Americans for the Arts and the Obama Administration

Do you hear that rumbling sound?  That’s the sound of the creative class locomotive beginning to roar.

1200 of the nation’s arts leaders came to Seattle last week for the Americans for the Arts (AFTA) national conference.  I thought you might like to hear some of the voices that are leading the national dialogue.

Yosi Sergant worked for the Obama campaign, was subsequently hired by the White House, and most recently was appointed by the Obama administration as Communications Director for the National Endowment for the Arts.  He said we find ourselves in a “perfect storm.”

I think we enjoy an Administration that understands the value of the artist in creating an environment that breeds rich and creative citizens, and that the value of that creativity has been made very clear by them.

We enjoy a relationship with Congress that is unparalleled, I would say,  in any time in recent history, where people see the role of the artist in a creative economy that is expansive … and is understanding the role that the artist can play in quick and healthy recovery from this recession that we’re in.

And we find a general population that is hungry for that attention.  So what a perfect storm and opportunity for us to really… move the needle, to really show that this community can help convene a conversation about a healthy society, not only for the beauty of the art that we produce but also for the role that we play in our communities and across the board in making sure that we live healthy and rich and full creative lives.

Bob Lynch has been the President  and CEO of AFTA for 25 years.  He said the arts have become critical to communities in this generation.

The nonprofit arts in America—100,000 nonprofit arts organizations— generate 166 billion dollars of economic impact in America… That creates 5.7 million jobs in the nonprofit arts in America, and those jobs return 30 billion dollars in taxes to the federal, state and local coffers.  So we’re an important industry, we’re a big industry.

When you add in the for-profit part—which means the local music store, the dance studio, Broadway, Hollywood, design—when you add in that we see over 680,000 arts organizations, arts businesses out there.  Those arts businesses represent 4.2% of all American business, and that’s something that legislators, decision makers… need to pay attention to in an economic downturn…  The arts are important.  The arts are part of the solution to America’s problems, not part of the problem.

I spoke to keynote speaker Bill Ivey, former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, a member of the Obama-Biden transition team, and Director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise & Public Policy at Vanderbilt University.

The challenge for arts, the challenge for culture in relation to government has always been to get the mainstream policy makers who care about public housing and health care and national defense to see the vitality of our cultural scene as just as important as those other parts of the policy-making world.  And I think there’s a great opportunity with the Obama-Biden Administration and we’ll see how far we can push it.

We have a President who is himself a real author, not a fake ghost-written author, somebody who has had a fascinating biography, a fascinating life story,  in which he encountered cultural difference in different parts of the world, he truly had a global childhood and youth.  And I think that makes him a great candidate to be a cultural President.  I think it’s up to us as arts leaders to keep the pressure on, to try to get to him, to talk with him about why these things are important, but I think we’ve got somebody at the top who is very likely to remain sensitive to the importance of art and art-making to a high quality of life in our democracy.

I’m working on editing some audio features for the AFTA website.  I’ll let you know when they are posted, but it’s truly an exciting time to be in the arts if you have imagination.

Speaking of imagination, do you know who was missing at this conference?  Classical music broadcasters!  There may have been a few, but I didn’t run into any of them. AFTA is the membership organization for leaders of the arts in this country, plus  it has more than 100,000 citizen members.  But for some reason, classical music broadcasters don’t have a seat at this table.  Strange, because we’re the ones who could advance the national dialogue better than anyone.

I hope my esteemed radio colleagues will see the opportunity and get on board.  This train is leaving the station.