integration of the arts in other sectors and the question of value
While I don’t think it makes the strongest case, I do agree with this op-ed piece published last Thursday in the LA Times.
It inspired some early Saturday morning discussion over email between a few of NYC’s cultural wonks. I had additional thoughts that I wanted to make available here since it really got me thinking.
The questions posed were:
1. How do we get the arts disentangled from HHS (health & human services), Environment, and other Social Justice goods, so that we don’t have to compete against them for the same funding/grantors’ attention? Should the arts be disentangled? or Should the arts be posited as an integral part of the solution?”
2. What are we asking the arts community to value? And by inference, what are we asking audience members and a larger culture to value? What values are we evincing in our work? Should we even be evincing values? Talking about them?
My responses:
1. There is no way to compete against them given the current economic conditions, especially with rising unemployment numbers and bankruptcies, and I think we will lose in the long run if we position the argument that way. I think integration is the only way; however, to accomplish it will require buy-in from everyone in the NFP sector as a whole which might be in the impossible dream given how polarized and resource starved all the different factions are…
If I had the power, I would require artistic components to be integral to most of the other nonprofit sectors programs & services rather than being a separate faction, like an ugly orphan who gets fed last and only if there are scraps. I’ve seen studies that suggest using drama to rehabilitate prisoners lowers recidivism rates, children who learn classical music develop better math skills, and cities with lots of well maintained public parks have higher quality of life indexes for residents.
Why doesn’t a homeless shelter offer entertainment with their free meals? Why doesn’t every public park contain a work of art that engages the local community in the process to select?
We are soaking in endless opportunities to revolutionize the cultural sector alongside the other social systems that are broken – health care, education, criminal justice to name a few – we should be leading the integration charge, not creating further divisions by reinforcing the notion that the arts need or deserve special treatment.
The IRS doesn’t recognize “art” in granting exempt status determination, so every one in the art world has to make the “literary, scientific or educational” argument to get federal exempt status for a NFP arts org. Maybe we should stop hacking our way through the NFP sector, for-profit commercial world and all the gray areas that live in between and just become part of everything else that is charitable instead?
Why aren’t the bulk of nonprofit artistic programs produced by social sector nfps – aren’t they at their core social programs? If these orgs introduced such programs, they could then start hiring the millions of artists that live in this country and are looking for ways to put their creativity to good use. Maybe they could deliver the emerging/community based arts programs and the commercial sector could take over where they leave off with those who want to play in the big leagues.
Is it possible to combine artistic programs (for professional and emerging levels) in the same space as literacy development, affordable childcare, after-school & head start programs, community supported agriculture groups etc?
2. Value is a question I keep coming back to – usually when I am speaking to artists about valuing their work, time, IP, audience’s opinion & critical response etc. I think too often we worry about what we are (or aren’t) valuing instead of investigating what our audience values (or doesn’t) and responding to that – that is part of how the system is failing.
Cultivating and fostering a sense of value for the arts outside our community is possibly our biggest challenge as far as sustainability is concerned and where artists should focus our attention as much as possible in the coming days. To me, it seems that our national psyche is also wrestling with the question of value – quite literally (Madoff victims, slashed 401Ks and depreciated housing values) and more philosophically given the massive bailouts of the corporations at the expense of the taxpayer.
Who better than the artists to raise this question in the broadest sense: As the nation we are NOW – what do we value? Is it corporations over people? Is it health care over art? Is it status quo over revolution?
The artists I know personify many of the values now absent in our society – integrity, hard work, self-sacrifice, commitment (yeah I’m talking to you Sarah) – isn’t it time we lead by example and help fix the mess that’s been made at the hands of others who lack our character?
Tags: arts & culture, value
July 12th, 2009 at 9:59 am
I take umbrage at being called a cultural wonk!
But seriously –
These are all great points. It is the question of “value” that I too keep coming back to, and perhaps that is because I am immersed in editing and writing the economics chapter of my dissertation that ends in an exploration of value at the moment. However, I think it is really because all of us cultural wonks seem to keep circling back to it. As if it was the core of all the practical issues plaguing arts & culture in the U.S. right now. In western philosophy there are two ways of understanding how culture unravels in the world
to put it crudely and bastardizing it some:
1. the spirit unfolding the material reality of our existence, relations, production modes, where the spirit is a kind of idea / concept / core “value”
2. the material reality, the technological progress unfolds / determines the relations of production, of sociality, and from them come the ideological understandings of value.
Basically its a chicken & egg question.
Which comes first the core values or the material culture?
We seem to keep making the statement that the arts is under-valued in U.S. culture (I do it too all the time). Right now I am wondering, is it just because we don’t do enough advocacy, outreach and lobbying to make sure art & culture are part of the core values? Or is it because the material culture and ways in which humans relate to each other in the U.S. now has progressed and with it the core values, and live-art (especially) has not kept up with those changes?