Let’s get right to this list of resources for nonprofit theaters, dance groups, music groups and other performance groups regarding program delivery and community engagement during COVID-19 (a curated list):

How Theater Companies are Innovating During the COVID-19 crisis

Dance Magazine checks in with three artistic directors to see how they’re handling life in the age of coronavirus. Apr 09, 2020

Coronavirus pushes L.A. dance companies toward the inevitable: Going virtual

Gibney Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center COVID-19 RESOURCE LIST

Theatre community rallies, adapts during COVID-19 pandemic

COVID-19 Theatre Resources from the SETC

Resources for Choral Leaders/Managers During the Pandemic

Genuine engagement through Zoom calls: a post on the TechSoup community from someone who says she “learned a lot about hosting fun and effective video sessions, including music circles with up to 100 participants from up to seven countries.”

21 simple things to do while your programs are on hold during COVID-19 quarantines   

Your nonprofit is still relevant during COVID19 – SHOW HOW 

What we will need for live theatre to continue: a call to political action

Update: Arts Groups Hold Pittsburgh’s First Virtual, Collective Fundraiser.

Update: Washington Ballet “virtual” gala spreads COVID-19 among artists and volunteers.

Update: Example of a virtual art therapy session.

if you have additional online resources that can help nonprofit theaters, dance groups, music groups and other performance groups regarding program delivery and community engagement during COVID-19, please comment below.

Why do I care? Theatre and live music performances have been a hugely important part of my life for as long as I can remember. They were my joy in grade school and my sanctuary on more occasions I could list. I believe the arts, including non-performance, like museums, play a fundamentally-important role in a community’s health.

I got my start in nonprofit management via nonprofit theatre organizations. I wrote my master’s degree thesis on the non-artistic elements necessary for theatre, dance and music to be used as a tool for public health and other community development initiatives. Months ago, I had written a blog about how arts organizations – performing arts centers, theaters, museums – have always been masters of customer relations and data management, how masterful the best of them, no matter how small, are at customer relations and customer loyalty, and turning event attendees into long term financial supporters. I consider my early professional experience at places like the Capitol Arts Center in Bowling Green, Kentucky, Hartford Stage in Connecticut and the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts to have been pivotal in building my skilIs in data management, project management, customer relations and so much more, skills I’ve applied in every job I have ever had, including international development work in Afghanistan – yes, really. It was a blog meant to celebrate arts organizations for having oh-so-much to teach other nonprofits – and government programs and for-profit companies as well. I kept delaying the publishing of that blog. First by a week, then two weeks, then a few weeks, because things came up that seemed more urgent. I figured that I would publish it right after I got back from my epic Baja, California, Mexico motorcycle adventure.

Well, when I got back from that epic adventure, I returned to a country being ravaged by Covid-19, an inbox full of emails asking me urgently for my consulting rates regarding virtual volunteering, and GoogleAlerts filled with news of newly-launched virtual volunteering schemes (many done with no regard to safety). So that blog got pushed farther and farther on the publishing calendar.

And now, I read the draft, and I want to cry. Because live theater, live dance, onsite museum tours, live music… none of that is happening. And none of that may happen for the rest of 2020. And many nonprofits that produce these events and exhibits aren’t going to survive the year. I have so many friends that still worked in the arts in some way, or some aspect of event management, and their jobs are gone.

Sports will come back. People will watch sports on TV even with no audiences. But the arts… can they survive this? I enjoy watching filmed versions of stage productions, but so many people loathe it, and it’s true: it’s no substitute at all for seeing a performance live. Maybe I’m comfortable with viewing televised productions because, growing up in a small town In Henderson, Kentucky, things like Great Performances on PBS were my only way of seeing Broadway shows or the opera. I go back to that grateful persona, starving for access when I watch Frankenstein presented by the UK’s National Theatre Live, or the Donmar Warehouse all-female production of Julius Caesar directed Phyllida Lloyd and shown on Great Performances. So often, such televised productions of stage shows are all I have access to – and that’s true for so many others.

But I long to sit in a dark hall and watch people act on a stage. Or to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with others while hearing amazing live music. Or wander through an art museum, not thinking about being two meters away from each other person. And it looks like none of us can do that safely for the rest of 2020. And maybe through 2021. And maybe longer. And the nonprofits, and even for-profit companies, that have brought us these experiences, may not survive. And that sends me into an emotional tailspin.

And not one national political leader is talking about what to do about this.

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