Christopher Bloodworth, executive director of The Field

In March of 2023, I became the third individual to serve as Executive Director of The Field, a nonprofit arts service organization devoted to building a community that connects, empowers, and elevates artists. It was a complicated but certain decision.

Prior to joining The Field, I had spent 10 years at the Entertainment Community Fund (formerly The Actors Fund) as the managing director of the Career Center. It was (at least at the time) my dream job. Every day I got an opportunity to work with performing arts and entertainment professionals across the creative spectrum to find ways to offset the challenges of an episodic career in a perpetually shifting creative sector. For many working outside of the creative economy, the enchantment of the stage, curtains, and sounds emerging from the pit are enough to convince them that the life of an artist is the stuff of fantasies. When in reality most arts professionals are piecing together work, day after day, week after week to make ends meet. This is not new or uncommon. Artists are the original gig workers. In fact, it was jazz musicians who first began to refer to their random collection of jobs as “gigs” at the turn of the 19th century.

Generations of artists have gone through this and have routinely passed down tips to emerging artists on how to make these precarious careers work. Many have waited tables, driven taxis, provided childcare, become personal trainers and more while in-between auditions. For far too many however, these survival jobs would lead to burnout, and deep feelings of failure for having not been successful in navigating their careers to the next level.

To offset this experience my strategy at the Fund was to help artists find meaningful supportive work that complemented their industry work. For some this meant training to become a Teaching Artist, for others it meant developing and launching that entrepreneurial idea they’d been waiting for the right time to put into motion. In all, the goal was to get artists to learn more about themselves and use that knowledge to make career decisions that were in alignment with their artistic purpose.

And while that line of thinking fueled my professional endeavors for many years, my curiosity kept pivoting more and more toward the career decisions artists make while immersed in the creative process. I wanted to know what set of conditions drive success in an artist’s career and how do these conditions come about.

The Field

The Field was founded in 1986 by a small group of performing artists who met weekly with the goal of improving their artwork and building their careers. Thirty-seven years later, our organization has grown organically into a nationally recognized arts service resource that supports more than eight thousand artists and their collaborators annually. Still, we remain true to our grassroots origins and artist-centered approach to help artists plan and build out their careers.

At The Field, we believe that art and artists are a vital part of a healthy, functioning and engaged society. We recognize the myriad of ways artists — simply through their existence — create culture and history, bridge societies, and drive change in cities and towns across nations. After all, art brings people together; and from that togetherness comes learning, awareness, growth, and change.

This is what attracted me to The Field. We are an arts service organization that understands the transformative power of the arts. Every day we actively engage in creating a world where those who communicate their ideas, thoughts, and feelings, into works that allow others to see and understand themselves more clearly, are abundantly and holistically prosperous in their field.

Here are three ways The Field is doing that work.

Fiscal Sponsorship

One of the primary ways we accomplish this work is through fiscal sponsorship, a formal arrangement between an individual or group and a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Fiscal Sponsorship enables artists and arts organizations to create projects that can receive grants and tax-deductible contributions without having to form a nonprofit or obtain tax eligibility. As a musician, you may not want or need to develop a formal entity in the beginning because it can open a host of legal and financial responsibilities that distract you from the creative process. As a sponsored artist of The Field you can grow and sustain your creative projects through grants and tax-deductible donations under our tax exempt status. Doing so opens you up to a whole new pool of donors and grant opportunities from benefactors that prefer to give to registered nonprofit organizations for tax deduction purposes and oversight.

Fundraising Assistance and Skill Building

Fundraising is an essential skill for entrepreneurs, small business owners, and yes, musicians too. The key to successfully raising the funds needed to research, compose, arrange, record, mix and present, your next project is to have a good plan. While it is possible to operate without one, having a plan allows you to consider and achieve long term financial stability. For many artists the skills required to fundraise do not come easily, but it is a necessary skill for those looking to further their artistic footprint. The Field works with sponsored artists to assess their fundraising capacity and create a plan to help achieve their fundraising goal. In addition, we will provide a digital custom profile that will allow you to collect tax-deductible donations, create instantaneous crowdfunding campaigns, accept recurring donations, stock donations while monitoring your fundraising progress in real time.

 Life and Career Preparedness

As mentioned earlier, artists transform the world. As a musician you have likely experienced the impact of your artform on others and witnessed its economic reach. Art consumption is at an all-time high, and yet most artists live hand-to-mouth, paycheck-to-paycheck, project-to-project. The pervasive scarcity that artists experience is debilitating to their creativity and their ability to flourish fully as people, citizens, parents, and caregivers. At The Field we are building services to help artists thrive in the areas of fundraising, budgeting, production, and planning; and we are connecting artists to service providers who can better assist in the areas such as financial planning and wealth building.

I hope that as you outline your career goals this year, you consider The Field as a viable resource to help you achieve them. Since our inception, we have served over two hundred thousand creatives either directly or indirectly. We are a lean and nimble organization known for personalized service, hard work, transparency, commitment to equity and inclusion, and authenticity.

To learn more about us, and become a fiscally sponsored artist, visit our Web site at www.thefield.org.

Christopher D. Bloodworth is the executive director of The Field