Financial Resilience for Creatives

Life is a Festival #62: Nick Farr, CPA (The Long Disaster)

In this global crisis, financial uncertainty affects us all, especially those whose livelihoods are based on gatherings like festivals and other events. Today on Life is a Festival, my friend and fellow member of Burners Without Borders, Nick Farr, CPA, will help us navigate the byzantine networks of government programs so we can get the resources we need now, and prepare for the future.

On the show Nick shares the immediate steps we can take for financial resilience, specifically how to get money from the government including Economic Impact Payments, unemployment benefits, and loans. We talk about how communities can support each other with initiatives like the Bay Area Safety Net Fund. We discuss what people with privilege can do, like redirecting institutional giving and support like the #sharemycheck initiative. Finally once we have some ground under our feet, long term resiliency means switching our mindset from disaster response to birthing a new way of being.

Nick is an accountant at Kroon & Mitchell in Grand Rapids and practices in New York, Michigan and California. He as spent 20 years in disaster response including as Volunteer Coordinator at the Alvaro Obregon 286 building collapse site during the 2017 Mexico City Earthquake. He is also the author of The Long Disaster, a manifesto of preparedness written in collaboration with the BWB Spring Summit at Fly Ranch in 2019.

Conditions are changing daily making some details in the show already obsolete. Therefore Nick has generously offered to create and respond to a thread in the Life is a Festival Facebook group to answer any questions you may have. Because in times of crisis, resilience ultimately comes from community.