#WeTheArtists: Our First Crowdfunding Campaign

What artist has made a difference in your life? This campaign raises funds for one of the top 20 artist residency programs in the world. Supporting 50+ artists a year (and over 8000 since our founding), we are a community of creators that supports the social and civic engagement of artists. Help us carry this work forward and bring 30+ American and international artists to 18th Street to launch powerful new artworks next year. Together we are changing the world, one artist at a time.

Let’s face it. In a world with as many challenges as ours, the arts are not always prioritized (that’s an understatement). And it is not easy to ask people to support individual artists. Most artists have a really rough time financially. We hear about multi-million dollar paintings selling at auction, rarely to artists benefit from this. 18th Street allows artists to create without fear of financial instability, it provides a foundation and a safety net for their creativity to thrive. It helps amplify and enhance the reach of their work.

We make a difference for artists, and they make a difference in the world. We support artists who:

• Work with homeless and formerly homeless folks to create theatrical performances and advocate for policy that combats homelessness in LA’s Skid Row. (John Malpede and Henriette Brouwers of Los Angeles Poverty Department, US)
• Write feminist plays in an oppressive society for women, with great personal risk. (Shahid Nadeem, Pakistan).
• Worked with the youth of Oakland and the Oakland police department to form more human, more understanding relationships through conversation. (Suzanne Lacy, US)
• Preserve and amplify African indigenous art and work with the Nigerian government on environmental justice (Ofiaeli Okechukwu Okoye, Nigeria)
• Revealed epidemics of rape across an entire city in a single, poetic installation and performance. (Leslie Labowitz-Starus and Suzanne Lacy, US)
• Create moving, humorous performances that capture the immigrant experience in America (Dan Kwong, US)
• Create Emmy-winning films and Grammy-winning compositions (Kate Johnson and Christopher Tin, US)
• Expose the human costs and irrevocable shifts of landscape in the wake of a brutal dictator (Patricia Fernandez, Spain)

Artists are necessary. They allow us to approach intractable problems with new, poetic solutions. They help us ask, who is not at the table? Whose voices are excluded? They push us to strive for excellence and beauty and poetry and inspiration. We need artists’ voices to resound, not be silenced.