by the South Carolina Arts Alliance
http://www.scartsalliance.net/2017/03/22/america-the-creative/
This past Tuesday, our executive director, GP McLeer, led a team of
eleven advocates from across South Carolina to Washington DC to join
over 700 arts supporters from around the country for National Arts
Advocacy Day. The annual event, organized by Americans for the Arts,
puts arts advocates in front of members of Congress to ensure that the
arts have a voice on Capitol Hill and to support the support of the arts
through public policy and funding.
The timing of the event could not have been more appropriate. On
March 16, President Trump released a blueprint for his executive budget
for FY2018, calling for the
elimination
of, among other cultural agencies, the National Endowment for the Arts
(NEA). While the President’s proposal is just that, a proposal,
the appropriation process in both the House and Senate is set to begin
in the coming days and weeks – a marathon that will stretch far into the
summer. Additionally, new legislation such as the
CREATE Act, the funding and implementation of the
Every Student Succeeds Act, and the burgeoning hot topic of tax reform (including
charitable deductions), were all up for discussion during Hill visits by arts advocates this year.
For South Carolina, the message to our Congressional leaders was
simple: The arts are valued in our communities, in our state, and should
continue to be valued in our nation.
Communities of all sizes have been using the arts as a tool for
economic development all across South Carolina. For the new hometown of
the South Carolina Arts Alliance, Fountain Inn, the continuous public
investment in the Younts Center for Performing Arts has been credited as
the sole change agent in turning a once almost-vacant Main Street into
an economic engine. In rural communities in the SC Promise Zone, like
Denmark, SC, community leaders have been working with the South Carolina
Arts Commission (funded in part by the NEA) to use the arts to tackle
community needs ranging from artistic vibrancy, to health, to literacy.
And in large cities such as Charleston, public support of the arts has
helped propel the city to be named one of the top tourist destinations in the world year after year.
The state Legislature has for 50 years supported the role the arts
play in South Carolina when it created the South Carolina Arts
Commission (SCAC) in 1967. Since then, with support from every corner of
the political spectrum, our legislators have placed value in the arts
by continuing to support the state’s only arts agency. The grants made
by the agency in nearly every county in South Carolina help arts
organizations and artists make our communities stronger, more vibrant,
and more economically successful.
Education in the state benefits when the arts are integrated into the
culture and programs of the school day. Through state funding for the
Arts in Basic Curriculum Project
which helps schools and entire districts plan for the inclusion of the
arts in their portfolio, or Read to Succeed Camps which last summer
began integrating the arts to help improve reading retention, to grants
made to individual teachers to support the purchase of arts materials
for students, the arts play a major role in helping us achieve the
Profile of the South Carolina Graduate, made law last year by the
Legislature and the Governor.
Statewide recruitment of business includes highlighting cultural
amenities in a given city or region, helping us secure investments by
Michelin, Volvo, and Boeing. In fact, the state of Texas lost the
competition to have Boeing’s headquarters in the state to Chicago in the
early 2000s because there were
not enough cultural facilities
near the sites the state looked at. Big companies need vibrant arts
scenes to recruit and retain talent. And in South Carolina, we use that
to our advantage.
The National Endowment for the Arts, which celebrated its 50th
Anniversary in 2015, is currently funded at $148 million. Of all of the
funding the NEA receives, 40% of it goes directly to regional and
statewide agencies – in our area that includes the SC Arts Commission
and South Arts (which covers 9 states). In South Carolina last year,
over
$1,000,000 in NEA grants
made it to our state – at least one grant in every congressional
district. $800,000 of that money went to the South Carolina Arts
Commission. Those funds are matched by the state, plus some, and then
used to support the work and grants of the agency as detailed above.
Funding for the NEA represents
just 0.004%
of the federal budget. And yet, that small investment yields a 9:1
return of private dollars used to match the grants across the country.
The NEA’s original charter legislation stated that one of the agency’s
purposes was to stimulate private sector investment – it’s doing its job
remarkably well. Over the years, the argument has attempted to be made
that with such a small % of the federal budget, why can’t “we”
just encourage private philanthropy to fund the arts and cut government
funding altogether? That view point has a major flaw – it assumes that
private philanthropy is available all over America. Private philanthropy
is geographically skewed, with only
5.5% of all private foundation funding reaches
rural parts of America. In South Carolina, there is simply not a
philanthropic infrastructure in place to support the arts in some of the
most rural communities. NEA funding reaches every single congressional
district in the country, and help reach over 16,000 communities across
the country. Public funding is necessary to ensure Americans have access
to quality arts experiences, regardless of where they live.
In addition to the role the NEA directly plays in supporting the arts
in America, at the end of the day, a governmental budget, and really
any budget, is a statement of values. In America, our economy, our jobs,
and our military are perhaps the three highest values we look to invest
in. The Bureau of Economic Analysis, the leading authority on analyzing
the country’s economic well-being, maintains an arts and culture
satellite account to measure the impact of the sector on the US economy.
The latest results are in,
and the arts and culture sector has an impact of $730 billion on the US
economy, representing 4.2% of US GDP – a higher impact than
Transportation and Construction, among other sectors – supporting 4.8
million jobs around the country.
For our returning and wounded veterans, the NEA has supported grants
across the country to support programs that use the arts in therapy,
provide better access to arts experiences for veterans and their
families, and more. The NEA partners with the Department of Defense on
Creative Forces to use the arts for rehabilitation services, and with
Blue Star Museums
to offer free admission to hundreds of museums across the country to
veterans, active military, and their families between Memorial Day and
Labor Day.
When it comes to jobs, the economy, and our military, investing in the arts are a major part of the equation.
The arts are a fiber that runs throughout our nation’s economy and
well-being. They raise achievement in our education system, make our
communities more vibrant, treat our military, and strengthen our
economy…and all of this for only 0.004% of the federal budget.
Special thanks to the entire South Carolina Team!
Valerie Morris |
Dean, School of the Arts, College of Charleston
Susie Surkamer |
Executive Director, South Arts
Dr. Stephanie Milling |
Head of Dance Education, Dir. of Undergraduate Studies, USC
Scott Shanklin-Peterson |
Chair, Engaging Creative Minds
Mary Ellen Millhouse |
Charleston Advocate
Al Weinrich |
Charleston Advocate
Megan Barbee | USC Dance Education Major
Christine Smith | USC Dance Education Major
Leigh Ann Davis | USC Dance Education Major
Allie Anderson | USC Dance Education Major
GP McLeer |
Executive Director, South Carolina Arts Alliance
