Tuesday, March 30, 2010

State Of Emergency



some of the positive impacts of art education:

* 4 times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement
* 3 times more likely to be elected to class office within their schools
* 4 times more likely to participate in a math and science fair
* 3 times more likely to win an award for school attendance
* 4 times more likely to win an award for writing an essay or poem

Young artists, as compared with their peers, are likely to:

* Attend music, art, and dance classes nearly three times as frequently
* Participate in youth groups nearly four times as frequently
* Read for pleasure nearly twice as often
* Perform community service more than four times as often

The combined impact of declining corporate sponsorship and drastic government budget cuts is producing a genuine calamity for arts organizations in the US.

Concerts, theatrical productions, art exhibitions and, in some cases, entire performance seasons are being canceled at an alarming rate. Public schools are losing arts programs; artists are losing grants; numerous theaters, opera houses, music venues and galleries face closure. Arts workers, too, are losing their jobs, with the current unemployment rate in the field estimated conservatively to be 12.5 percent.

The CEO of nonprofit Americans for the Arts, Bob Lynch, told the Associated Press that some 10,000 arts organizations nationwide have disappeared or are close to ending their operations. This represents about 10 percent of the total, and the economic crisis is only a few months old.

Arts organizations in the US are especially vulnerable because so many in recent years have come to rely on either corporate largesse or the contributions of wealthy individuals, or both. Aside from the inevitable ideological limitations this placed on arts groups, this corrupt relationship tied the latter to the fate of the stock market and the wider economy.
From here

5 comments:

DILLIGAF said...

Can drinking vodka be considered an art form? I have been working on it an awful long time...;-)


hehehe..word veri thingy is 'whoring'...I kid you not!

Underground Baker said...

First, four dins, I am so jealous you got "whoring"!

Candy, I thought you might like this little tribute to Dennis Hopper. I guess it could kind of be related to your post.

http://www.percevalpress.com/

I would like to point out that I have never:

been recognized for academic achievement
elected to office
participated in any kind of fair
won an award
participated in youth groups

and dam, I'm not an artist either!

Gardenia said...

Wonderful information, but leaving me feeling very agitated and concerned. I read that something like 23,000 teachers were cut in California - although it seems to me that whenever cuts are made in education they are made in the arts....cutting arts is almost like polluting the earth - everytime beauty leaves, a bit of death occurs - which reminds me - I just saw a piece of news where Obama approved drilling 50 mi off of Virginia coast - shocked me.

X. Dell said...

Arts training has the benefit of stressing critical thinking and independent judgment. At the same time, it promotes understanding of how to cooperate with others, while retaining one's sense of personal autonomy.

When I look at some of the rhetoric explaining that Arts aren't important (kinda ironic, since arts are the basic content of this media-driven culture), like math and science, I begin to think, in my conspiratorial mindset, that perhaps the defunding of Arts programs don't have so much to do with economics as it does with ideology.

The kids in this video nailed that harmony. Very nice.

Anonymous said...

Such a cute video. How to make the chorus a vibrant medium. Quite a challenge. I sang in the church choir last night to an audience of about twenty people. Good fun, that. Not exactly living up to my dream of rock n roll stardom, but it will do :) We certainly don't sing Bjork :)

The school district where I grew up has been cutting programs and teachers left and right, as well. The community just voted "no" on a referendum to overspend the budget. Wisconsin really has top notch schools and programs: academics, arts, sports. I played in a bunch of really great music ensembles, in theater, etc. I believe it was all built on money from the timber industry, back when Wisconsin was something of a very red state. Red red. Not current red :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_Idea

-andy

generated by sloganizer.net