Toward a Portable Future: Moving the Arts from the Margins in Portable Benefits Reform
Portable Benefits are Having a Big Moment.
2021
Angie Kim, president and CEO of the Center for Cultural Innovation, and Amanda Briggs, research associate at Urban Institute, co-author guest commentary “Labor protections needed for independent contractors” in CalMatters examining California’s rapidly growing independent contractor workforce — especially after the rise of gig platforms and AB5 debates — and outlining their needs for stronger, clearer labor protections.
It highlights that independent workers often lack minimum wage guarantees, health insurance, and paid leave. The authors urge policymakers to build systems that protect these workers without forcing them into traditional employment they may not want.
In April 2025, the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) released a pivotal portable benefits white paper, “Portable Benefits Paving The Way Toward A Better Deal For Independent Workers,” that outlines a bold, necessary vision for the future of work. The report acknowledges what workers across industries — especially in the arts — have known for decades: that today’s labor systems fail to protect millions of independent workers who fall outside traditional employment definitions.
Grantmakers in the Arts (GIA) applauds this report and commends the HELP Committee for naming artists and independent workers as essential to any serious conversation about federal labor reform. The white paper is a meaningful step toward creating portable benefits that follow workers across jobs — a shift that could profoundly improve the lives of artists, culture bearers, and creative educators.
What the report makes clear — and what our field must now reckon with — is that the arts sector has been largely absent from these national conversations. If we want creative labor to be protected and valued, we must stop waiting to be invited and start organizing ourselves as a political and economic force.
The Policy Moment Is Here. Are We?
Spring 2024 — Utah passes S.B. 233
“Over the past decade, Utah has continued to thrive due to dynamic and innovative policies that enable us to adapt to an ever-evolving economy,” said Sen. John D. Johnson, sponsor of S.B. 233. “The goal of S.B. 233 is to help individuals capitalize on the flexibility and work-life balance that ‘gig’ jobs offer. Stride’s portable benefits program will empower Utah’s independent workforce with the necessary support to pursue their chosen career path with confidence.”
The white paper affirms what GIA and many cultural workers have been calling for: the creation of benefits systems that reflect the flexibility, precarity, and contribution of independent work. Eighty percent of independent workers say they prefer their work structure — but they shouldn’t have to choose between flexibility and basic protections like health care, paid leave, or retirement security. And, there is strong evidence explicitly within the arts sector that arts workers are already less insured than the general population and stand to fall farther behind if faced with barriers – such as increased costs or reduced access.
The proposal of a pilot program is not an effort to upend traditional employment, nor is it a workaround for misclassification. The goal is to fix the problem of modern work. It’s about building new tools for a growing class of workers — gig workers and 1099 contractors, who include artists — who want to work this way. Workers who want to work independently are not falling through the cracks of the system; they’re working in ways the system never accounted for.
“Providing independent workers access to products already allowed under ERISA and encouraging them to save would do a great deal to close the retirement savings coverage gap.”
The report’s inclusion of artists alongside drivers, journalists, healthcare contractors, and digital gig workers is not symbolic — it is a recognition that artists are workers. Far too often, the arts sector has failed to act like it. Gig workers are disproportionately workers of color, immigrants, women, and LGBTQIA+ people. If we are serious about creating a just economy, we need to take seriously the economic conditions of cultural workers.
Congress is showing up with interest and policy intent. It is now time for our sector to mobilize.
The Stories That Change Policy
The white paper highlights truck drivers, software designers, caregivers, musicians, actors, and writers who rely on flexibility. This is big! Legislators’ understanding that artists are workers and work in the gig economy happened through storytelling and advocacy. And that continues; the arts sector has a responsibility to ensure our stories are not left out of this policy moment.
There are so many stories; we’ve all heard them —
More than half of artists earn their income as independent contractors, compared to only about 7% of all U.S. workers. Portable benefits could transform their economic security.
Source: Fractured Atlas, 2023
“
I have an ideal writing routine that I’ve never experienced, which is to have, say, nine uninterrupted days when I wouldn’t have to leave the house or take phone calls… But I am not able to write regularly. I have never been able to do that—mostly because I have always had a nine-to-five job. I had to write either in between those hours, hurriedly, or spend a lot of weekend and predawn time.
— Toni Morrison
A disabled Albuquerque-based writer who needs maximum flexibility in their schedule, and so is denied traditional employment.
An artist and illustrator in LA who holds a job, plus two freelance gigs, and debates whether they can have children without access to paid leave.
An actor and theater director questioning succession plans due to a lack of access to retirement benefits (other than special awards).
A musician who has toured for decades calls upon fans to crowdfund his medical bills after a severe car accident because affordable health insurance is inaccessible, something quite common for working artists.
National arts organizations have called for affordable, portable health coverage for artists for more than a decade — yet gaps persist. Portable benefits can help close these gaps and keep artists healthy and working.
Source: Americans for the Arts, Arts Mobilization Center, Survey conducted in 2013 from 3,402 artist respondents.
And, this struggle extends even into some of cultural most successful and recognized artists – Toni Morrison famously worked a 9-to-5 job on top of her personal, literary fame to be able support her family, despite her (never-experienced) ideal writing routine requiring paid leave, or, in her 2025 Grammy acceptance speech, Chappell Roan said, “I told myself that if I ever won a Grammy and got to stand up here before the most powerful people in music, I would demand that labels in the industry profiting millions of dollars off of artists would offer a livable wage and health care.”
These narratives exist in abundance, but they are often scattered and definitely underleveraged in national policy spaces. Storytelling is a policy advocacy strategy. The call upon our field is to coordinate, collect, and elevate these stories into action.
“New solutions are needed that include independent workers in social insurance programs, so as to protect artists, reduce barriers to entry to arts work by people of color, and enable arts workers to move more freely across hiring entities that struggle to afford employing them. Solutions that work for artists will work for millions of others.”
— Center for Cultural Innovation
The Good News: Models Already Exist.
Portable benefits support the entire creative ecosystem — giving artists time to create, communities better cultural outcomes, and everyone more stability.
Source: Creatives Rebuild NY, as highlighted by guaranteed income pilots.
We don’t have to imagine what it looks like to support artists through portable or guaranteed benefits — we’re already doing it. But we must connect these local innovations to national reform.
Springboard for the Arts' guaranteed income pilot for artists in Minnesota stabilized creative lives and improved well-being, showing that regular income is a foundation for creativity.
Creatives Rebuild New York's multi-year initiative has invested millions in guaranteed income and employment for artists, offering a Policy Playbook to inform scalable reforms and an Artist Employment Program toolkit to for artists, organizations, communities, cities, counties, and states, who are interested in setting up a program to employ multiple artists in salaried positions.
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ San Francisco Guaranteed Income Pilot for Artists (SF-GIPA) reframed cultural labor as essential labor — deserving of dignity, not just opportunity.
Aspen Institute & Future of Work Institute, Urban Institute & Center for Cultural Innovation, and IndieSpace have all documented ways portable benefits can support creative work without sacrificing flexibility or autonomy.
These programs are not fringe experiments — they are proof points. Our field can now coordinate the political case these pilots make.
In October 2024, in “How Guaranteed Income Can Support the Arts—And Ourselves,” Maura Cuffie-Peterson examines how guaranteed income programs, including pilot efforts for artists, are reshaping conversations about economic stability, dignity, and cultural participation.
Three Key Takeaways:
Guaranteed income goes beyond supporting individual artists — it nurtures community well-being by stabilizing those who produce and share culture, which benefits everyone.
Pilot programs for artists (like Springboard for the Arts and Creatives Rebuild New York) have shown that predictable income enables creative workers to focus on their practice, reduce stress, and engage more fully with community projects.
Guaranteed income is a policy model worth scaling up — the piece argues that if society values culture, it should value the workers who make culture, and guaranteed income is one powerful pathway to do so.
GIA’s Commitment — And a Call to the Field.
At GIA, we are committed to changing this pattern of absence.
In April 2024, we convened a field-wide webinar, “The Role of Artists Labor: Artists Can’t Eat Prestige,” on portable benefits for artists and independent workers, helping amplify cross-sector dialogue on artist-centered policy design.
In the Fall of 2024, GIA produced a limited podcast series, For the Love of Radical Giving, in which the third episode entitled “No More Starving Artists,” which highlights how treating artists as essential workers — deserving of stable benefits, fair pay, and community investment — can transform both cultural ecosystems and broader social equity efforts. It also underscores how portable benefits and guaranteed income can provide artists with the security and freedom to sustain their creative practices while serving their communities.
We continue to amplify and publish analysis and advocacy guidance on portable benefits, guaranteed income, and funder practices than can support artists as workers.
We are collecting stories and pushing for policy that includes the lived experience of cultural workers — not as an afterthought, but as a starting point.
We need funders, service organizations, researchers, and artists to step up — not only in support of Congress’s efforts, but to push our own sector to organize like labor.
Let’s Stop Asking to Be Included!
Source: Fight for Freelancers USA
Congress is signaling that it’s ready to engage.
If the arts sector wants to see cultural work protected in future labor systems, we must stop treating cultural workers as a special case. We are workers. We are part of the economy. And we deserve — and demand — the same protections and benefits as any other worker navigating a 21st-century labor market.
It’s time to stop asking to be included in the future of work. It’s time to show up like we’re shaping it.
“New solutions are needed that include independent workers in social insurance programs, so as to protect artists, reduce barriers to entry to arts work by people of color, and enable arts workers to move more freely across hiring entities that struggle to afford employing them. Solutions that work for artists will work for millions of others.”
ABSTRACT
In April 2025, the Senate HELP Committee, led by chair Bill Cassidy, M.D., released a landmark white paper, “Portable Benefits Paving The Way Toward A Better Deal For Independent Workers,” calling for federal portable benefits — a system designed to provide healthcare, paid leave, and retirement support, among other worker supports, to independent workers. Artists were named among the workers who could benefit most. While Congress is stepping up, the arts and culture sector has an important and critical role in this conversation and any potential policy initiatives
This piece affirms the report’s intent and urges the arts field to meet the moment. Portable benefits are not about dismantling traditional employment — they’re about stabilizing the flexible labor that already defines creative work. With pilot programs in place and stories ready to be told, now is the time for artists, funders, and cultural advocates to stop asking for inclusion and start showing up like we’re shaping the future of work.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nadia Elokdah is vice president and director of programs for Grantmakers in the Arts.
