suggests quick replies based on the context of messages you receive. The free version offers 1,500 AI-generated words per month, while premium plans unlock additional generations and access to more advanced writing styles. Paid plans start around $10 per month. InboxPurge: Cut the clutter An overflowing inbox can be a needless source of stress, but AI-powered extensions are stepping in to help you regain control. InboxPurge offers a free plan focused on helping you declutter your Gmail. It uses AI to identify and categorize emails and allows you to quickly unsubscribe from identified newsletters and delete or archive entire categories of messages. InboxPurge offers 20 free cleanup actions each month, while premium plans start at $4 per month and unlock more advanced automation features. Theres also a onetime $5 plan that unlocks all features for a weekperfect for periodic binge-decluttering sessions. Mailmeteor: Enhance email productivity Mailmeteor is primarily a mail-merge tool, with a free plan that offers features for boosting your email productivity and organization. Use it to send follow-up emails at the perfect time, even if you’re not online. With the free plan, you can run three campaigns concurrently and send 50 personalized emails each day to multiple recipients. Paid plans start at $5 per month and unlock higher sending limits for mail merge, more detailed tracking features, the ability to personalize emails with more variables, and integrations with other tools. Concisely: Summarize emails automatically Don’t have time to read every lengthy email in detail? Neither does anybody else. Thats why AI-powered summarization tools are such lifesavers. The free Concisely extension can quickly analyze long emails and provide you with a brief overview of the key points, boiled down to a single sentence. Its especially useful for newsletters, reports, or lengthy discussions where you only need the core information. The extension is free at the moment, with no paid plans available. Grammarly: Watch your tone AI-powered tone analysis extensions can help you communicate more effectively. Grammarly has a free version that analyzes the tone of your messages to let you know how you might sound to the person on the other end. There are lso built-in grammar-checking features, of course, which help you come across more clearly and professionally to your recipients. The free version of Grammarly offers grammar, spelling, and punctuation checks, as well as basic tone detection, plus some limited AI text generation. Paid plans start at $12 per month and unlock more advanced tone suggestions, clarity-focused rewrites, vocabulary enhancement suggestions, and plagiarism detection.
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In the UK, it is currently Dying Matters Awareness Week. Griefand the impact of death and lossis something that nearly all of us will experience at some point in our working lives. Despite this, many workplaces are not equipped to have these tricky conversations and are unsure how to best support their staff with their mental well-being while grieving. At This Can Happen, we conducted an in-depth, two-stage research project into how workplaces are supporting employees with griefthe Grief In The Workplace Reportand the findings are eye-opening. We found that 87% of respondents with lived experience felt grief had impacted their mental well-being, yet 46% felt that they did not have enough time to grieve and 51% did not feel supported by their organization. This is a critical issue for managers and leaders in the workplace that is impacting not only employee mental well-being, but also the ability for staff to perform at work. In fact, 76% said since returning to work they had not received any communications from managers or leadership in relation to their grief, and 76% also said they felt their loss had affected their performance in their immediate return to work. So, how can employers help? Here are five ways. 1. Break the taboo in speaking about grief and bereavement These conversations should be led from the top-down to tackle stigma and build psychological safety in the workplace. This is the responsibility of both leadership and line managers. For example, if members of leadership have lived experience of grief and loss, consider how personal storytelling from these individuals could have a transformative impact on staff likelihood to share their own challenges. This could take the form of an internal blog, a panel discussion, or even an update in a company meeting. Line managers can then pick up on this note and continue these conversations in catch-ups with line reports, encouraging open and honest conversation about mental well-being to build trust, so that employees know that they can immediately go to their manager when they need support. 2. Put the right support in place Providing the right resourcesand ensuring that staff know where to find themis crucial. Our research shows that this is currently an area in which businesses are struggling, with 37% of respondents unsure about what resources were currently available to support them with grief. Make sure that you have a comprehensive Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) in place, which is a confidential service that supports staffand sometimes their family memberswith their health, including counseling, referrals, and expert advice. Consider creating worksheets with tips and advice about living through bereavement, along with helpful links that employees might want to explore for further reading or conversations. Finally, ensure that line managers are fully trained in having these conversations in the workplace, and understanding what resources your organization has in place, so that they can signpost staff correctly and efficiently. 3. Be open, empathetic, and human in your approach This might sound like an obvious one, but its not; so many leaders and managers approach grief and bereavement from a policy-led perspective, or avoid the conversation altogether because they are afraid of saying what could be perceived as the “wrong thing.” Some 64% of respondents in our research had not heard their managers talking openly about bereavement. Take the time to understand what employees are thinking and feeling in terms of their grief, and what they need right nowkeeping in mind that grief is not one linear path forward, but rather a journey thats filled with peaks and troughs over time. This can be heightened around key moments such as anniversaries and birthdays. Keep the lines of communication open to understand what employees need at any given moment, and how you as an employer can really make a tangible impact in the support you offer. 4. Give employees experiencing grief both space and flexibility at work Make sure employees who have uttered a loss know that you as an employer or line manager are there for them to speak to if they need it, but also give them the time and space to process their grief as needed. As much as you can within your workplace and industry, offer flexible working arrangements to bereaved staff. The thought of going into the office following a bereavement can sometimes be an overwhelming prospect; try to understand the impacts of grief in the short-, medium- and long-term, and understand where staff might benefit from flexible working arrangements. 5. Consider how you can provide ongoing support For example, if resources allow, consider meeting with a psychologist to explain how to set up bereavement support, and ensure that this is baked into the heart of an organization, rather than sitting solely in a policy. From here, speak to staff and understand if theres anything further that they would like to set up from a grassroots perspective. A lot of powerful work that we have seen in this space has been created and run organically by employeeslunch-and-learn sessions on lived experience with grief or quarterly drop-in “grief cafés,” for instance. These are all thought-starters on how best to support employees experiencing grief. The most important thing that you can do as a leader or manager is to be kind, empathetic and understanding to the challenges that these team members are facing, and listen with an open ear around how best to support them. Youll soon see the benefits of this, not just on employee mental well-being, but in terms of presenteeism and productivity as well.
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