Ian Factor is a Bend artist and teacher. 

1. Central Oregon Creative Artists Relief Effort

Richard Schuurman knows how hard it is to make a living as a musician. His younger brother, Eric, carved out a career as an independent musician.

“For many years he did make a living (with music), and then like so many others, you have to do course corrections in certain ways that still keep you connected to the music field, but maybe not in the way that you initially would have hoped,” Schuurman said. “… When the Great Recession of a few years back (hit), it was such that he had to make a complete course correction — not a course correction, but a change. And then he was able to get back into music and I saw just how influential that was again in his life, so that to me as much as anything really influenced me.”

Schuurman, husband of The Bulletin Publisher Heidi Wright, is a lifelong music fan as well. Last summer he and Wright caught a socially distanced show by local singer-songwriter Pete Kartsounes at CHOW. He was immediately struck by how good the performance was, and following a conversation with Kartsounes, how much Kartsounes and other artists were struggling to stay afloat during the pandemic.

“He was commenting that over the last three months, he’s had something like three gigs or so,” Schuurman said. “And so it got me thinking, OK, is there anything that I might be able to do in my own way to help support them? I had been familiar with NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series, and I thought that that might be an interesting model to see if that might work here.”

Using equipment he purchased for a documentation project, Family Heritage Connects, he set up a socially distanced studio in his home. The Bulletin got involved, and a donation drive effort in partnership with arts collaborative Scalehouse, the Central Oregon Creative Artists Relief Effort, followed soon after.

The effort will raise donations to help Central Oregon’s creative artists — musicians, visual artists, performers and creative workers — by offering grants and a platform to bring attention to the talent that needs help to continue thriving in this community throughout the pandemic and beyond.

With the assistance of local sponsors and help from The Tower Theatre and KPOV, CO CAREs will bring recognition to a different artist each week with a video on The Bulletin’s website and a prominent feature story in GO! Magazine. Schuurman’s house concerts will feature acoustic, solo or duo musicians, while videos captured by The Bulletin at the Tower Theatre and other locations will feature visual artists, bands and other performers. The videos will be similar to NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts or GO! Magazine’s Anatomy of a Song series.

People can give tax-deductible donations to the charity GoFundMe CO CAREs account or to the featured artists’ independent account. Links with opportunities to donate or apply for a grant will be available at the top of the website beside the launch video describing the effort. The fundraising goal for a first round of grant-making is $40,000.

“Our tagline is ‘Empowering our community,’” Wright said. “The performing and the creative arts and the whole fabric of this community is very important. If we’re going to be part of the community, whatever we can do to help, that is part of our responsibility. We’ve got an audience that I think is caring and perhaps can help support this effort. It just made sense.”

Scalehouse, the fiscal sponsor of the project known for hosting the Bend Design Conference in the fall and for helping to launch the city’s Creative Laureate program, will handle the grant application process and distribution of funds. The collaborative launched its own Creative Relief Fund in October funded by a grant from The Bend Foundation and will roll that into CO CAREs.

Grant determinations will be made by an advisory board made up of artists, designers and performers from outside Central Oregon, including artists from Portland and Eugene.

The application, which can be found on The Bulletin’s website, will ask for the artist’s creative discipline, proof of creative artistic practice and a three-sentence artist statement about their work. Applicants will also need to provide a declaration of need stating lost income due to COVID-19 and how the grant will help.

René Mitchell of Scalehouse said the art collective was inspired by Portland’s Regional Arts & Cultural Council initiative to provide resources for artists and creative workers greatly impacted this last year. “Our role is to identify and recognize the need, confirm that applicants are working artists and provide the awards,” she said. “We are not here to critique the work — we want to support those who entertain us, inspire us and create a sense of community.”

This relief is desperately needed by many Central Oregon artists. Bend Burlesque co-founder Mehama Kaupp, who features in the CO CAREs launch video, said the effort “feels like a really nice little jump-start with things opening back up a little bit too. Just get creative juices flowing and hopefully remind everybody we’re still out there.”

“It’s been really super difficult because we were performing once to twice a month, and we’ve been completely shut down,” Kaupp said. “It’s affected the business completely. We don’t have an office space; we can’t pay bills; we have no income coming in. I am on the verge of, do I shut this down or do I keep fighting? It’s not been easy.”

Eric Leadbetter, one of the first artists to record a video and House Concert with Schuurman, became a father during the pandemic. At the same time, most of his work as a full-time musician and music educator was wiped out.

“When you dedicate your life to something you love — in my case, it’s music — (you’re) not obviously doing it to make a fortune,” Leadbetter said. “Obviously it would be nice to sell some records and whatnot, but the art itself is part of the gratification of doing it and also helps you get out of bed in the morning. Before the pandemic, in 2019 I played 256 shows that year and taught at least 100 lessons, probably more. It’s still really hard to make a living even with that much work, especially now that I’m supporting a family.”

CO CAREs may be coming a year into the pandemic, but it will not be pandemic-specific. The effort will continue beyond COVID-19.

“Performing artists and creative artists are going to need ongoing support for the next 6 months to a year,” Wright said. “… We’re going to see how we do with the first push over the next six weeks, get funds distributed and go from there.”