This course has, among many other things, re-affirmed to me that the arts are both valuable overall and viable as career fields. I’ve known a lot of professional artists (mainly parents from my elementary school that remain family friends today) who have left their fields after a number of years, and can think of very few people I know personally who have actually been able to stay in the arts as a career. So, however unfair that judgement is, I entered this course thinking that while there might be a range of arts jobs in theory, there was really no way that people could stay in them long-term. I had always assumed that I’d participate in the arts in my future as an occasional supplement to my professional and personal life, but it took this course to show me that I really can engage in the arts in meaningful, sustained ways without being a performer, composer, or professor. Whether that’s working at a non-profit actually in the arts, joining an adult community choir (I had no idea those existed outside of churches!), or just finding free concerts in whatever city I end up in, I now know that these opportunities exist. In regards to civic identity, I have felt much more engaged politically because I have been deeply engaged in the arts this past month. I hope I’ll be able to use my new knowledge that the arts actually can exist in meaningful ways after graduation.
As was mentioned at the WPA MLK Day concert, the arts are a retreat for nourishing the soul. The arts can both remind us of all the work that needs to be done in the world, and in our communities, and give us the strength to go back out and actually do that work. In a time when we are exposed to more bad news than at any other time in history, it can be exhausting to keep working for what’s right. The arts have a unique ability to take people in that state of empathy burnout, acknowledge their pain, and simultaneously remind them that good work is worth doing. In this way, the arts help sustain democracy and civic participation. If the world feels hopeless, and people are too exhausted to create change, democracy cannot possibly continue. We need the arts to step in and bridge the gap between fear and hope. I know for myself, this course helped me to remember that I do have power to change the way things are, and that as long as that power exists, the world is not doomed. Rather than feeling stuck in a world gone wrong, I now feel a renewed sense that the world can truly be made better if enough people world hard enough for long enough. I wouldn’t say that my civic identity is rooted in the arts, but my belief that I have civic power is largely rooted in the arts.
It’s hard for me to know exactly how I will take this knowledge back to campus beyond my policy proposal. Part of what this course has revealed to me is how much arts access matters in terms of allowing people to be engaged civically and artistically. St. Olaf is likely better than most schools at allowing broad access to arts, but the programs and departments are by no means perfectly accessible. I am currently writing a policy proposal about disability accessibility within the music department, but I hope that this course will sustain me enough to keep doing this work and making sure that everyone at St. Olaf has the opportunity to engage meaningfully and equally with the arts. I’ve learned that I really can make a difference, and that arts advocacy can be productive and lead to real changes.
I came into this course outwardly assured of the importance of the arts, but not really believing it. The presentation we were given at AFTA, where we were told exact figures about the arts, including how much revenue they generate was one part of helping me actually believe it. The arts are odd because they are in every aspect of life, but are generally portrayed as trivial money pits rather than important sources of economic and cultural growth. As someone who has been involved in the arts for most of my life, I had gotten used to defending them, but was only really prepared to do that in abstract terms. Being able to point to specific numbers that show that arts are economically important helps. While I don’t think things need to be profitable to be important, I recognize that that is very rarely a message received in US American culture, and that being able to demonstrate economic viability is almost always the best way to get something to be seen as worth having. That experience helped solidify my belief in the importance of the arts by showing me that I don’t have to give up on the arts as a part of my life. I grew up in a place where the arts seemed to be considered just about the lowest priority on everyone’s list, so I had convinced myself that the arts can only decline in relevance. Being given a tool to use to show that the arts are not actually a black hole of funding in which money never escapes allowed me to be open to the idea that arts might be good for more than their own sake.
I want people to understand that not only could the arts not exist without democracy, but also that democracy cannot exist without the arts. Much of what art can do for a society is to push it forward, and to expand the realm of thought and possibility beyond what has been accepted. One of the phrases we heard repeatedly in this course was “politics is the art of the possible”, but we have also seen how the arts can expand the definitions of what is possible to make way for political action to form. One of the best examples of this we say was the many subtle nods in My Fair Lady that unmistakably showed that Colonel Pickering was gay. In 1956, this implication was likely missed because, to most people, it would have been thought of as impossible for a wealthy, reputable man to be gay. Yet, of course, when seen in 2020, it would have been nearly as impossible to read the character as straight. This is in large part because the idea of full civic inclusion of LGBT people became politically viable in the intervening decades, which happened in part because of art, which could be created because of the social climate, and so on and so forth. Here we get into the cycle that is the interplay between democracy and the arts. Political possibility is defined by societal boundaries, and the arts continually push societal boundaries as they are shaped by political and social climates.
One of the things I would like to see happen at all levels of arts because of this course is for organizations to move from an acceptance and accommodation model of disability to one that treats disability as the standard. At the moment, there is very little attention given to what individuals and communities miss out when spaces are inaccessible. The cost of accessibility is too easily accepted as an excuse, usually without fully considering the cost of exclusion for disabled people. Before arts organizations can feel comfortable saying “its an unreasonable burden” and moving on, they must really take the time to think deeply about what it means for people to be able to be pushed out of any and every space because their needs are considered an unreasonable burden. Arts organizations need to be accessible because being any other way is an unreasonable burden to impose on people. If the money doesn’t exist, organizations have a duty to at least think about ways to raise the money in order to create accessible spaces. They must also think about the implications of things like making specific sensory friendly performances of shows while keeping all the rest unfriendly. What does it mean to essentially separate disabled people and their families from the rest of the public rather than making every performance accessible? Can anyone want flashing lights and loud noises in their performances enough to justify the cost of that separation? Until we start assuming that considering diverse disabled needs is just part of the process of engaging with the arts, arts organizations can be assured that they will be excluding many people at a cost too high to justify.