In late February, Music Maker was pleased to welcome back Brittany Anderson as our social worker. Brittany had previously served in that position for us from April 2018 through December 2019.

Brittany has been at work for about six weeks now, busy reaching out to all our partner artists, surveying them, and learning everything she can about the conditions they face and how Music Maker can better help them. 

“So many of the artists we work with are marginalized by a variety of factors — age, health, race, poverty — and those factors impact every aspect of their lives,” says Music Maker co-founder Denise Duffy. “Having a professional social worker enables us to really try and break down some of those barriers that get in the way of our partners achieving artistic excellence. A social worker can step in when someone’s having a healthcare crisis, whether it’s home health needs or connecting them with a healthcare provider. A social worker can advocate for our artists so they can take advantage of resources that exist in their communities.”

Brittany Anderson has returned to Music Maker as our social worker.

Brittany’s skills will be critical to our efforts in the future. As we reported last week in our COVID-19 Update, Brittany returned to Music Maker and found our partner artists facing the most difficult year of their lives, owing to the loss of gig income during the pandemic. She’s been in constant contact with our partner artists, doing everything possible to help them close the financial gap and gain access to services they need, even working with individual artists to get them registered for COVID-19 vaccinations.

Brittany’s hope for the future of her work with Music Maker is to build partnerships with other charitable organizations that might help us improve the living conditions of our partner artists, as well as the services they receive. 

“One of the big things for me is to be a ‘macro’ social worker,” Brittany says. “I want to look at the systems that affect our artists and learn how those systems operate. Then we’ll be equipped to ask our artists the right questions that will make it easier for us as we form partnerships.”