OVERVIEW

In 2018, 2nd Story began a long, deliberate, and ultimately fruitful journey towards achieving pay equity and increasing arts worker care at our organization. As part of that work, we launched the Rising Tide Project. The Rising Tide Project is rooted in creating frameworks to achieve pay equity, investigating new models of care, and imagining what it means for arts workers to thrive (as opposed to just survive). Our work takes a multi-pronged approach to furthering worker care across the sector, including establishing small cohorts of arts organizations to support their own internal efforts and a series of public events to share learning, cultivate community, and build momentum around pay equity and arts worker care.

BACKGROUND

At 2nd Story, we have been engaging in a multi-years long dialogue rooted in achieving pay equity for artists AND arts administrators alike. Internally, we have been grappling with the following questions:

• How does pay transparency reinforce pay equity initiatives?

• How do we convince someone to say “Yes!” to a career in the arts? 

• What does pay equity for artists and arts administrators really look like?

• How do we move from a minimum wage to a living wage to a thriving wage?

• How can we leverage what we have learned from implementing pay equity initiatives at 2nd Story for sector-wide change?

• Can we create a framework for other leadership teams looking to realize pay equity within their organizations?

• How does radical imagination play a role in this work?

In addition to supporting 2nd Story’s own arts worker care initiatives, The Rising Tide Project work includes:

• Creating a cohort of artistic and executive leaders of Chicago arts organizations who work in collaboration with each other over an extended period of time, led by 2nd Story staff, to grapple with the shared challenges related to pay equity.

• Hosting public events, including The Radical Imagination Town Hall Series that explore curiosities, questions, and concerns surrounding equity and parity in the arts.

• Publicly sharing/publishing the findings from these different threads of inquiry in order to contribute to the learning of the field and to provide tools and strategies to support our collective effort towards pay equity.

The Rising Tide Project is made possible with support from the Paul M. Angell Foundation.

DOWNLOAD THE IMPACT REPORT FROM YEAR ONE