Technical service and support organizations for the Chicago performing arts community
Actors’ Equity Association
The labor union representing American actors and stage managers in the theatre. Equity seeks to foster the art of live theatre as an essential component of society and advances the careers of its members by negotiating wages, improving working conditions and providing a wide range of benefits, including health and pension plans.
Americans for the Arts
Americans for the Arts’ mission is to build recognition and support for the extraordinary and dynamic value of the arts and to lead, serve, and advance the diverse networks of organizations and individuals who cultivate the arts in America. Connecting your best ideas and leaders from the arts, communities, and business, together we can work to ensure that every American has access to the transformative power of the arts.
Arts Alliance Illinois
Arts Alliance Illinois is a leading voice for the cultural sector and creative industries. Through civic engagement, arts education, and cultural equity initiatives, they promote the value of the arts and give voice to a creative state.
Arts and Business Council of Chicago
Arts and Business Council of Chicago aims to develop leadership, the business of arts, and the art of business in Chicago. Since its founding, Arts & Business Council of Chicago has trained and placed thousands of business volunteers on management consulting projects for nonprofit arts groups.
City of Chicago DCASE
The Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) is dedicated to enriching Chicago’s artistic vitality and cultural vibrancy. This includes fostering the development of Chicago’s non-profit arts sector, independent working artists and for-profit arts businesses; providing a framework to guide the City’s future cultural and economic growth, via the 2012 Chicago Cultural Plan; marketing the City’s cultural assets to a worldwide audience; and presenting high-quality, free and affordable cultural programs for residents and visitors.
Forefront
Forefront is the nation’s only statewide membership association for nonprofits, grantmakers, public agencies, advisors, and their allies. They provide education, advocacy, thought leadership, and facilitate collective action around issues that are important to their Members and to the sector.
Fractured Atlas
Fractured Atlas is a national organization that supports folks at every level of the cultural ecosystem. Mostly that includes individual artists — performing, visual, literary, design, media, and everything in between — and arts organizations — from one-person outfits to the biggest of the big. Fractured Atlas can help you run your business more efficiently, with more, better resources at your fingertips.
Joseph Jefferson Awards Committee
The Jeff Awards has been honoring outstanding theatre artists annually since it was established in 1968. With approximately 55 members representing a wide variety of backgrounds in theatre, the Jeff Awards is committed to celebrating the vitality of Chicago area theatre by recognizing excellence through its recommendations, awards, and honors.
Lawyers for the Creative Arts
Lawyers for the Creative Arts provides free legal services to financially eligible clients in all areas of the arts—visual, music, dance, literary, digital media, arts education, and much more. They help individuals and organizations with business issues, contracts, copyrights, trademarks and many other legal areas.
Performing Arts Alliance
The Performing Arts Alliance is the national policy advocate, leadership forum, and learning network for America’s nonprofit performing arts organizations, artists, and allies.
Public Narrative
Public Narrative’s mission is driven from a desire to shore up the country’s democratic underpinnings. To fulfill it, teaching two distinct groups — journalists and nonprofits — how to tell better stories. They particularly intend to change the public narrative to ensure we are telling the full story about racism, sexism and xenophobia — things that are historically and deeply woven into the fabric of society.
The Saints
The mission of The Saints shall be to support arts organizations (primarily not-for-profit) in Chicago and nearby communities through volunteer and charitable services. The Saints also, through membership and benefit fundraising, provide direct financial grants to not-for-profit companies to support special artistic and capital projects in a competitive, annual program.
Season of Concern
Created nearly 30 years ago by Chicago theater artists to provide care for those in the theater community afflicted with AIDS-related illnesses, Season of Concern has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from generous artists and theater patrons to benefit hundreds of people in the entertainment industry-actors, directors, designers, technicians, playwrights-who are experiencing health-related emergencies and medical issues.
See Chicago Dance
See Chicago Dance is your source for all things dance in and around Chicago. They are the most comprehensive resource for dance information in Chicago and one of the largest websites in the United States dedicated to the art form.
Theatre Communications Group
Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the national organization for the American theatre, was founded in 1961 and has now grown from a handful of groundbreaking theatres to over 700 Member Theatres and Affiliate organizations and more than 12,000 individuals nationwide. TCG offers its members networking and knowledge-building opportunities through conferences, events, research, and communications; grants approximately $2 million per year to theatre companies and individual artists; advocates on the federal level; and through the Global Theater Initiative, TCG’s partnership with the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics, serves as the U.S. Center of the International Theatre Institute.