Singing the Un-sung Melody
Since it doesn't look like my Houston colleagues can manage to get an e-zine up and running, and since I spent some valuable time writing an article on arts funding for them, I thought now would be a good time to post the results of my efforts. Here is "Feed A Tenor, Starve a Child".
A few weeks ago I had a conversation that enlightened me about the state of funding for the arts in my community. Seattle is known for a vibrant cultural scene, with a stunning new Museum and sculpture park, a world-class Library housed in an architectural masterpiece, a robust literary scene, a world-class orchestra, opera and ballet, and an award-winning theater community. But my colleague was saying how hard it has become to find significant funding. She expressed her frustration by quoting the old saw, “feed a tenor, starve a child.”
I asked her why the arts were suffering, when there was so much philanthropy – record amounts according to the Wall Street Journal and other publications. She said it was true that philanthropic giving was increasing, but the problem is that funding for the arts is not much more, as a percentage of giving, than it has been for years. She asked me a few rhetorical questions. How can the arts expect support when there is so much to do in social services? Should we stop soliciting arts funding and close our museums, silence our orchestras and darken our stages? Should everyone with money to give turn from the arts and give it instead to social service causes, until the world’s problems are solved?
In 2004 the Rand Corporation published Gifts of the Muse ($18 from http://www.rand.org.), which in less than 100 pages provides the reader with dozens of thoughtful arguments for arts support, using global examples and arguments by some of the most eminent thinkers on the philosophy and economics of the arts.
With profound arguments for the intrinsic value of the arts in society, this book expounds on the idea that the arts benefit all citizens, not just the wealthy who may achieve a measure of immortality by naming a concert hall or museum wing.
The arts benefit us first by encouraging the talents of people who become valuable to the life of businesses, cities, and citizens. These are the painters, dancers, choreographers, singers, sculptors, playwrights, architects and poets who enliven our lives and surroundings, give us hope, encourage thought, and make plain that individual expression is valued. By their product will we be known, and so by their product are we mirrored to others. In this sense, art is not only the expression of the creators, but also of the perceivers. We make and support the arts we enjoy, and so they are a reflection of us.
An economic argument lends some credence to this: “The arts sector attracts the types of workers who spend money on the arts and pay taxes, and these workers are the ones that desirable firms (which create good jobs and pay taxes) need in order to prosper.”
The multiplier effect is another economic argument that proposes that arts organizations not only spend money on artists but also on people with skills in administration, marketing and other essentials to running a business. Their efforts create a demand for other services, (advertising, office supplies, accounting services), while arts consumers need still other services (lodging, food, parking, childcare). Government revenues also benefit because arts employees pay sales taxes and income taxes.
Grassroots arts organizations benefit in their own ways. The bottom-up groups that are responsible for bringing diverse people from the community into cultural programs are organizations that train people in skills that lead to political action and ultimately revitalization of communities. Two principles hold here: build a sense of community and build a capacity for collective action, based around our embrace of individual expression in the arts.
Gifts of the Muse offers three recommendations for promotion of funding for the arts:
· Develop language for discussing intrinsic benefits, which are benefits, beyond quantifiable ones, that are the defining elements and essential appeal of the arts.
· Address the limitations of the argument for economic benefits by researching and specifying what makes the benefits case in the community. Examine benefits more closely with quantifiable methods that are not limited to showing in general that people connected to the arts spend money.
· Promote early exposure to the arts, meaning expose children to a blend of the arts, preferably in the family, but also in the schools, in community-based arts programs, or through popular commercial entertainment.
“The most promising way to develop audiences for the arts is to provide well-designed programs in the nation’s schools.” This means arts education not only in elementary school, but throughout all grades. And it means not only more funding for arts in the schools, but better outreach on the part of the schools to professionals in the art world. More than one-time field trips, this is organized learning over a significant period of time.
There will probably never be a resolution to the issues that surround funding the arts over funding social services; yet, there are many arguments for arts funding.
· Art is good for the economy because it contributes to a network of transactions.
· Art helps us comprehend what it is to be human – to feel, to create, to be alive.
· Art is our legacy, so we must preserve it or there will be nothing left to show who we were, what we thought and how we lived.
Art is expression and tells our stories in bold emotional terms that are both cathartic and sustaining. The arts touch our lives and our communities, so the issues around arts funding touch us all, and the long term effects of cultural policies are felt both by artists and audiences. Most of us in some way are engaged with the arts, whether we are happy simply knowing that the arts exist in our communities, or we participate in them, or we plan to, or we look forward to having them available for future generations.
A healthy philanthropic community supports activities that heal lives and encourage hope. Philanthropists and donors on every tier want their money spent on programs that benefit people. This does not always mean contributing to a medical breakthrough or a campaign to eradicate illness, illiteracy or environmental scourges. Often it can mean contributing to the life of one’s own community by making certain that the people who express for us what it means to live, feel and think today can sustain their artistic pursuits. The arts, if they are encouraged to thrive, can define a culture, make a society more comprehensible to those who live in it, and bring people together.
A few weeks ago I had a conversation that enlightened me about the state of funding for the arts in my community. Seattle is known for a vibrant cultural scene, with a stunning new Museum and sculpture park, a world-class Library housed in an architectural masterpiece, a robust literary scene, a world-class orchestra, opera and ballet, and an award-winning theater community. But my colleague was saying how hard it has become to find significant funding. She expressed her frustration by quoting the old saw, “feed a tenor, starve a child.”
I asked her why the arts were suffering, when there was so much philanthropy – record amounts according to the Wall Street Journal and other publications. She said it was true that philanthropic giving was increasing, but the problem is that funding for the arts is not much more, as a percentage of giving, than it has been for years. She asked me a few rhetorical questions. How can the arts expect support when there is so much to do in social services? Should we stop soliciting arts funding and close our museums, silence our orchestras and darken our stages? Should everyone with money to give turn from the arts and give it instead to social service causes, until the world’s problems are solved?
In 2004 the Rand Corporation published Gifts of the Muse ($18 from http://www.rand.org.), which in less than 100 pages provides the reader with dozens of thoughtful arguments for arts support, using global examples and arguments by some of the most eminent thinkers on the philosophy and economics of the arts.
With profound arguments for the intrinsic value of the arts in society, this book expounds on the idea that the arts benefit all citizens, not just the wealthy who may achieve a measure of immortality by naming a concert hall or museum wing.
The arts benefit us first by encouraging the talents of people who become valuable to the life of businesses, cities, and citizens. These are the painters, dancers, choreographers, singers, sculptors, playwrights, architects and poets who enliven our lives and surroundings, give us hope, encourage thought, and make plain that individual expression is valued. By their product will we be known, and so by their product are we mirrored to others. In this sense, art is not only the expression of the creators, but also of the perceivers. We make and support the arts we enjoy, and so they are a reflection of us.
An economic argument lends some credence to this: “The arts sector attracts the types of workers who spend money on the arts and pay taxes, and these workers are the ones that desirable firms (which create good jobs and pay taxes) need in order to prosper.”
The multiplier effect is another economic argument that proposes that arts organizations not only spend money on artists but also on people with skills in administration, marketing and other essentials to running a business. Their efforts create a demand for other services, (advertising, office supplies, accounting services), while arts consumers need still other services (lodging, food, parking, childcare). Government revenues also benefit because arts employees pay sales taxes and income taxes.
Grassroots arts organizations benefit in their own ways. The bottom-up groups that are responsible for bringing diverse people from the community into cultural programs are organizations that train people in skills that lead to political action and ultimately revitalization of communities. Two principles hold here: build a sense of community and build a capacity for collective action, based around our embrace of individual expression in the arts.
Gifts of the Muse offers three recommendations for promotion of funding for the arts:
· Develop language for discussing intrinsic benefits, which are benefits, beyond quantifiable ones, that are the defining elements and essential appeal of the arts.
· Address the limitations of the argument for economic benefits by researching and specifying what makes the benefits case in the community. Examine benefits more closely with quantifiable methods that are not limited to showing in general that people connected to the arts spend money.
· Promote early exposure to the arts, meaning expose children to a blend of the arts, preferably in the family, but also in the schools, in community-based arts programs, or through popular commercial entertainment.
“The most promising way to develop audiences for the arts is to provide well-designed programs in the nation’s schools.” This means arts education not only in elementary school, but throughout all grades. And it means not only more funding for arts in the schools, but better outreach on the part of the schools to professionals in the art world. More than one-time field trips, this is organized learning over a significant period of time.
There will probably never be a resolution to the issues that surround funding the arts over funding social services; yet, there are many arguments for arts funding.
· Art is good for the economy because it contributes to a network of transactions.
· Art helps us comprehend what it is to be human – to feel, to create, to be alive.
· Art is our legacy, so we must preserve it or there will be nothing left to show who we were, what we thought and how we lived.
Art is expression and tells our stories in bold emotional terms that are both cathartic and sustaining. The arts touch our lives and our communities, so the issues around arts funding touch us all, and the long term effects of cultural policies are felt both by artists and audiences. Most of us in some way are engaged with the arts, whether we are happy simply knowing that the arts exist in our communities, or we participate in them, or we plan to, or we look forward to having them available for future generations.
A healthy philanthropic community supports activities that heal lives and encourage hope. Philanthropists and donors on every tier want their money spent on programs that benefit people. This does not always mean contributing to a medical breakthrough or a campaign to eradicate illness, illiteracy or environmental scourges. Often it can mean contributing to the life of one’s own community by making certain that the people who express for us what it means to live, feel and think today can sustain their artistic pursuits. The arts, if they are encouraged to thrive, can define a culture, make a society more comprehensible to those who live in it, and bring people together.
posted by Schultz and Company | 3:02 PM
|
0 comments
