Jo Strom Lane
Arts Advocacy Day 2015 BLOG
Waiting in the line for the Americans for the Arts conference check-in, a sea of faces represent everything from museums and grant makers to the recording industry and writers, public media and arts agencies to education and publishers. Recognizable national theatre agencies include SAG/AFTRA, TCG, IATSE, AEA, ATHE, and EdTA. All crowd into the room looking for their state. Besides myself, Oregon has one of our own STO as the Region I ITO, Alyssa Jewel, participating in activities during AAD, as well. We find Oregon is grouped with Washington, also with two delegates.
The energy is palpable. Looking around the room at over 500 representatives from 48 of the united 50 states eager to make their pitch for arts. In a flurry of rapid-fire succession, we’re all inundated with legislative and political updates going straight into the briefing. We listen to organization leader after organization leader share the importance of connecting with both House and Senate to promote the cause. Although I’m here for theatre education, really it’s a microcosm of the big picture of arts and their impact.
After the initial introduction to the day, the value of arts education in myriad forms is clear. It’s NEA funding that directly supports 5,000 local communities. It’s the military Blue Star Project allowing families to access theatre events and programming for little to no charge. It’s charitable giving that allows for increased funding for more states. It’s supporting museums large and small. It’s the reauthorization of ESEA only if it includes arts education funding as an academic core showing the importance of arts equal to other core subjects. And the list goes on.
Randy Cohen from AFTA energized the room connecting the dots with compelling history and data to demonstrate the clear need for our country as a whole to give itself the necessary gift of the arts for more reasons than cultural literacy. He gave tangible evidence.
- “The arts are fundamental to our humanity.”
- “Students with an education rich in the arts have higher GPAs and standardized test scores, and lower drop-out rates.”
- “Students with 4 years of arts or music in high school average 100 points higher on the verbal and math portions of their SATs than students with just one-half year of arts or music.”
- “The arts and culture sector is a $699 billion dollar industry, which represents 4.3 percent of the nation’s GDP.”
- “Businesses in the US involved in the creation or distribution of the arts that employ 2.9 million people representing 3.9 percent of all businesses and 1.9 percent of all employees.”
Those facts and figures are always necessary but seem inaccessible; we’ve been reliant on anecdotal evidence too long. Now arts educators have charts, graphs, and bullet pointed data that outlines the case for national investment in all arts, including theatre. To feel the sense that multiple organizations are geared specifically to ensure arts and arts funding stays at the forefront of the appropriations gives me relief from feeling it’s a lonely fight to vivacious energy that it’s worth fighting because we are not alone.
By the end of the day, I am overwhelmed with information. I’m running through the role-play about the current political issues and policy, our need for arts in education, and trying to recall as many facts and figures as I can in preparation. Hundreds of other theatre educators and arts advocates around me eagerly prepare to meet their representatives, too, wanting to implore them to support arts education and its importance in students’ and people’s lives. Within just one short day, we’ve all met one another, heard from leaders from National Endowment for the Arts, Americans for the Arts and industry, all helping us to understand better our role nationally, and now we are ready to act.
The following morning, NEA Chairman Jane Chu explained in her congressional arts speech about the role NEA plays in serving local communities with their funding. Through an NEA grant, Turnaround Arts artist Doc Shaw works with disadvantaged students at King Elementary School in NE Portland, Oregon to connect them with arts improving attendance, promoting self-discovery, and increasing arts to students of color. Actress Victoria Rowell spoke passionately about the need to fund NEA in order to allow access to students of color and challenge the industry to represent all faces of our nation within the upper management. Actress Holland Taylor spoke about her experience in the arts and its impact on the country. I found out about The Innovative Collaborative, a network of arts, sciences, and humanities for K-12. Arts and STEAM Caucus member Rep. Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon spoke about the importance of arts in education. Senator John Lewis spoke with fervor about the impact of arts in relation to his experiences, in particular as a young man who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma. Their passion ignited the room for action.
By mid-morning, both Alyssa and I head to the Senate and House offices. We get to meet with the legislative aides for both Rep. Blumenauer and Sen. Wyden (both from Oregon), and the senator himself in the hallway as he rushed to another appointment. When we met with Mr. Paul Balmer from Rep. Blumenauer’s office, we learned he graduated from Grant HS in Portland and participated in theatre, as did his sister who is working in theatre. We immediately think of ideas for how we can apply this experience when we return to Oregon.
This year Oregon Thespians are going to have our first ever Arts Advocacy Day at our state capitol the weekend of our State Festival, a mere two weeks away. As a board, we have several ideas for events and are organizing around it, but this is uncharted territory for us. We know that students will be reciting Shakespeare on the steps, part of The Complete Works Project, but that isn’t enough to create the kind of change we seek. Instead, we will include visits with Representatives, and have the students learn they must do more than be present; they must lobby, as well.
After participating in Arts Advocacy Day, I understand my role as an educator to influence policy supporting arts education for all students in our state and where our state falls in the spectrum of arts support. I feel better prepared to advocate for arts in my state directly with representatives and guide students accordingly. I now see how policy around the importance of the arts truly is shaped in all of the states. I understand we are all lobbyist who need to voice our belief that arts education must be available to all students in every school.
Modeling participation at the national level brings that knowledge into action at the state and local level; it is imperative to a generation of students who crave arts. Ultimately, it is the students’ voice that needs to be heard. Theatre is integral to many high school students due to the wide range of skills it provides. Many students have experienced how insufficient funding is a huge problem and are aware that not all schools have access to theatre arts when they should. By sharing with students what they can do in our democratic system and giving them the tools with regard to policy and legislation, students can create a voice for what they feel and in turn invigorate them into viable action immediately not just on Arts Advocacy Day.
Arts touch on community outreach in ways that other fields do not. Theatre education is no different in its far-reaching and important impact. I know I am preaching to the choir, but it was invigorating to be sitting among major organizations with a large stake in our national arts scene joining forces to influence the powers that be sharing in the vision of national support for the arts.
What can you do? Thank your representatives who do vote for arts programming and encourage them to continue to do so. Be an active lobbyist. Be the one who influences the individuals who do not vote in favor of the arts to educate them on why arts are imperative for our economy, humanity, and soul. Use the data from the Americans for the Arts website from Arts Advocacy Day; it supports the economic impact arts have on every community. Use the facts and figures; it shows arts are viable jobs for the future. Have your students use their personal stories on what arts means to them; let them hear how it changes lives. You can share your own arts story at arts.gov. It’s our collective job to be the experts, share our personal stores, and be the voice to encourage progress forward.
Thank you to the Educational Theatre Association for awarding my colleagues and I the opportunity to attend Arts Advocacy Day 2015 in Washington D.C. as a Hawkins Award recipient representing EdTA and the Oregon State Thespian Board. I feel ready now to advocate for the arts!