What Good Are “The Arts” Anyway?

Why we need to support the arts now more than ever

Just finishing a season that was delayed due to the pandemic, the National Basketball Association has been a model for other professional leagues on how to resume operations as close to normal as possible. Living in a bubble at Disney World helped the league bring back the sport to its fans while at the same time protecting players and team management from COVID-19.

Besides providing entertainment to the fans, there was a financial incentive to get the game going again — professional sports are a hundreds-of-billions-of-dollars industry in the US. And the thing that sports have going for them is that they are mostly watched on television. In fact, leagues like the NBA get a huge chunk of money from broadcasting rights; tickets to the games only make up a fraction of their income.

One industry that doesn’t rely on television to reach its audience is the arts. Think ballet, opera, theatre, museums and art galleries — all of these have traditionally relied on bringing in thousands of people to comprise a live audience. Could actors walk around on stage in front of a camera? Sure. But a televised version of a musical is just a television show; valuable in its own way, but not the same as a live performance.

So, a pandemic presents a problem. How do arts organizations continue to operate? Not only for their own financial well-being, but for the myriad benefits they provide to millions of people who enjoy these live events. And if they can’t operate safely, what should the country be doing to ensure that they are around when the pandemic is over?

The great lengths the NBA went to are demonstrative of the high value Americans place on sports (and the money to be lost by the league). No one would ever question the value of sports to the American people. The arts? That’s a different matter. So, until it’s safe to operate normally again, we need to make sure the arts and artists stay in the spotlight. We can do that by exploring the question: what good are the arts anyway?

Art Healthy

There are numerous reports showing a strong positive correlation between students who have arts and performing arts classes in school and how those students fare. They attend school more, generally do well in other subjects, are more empathetic, and have a better understanding of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) concepts.

There is also evidence that corporate executives view a degree in the arts as “the most significant indicator of creativity”, and that the creativity, and innovative and divergent thinking that comes with that degree is highly valued in the workplace.

Finally, there is evidence that the arts affect us in ways that are intangible. Art can be used to connect people through stories that illuminate similarities between us. Drama can be used as a form of therapy and role playing to avoid conflict in vulnerable populations. Art can also have the benefit of making us laugh, or calming and relaxing us. Think about how often we turn music on when we feel stressed or anxious; it is literally good for our minds and bodies.

Money Makes the World Go Round

The arts benefit us in multiple ways, but aside from the good feelings and greater empathy, it contributes billions of dollars to the US economy every year. According to research from the National Endowment for the Arts, “arts and culture contributed $877.8 billion, or 4.5 percent, to the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2017.”

The report goes on to state that:

“The value added by arts and culture to the U.S. economy is five times greater than the value from the agricultural sector. The arts and cultural sector add more to the economy than do construction and transportation/warehousing combined.”

So, aside from the aforementioned benefits, there is an obvious financial benefit to getting museums and dance companies back up on their feet. The pandemic is an existential threat to many arts organizations and the artists they employ. However, there seem to be a few obstacles standing in the way of returning them to some sense of normalcy.

Art Isn’t Easy

Most obviously, the first obstacle is that there can’t be audiences in the same way that there were pre-pandemic, if at all. The Broadway League, the National Trade Association for the Broadway Theatre Industry, recently announced that ticket sales are being suspended through at least May 30, 2021, if not later. However, some regional theaters around the country have invited audiences back in with varying degrees of success. Even then, capacity is severely limited and theaters have to make accommodations that are sometimes cost prohibitive.

The second obstacle to getting arts organizations up and running again is one that is a little harder to pin down. There exists, in some circles, an attitude toward the arts that they are expendable, disposable. That they provide little to no value to people or to the economy, despite tons of data to the contrary. There is an apathy, at best, and a conscious hostility at worst. An example of the latter demonstrated by Trump’s desire to cut the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts as recently as February of this year.

This apathy and hostility are exhibited in the mentality of some that the arts are excess fat to be trimmed from schools and city and state budgets in times of hardship. There’s a perception that it’s elitist and esoteric. That it doesn’t contribute and isn’t valuable to the economy. And it’s not just some Americans who hold these attitudes. A British politician and Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, suggested that actors and musicians who don’t feel supported by their government should just look for a new career. Although attitudes are changing, there are still some who believe that the job of an artist isn’t a “real” one.

Creatives and performers have very often trained for years at their craft. Many dancers started a young age, putting in thousands of hours in the studio, perfecting their lines. Visual artists spend countless sums of money on supplies, and musicians often practice until their fingers bleed.

Art isn’t easy, and if we value the art, we must value the artist.

The arts in the United States have long been maligned by some as dying and irrelevant. The “fabulous invalid” that is theatre, for example, is finding it harder to compete in a landscape dominated by streaming services. But the theatre has avoided being completely written off time and time again. And the renaissance that arts and performing arts go through every generation or so, prove that audiences still crave these live and communal experiences.

Where Do We Go From Here?

What has to change in America is the value we place on the arts. And that requires changing attitudes. This was a problem even before the pandemic, but those attitudes have exacerbated the mess these companies and artists find themselves in now. Again, arts and culture contribute approximately $877 BILLION to the economy every year. Over 5 million workers are employed in the arts and culture industry, earning a total of $405 billion.

For the sake of these jobs, these companies, and for the stability of our country, we have to support the arts. Individually we have to donate when we can, and visit when we feel it’s safe. Pay for the Zoom musical now and you might get to attend the real thing in a few months. But most importantly, we have to keep shining a light on the arts during these dark times. Share this story. Tweet your friends, post about the importance of arts and culture on Facebook. And importantly, extend the notion of “shopping small” and “supporting local” to include arts in your town or city.

We also have to push our elected officials to fully fund (and even increase funding to) the arts and humanities in the US. We have to make clear to politicians that it is the arts that many have turned to for comfort and normalcy in these uncertain times. We need to demand tax incentives like some professional sports teams get to build their stadiums and arenas. We need to demand they bail out the arts and culture sector in the same way the automotive industry was bailed out. And in the same way that farmers receive subsidies when they have low yields. But none of this should come at the expense of the agricultural sector or other vital industries, that’s not the argument. Farmers are important. They feed our bodies.

But the arts feed our soul.