25 Random Things: Funding for the Arts

I feel very passionate about the need for funding for the arts.

Mike Wilkerson, who used to manage Ragdale with writer Deborah Galyan, now teaches arts management at American University, writing blogposts to a site called 1/2 Mile Outside the Beltway. There is a sequence of messages there now on the subject of arts funding, including this one from February 12th:

We need new arguments

The elimination of the arts from the stimulus bill -- and the chorus of "who needs the arts" that followed even on liberal sites like Huffington Post and Daily Kos, suggests that we have so spectacularly failed to make our case that the arts are important. The popular imagination doesn't buy the "arts create jobs" concept, even though it's true. People generally understand roads, rails and buildings as ways to employ people. They support (sort of) education, especially when the President talks about crumbling school buildings and the need for science labs.

One of my students last night rather brilliantly linked the beleaguered cause of the arts to the sciences, which, under the previous administration and in the chorus of global warming-deniers, has become a somewhat partisan cause. Who knew that the search for objective truth would become a liberal cause, when even many if not most scientists aren't liberals?

Artists, academics, humanists, scientists -- we're all in the same boat, drifting further and further from the mainstream's perception. Obama's election helped, but we have to row this boat on our own, not wait for his administration's solutions. How shall we speak up for the arts?

You'll find an interesting comment at Mike's site by poet Lyle Daggett, who writes a blog about poetry called A Burning Patience. Lyle brings together a remarkable collection of voices and views – you'll find an extensive list of links to other writers and magazines at his site, as well as timely posts about specific poems, events and publications.

The image above comes from Funding the Arts, the brainchild of Joanne Deutch. One of the best ways to help fund the arts? Buy small press books, tickets to plays, pay attention to what is happening at the margins of our culture. To keep the arts alive, we need better arguments, better critics, better infrastructures for their survival, and audiences that are engaged.

Arlene Goldbard on Community Arts and Cultural Development

My friend Mike Wilkerson, who teaches graduate courses in arts management at American University in Washington DC, posted a link to the Community Arts Network Reading Room on his facebook page. There's an excellent piece there by Arlene Goldbard, called "The New New Deal 2009: Public Service Jobs for Artists?" , illustrated with WPA posters from the Library of Congress.

There are terrific links there, including one to Obama's arts and humanities transition team. Here is a link to the National Archive on-line collection of WPA resources.

Goldbard's work is immensely helpful for taking on those anti-arts types emerging now on tv news, objecting to stimulus package appropriations for the National Endowment for the Arts. She recalls the CETA era under Jimmy Carter, and how it was shut down immediately once Reagan was elected:

During the heyday of CETA, murals, plays and publications also excited controversy, but the ultimate and successful opponent was right-wing opposition to the whole concept of public service through the arts, which was ridiculed as using taxpayer funds to give people jobs playing with paints.

I was a CETA artist for a couple of years, working with senior citizens and children, and yes – we did play with paints, words, and other materials. It was a very enriching experience, for which I made a modestly sustaining income.

Goldbard's summary gives an excellent up-to-the-minute report on public arts funding and its history. At her website you'll find more personal writing about her work on behalf of cultural development, as well as information about her book, New Creative Community.

Arlene Goldbard is a writer, speaker and consultant on culture, politics and spirituality, based in Kansas City, Mo. She is a long-time veteran of the community cultural development field who began writing about cultural policy (including public service employment for artists) more than 30 years ago. She worked at the San Francisco Neighborhood Arts Program in 1973, when the first CETA arts jobs were created. Her most recent book is “New Creative Community: The Art of Cultural Development” (New Village Press, November 2006). You can subscribe to her blog and download her writings at her Web site.