The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Arts and Design Alumni
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.
Posted byLee Ann Scotto Adams
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Abstract/Description
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, we turn to data from the 2022 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, we 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. Though the COVID-19 pandemic was an unprecedented event in the contemporary era, it is likely that universities and their graduates will need to contend with further changes, shifts, and emergencies in the future.
The questions that the 2022 SNAAP survey asked of arts and design alumni about their experiences of the pandemic included questions about how much of their work was related to arts or design, changes to their creative work, and how their paid work was affected. The survey also asked about whether and what types of skills they needed to update or learn in order to advance their career, as well as where they acquired new skills during this time. As is the case for graduates of all non-vocational programs (Comunian et al. 2022), not all graduates of arts and design programs choose to work in the field they were trained in, some never intended to work in these fields even when pursuing their education, and some double major in arts and non-arts subjects with the intent to pursue a career outside of the arts (Frenette et al. Dowd 2020).
Despite challenges posed by the pandemic and changes in their working lives that occurred as a result of the pandemic, the majority of arts alumni doing arts, design, or creative work remained in the same kind of work as they were in before the pandemic and did not experience a loss of income due to the pandemic. However, those most likely to experience income loss were those in the lowest income brackets and those most likely to increase their incomes were those from higher income brackets. A majority of these arts and design alumni said that it has been vital to learn new skills or update their skills for career success in a variety of areas, notably in technology skills.
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, we 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. Though the COVID-19 pandemic was an unprecedented event in the contemporary era, it is likely that universities and their graduates will need to contend with further changes, shifts, and emergencies in the future.
The questions that the 2022 SNAAP survey asked of arts and design alumni about their experiences of the pandemic included questions about how much of their work was related to arts or design, changes to their creative work, and how their paid work was affected. The survey also asked about whether and what types of skills they needed to update or learn in order to advance their career, as well as where they acquired new skills during this time. As is the case for graduates of all non-vocational programs (Comunian et al. 2022), not all graduates of arts and design programs choose to work in the field they were trained in, some never intended to work in these fields even when pursuing their education, and some double major in arts and non-arts subjects with the intent to pursue a career outside of the arts (Frenette et al. Dowd 2020).
Despite challenges posed by the pandemic and changes in their working lives that occurred as a result of the pandemic, the majority of arts alumni doing arts, design, or creative work remained in the same kind of work as they were in before the pandemic and did not experience a loss of income due to the pandemic. However, those most likely to experience income loss were those in the lowest income brackets and those most likely to increase their incomes were those from higher income brackets. A majority of these arts and design alumni said that it has been vital to learn new skills or update their skills for career success in a variety of areas, notably in technology skills.