Community Resource Mapping
freeDimensional’s Distress Services typically work in concert with a wide range of partners from international human rights organizations to community groups. No two cases are alike. freeDimensional adds unique value to the cases it helps through its network of art spaces, themselves centers of knowledge about the resources in their community, and through its ability to interface with human rights organizations that are not always predisposed to respond to culture workers doing activist work. Organizations that help academics (Scholars at Risk), musicians (FREEMUSE), writers (PEN, ICORN), journalists (Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, and the Rory Peck Trust), and artists (Art Moves Africa) know about our services and routinely reach out to us to either nominate an individual their organization has assisted or to pass along a case that falls outside their mandate to assist. Sometimes freeDimensional is the lead organization on a case, while other times we add value to another organization’s assistance strategy. In all instances we engage in a process of resource mapping, a process that always includes a local art space. Typical action steps include outreach to artist residencies that would be appropriate for a short-term safe haven; nominations and referrals to academic programs or other safe haven organizations such as the International Cities of Refuge Network; strategic introductions to funding organizations; coordinating solidarity visits from other culture workers and concerned individuals to meet with the stakeholder; and outreach to social assistance such as refugee, legal aid, and psycho-social services. Even when Creative Safe Haven and Creative Resistance Fund are not the right fit for a case nominated to freeDimensional, we try to help by providing crucial information and contacts. Recently, freeDimensional raised financial support and facilitated access to psycho-social services for a well-known theater personality, Alam Zeb, who fled Pakistan to Malaysia with 5 family members after he was abducted by the Taliban and forced to publicly renounce his career as an actor.
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