Intersection was one of the early adopters of fiscal sponsorship for the arts. When Frances Phillips was the Executive Director back in the 1980s, she and a cohort of other folks worked on developing and articulating the models for fiscal sponsorship and establishing best practices. But even before that the organization was working to help artists have sustainable careers. At one point there was a radio show about opportunities in the Bay Area, and there were professional development workshops about things like developing contracts and copywriting your work. Because it wasn’t sexy and outward-facing like the visual and performing arts, artist resources was kind of a back burner thing that we did to build the capacity of individual artists and small to mid-sized organizations.
When the financial crisis hit in 2014, we fully pivoted to artist resources and services so that we could rebuild into something that was sustainable.