The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Arts and Design Alumni

During the COVID-19 pandemic there were many changes in arts and design alumni's paid work, creative work, income and in the skills that they needed to be successful in their careers. Given the documented impact of the pandemic on the arts and culture sector, on arts and creative workers, and on institutions of higher education, the authors turn to data from the 2022 Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) survey to understand how the impact of the pandemic was felt by people doing arts, design, or creative work as part of their job or occupational roles and the varied experiences across socio-demographic characteristics. This report focuses on providing insight into arts and design graduates whose work is--or before the pandemic was--in the arts, design, or creative realm by examining their working lives, economic lives, and the skills that they needed to attain or update during the first two years of the pandemic in the United States. In addition to presenting analyses and findings about arts and design alumni's experiences of the first year of the pandemic along these dimensions of their creative and working lives, the authors also dedicate a section of the conclusion of this report to the impressions and challenges identified by higher education arts leaders in a series of formal conversation at the beginning of 2021 to frame commentary about university preparation for resilient arts and design alumni. [Additional funding for this report was provided by the University of Illinois College of Fine and Applied Arts, the University of Illinois Investment for Growth Fund, and the Department of Arts Administration, Education, and Policy at The Ohio State University.]