No sooner had I posted an essay on how the purveyors of “Anti-Wokeism” are cowards, did the Republican Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, provide another example of not only that cowardice but also how he has done something that will, over time, make all Floridians poorer.
DeSantis recently vetoed $32 million in state funding for arts organizations. This was another shot across the bow of scapegoating the arts in the ongoing war on “wokeism” in America. DeSantis claimed that taxpayers would find funding for many arts projects objectionable because of its sexual nature or other reasons. Meanwhile, arts advocates say these cuts will devastate arts and culture in the Sunshine State.
The reason the arts and the artists, musicians, poets, and creatives of all stripes who create that art are being attacked and targeted as part of this “anti-woke” ideology, relates to the primary role of artists in any society. While we all have a responsibility to “bear witness” to events around us, for musicians and artists, that responsibility is far more fundamental. It is the essence of what they do. For example, music is a powerful platform to highlight, frame, and spur change regarding issues related to justice and equality and thus has played a critical role in every human rights movement in the history of mankind. Nina Simone articulated this well. “You can’t help it. An artist’s duty is to reflect the times.”
Artists have a responsibility to hold a mirror up to society, a mirror that reflects the truth and sheds light upon the realities of that society. And that reflection of truth is what terrifies these anti-woke “crusaders” because, at its core, art challenges us to think. Art expands our perspective and can break boundaries. But DeSantis and his ilk do not want to expand our perspective because they only want one perspective to ever be considered…their own. They don’t want to expand or break down barriers because they want the barriers they have established, defended, and maintained to remain solidly in place.
Rather than seeking truth, they prefer to keep people ignorant and fearful because they believe the public isn’t smart, thoughtful, and trusted enough to be exposed to facts, history, and truths. As I wrote in my previous essay, they fear that if we are exposed to that history and truth, they will be exposed, not as righteous, American “heroes” or “patriots”, but as lying frauds.
But it’s more than that. From a public policy standpoint, attacking the arts community and cutting arts funding is counterproductive. While DeSantis might believe that these cuts in arts funding will save taxpayer money, at the end of the day, they will leave Floridians poorer in many ways. Here are three, among many:
Economically: The arts are a vitally important economic industry, generating revenue, creating jobs, and developing communities. For example, Americans for the Arts partnered with the Division of Arts and Culture and Citizens for Florida Arts, Inc. to measure the economic impact of Florida’s arts and culture industry.
The study, published in 2023, revealed findings including:
- Florida’s arts and cultural industry generated $5.8 billion of economic activity, including $2.9 billion from nonprofit arts and culture organizations.
- This economic activity supports 91,270 full-time jobs and generates $3.8 billion in resident household income.
- Florida’s arts and cultural industry delivers $694.7 million in local, state, and federal government revenue.
In other words, the notion that communities that support the arts and culture do so at the expense of economic development is simply not true. The arts are an industry that creates jobs, generates government revenue, and drives tourism.
Public Health: A growing body of research is making it increasingly clear that the next big frontier in how we, as a society, leverage music and the arts for community benefit relates to its power and potential as an individual therapeutic and public health tool. Music and the arts are being employed to treat a wide array of medical conditions from managing pain and addiction, to treating dementia, depression, and anxiety, to improving coordination in people suffering from cerebral palsy. In short, the medical community is just scratching the surface of applying music as an important public health tool.
Rather than attacking the arts, we should be investing in them if one of the outcomes is advancement in leveraging the arts’ potential as an individual therapeutic and public health tool.
Education and Workforce Development: Music and the arts are universal in nature. As such, their power and potential as an educational tool is unparalleled. For example, music is more than notes played and songs sung. Music is math. Music is reading. Music is language. Music is logic. The research and data are clear in that children involved in music programs score higher on standardized tests. It’s also clear that students involved with music programs are more academically engaged and less likely to face disciplinary measures.
While developing technical skills in math, reading, and language is critical, it is the development of various personal skills, values, and characteristics, with creativity at the top of that list, that reveals the true extent of music’s educational impact. For example, every issue we face in today’s increasingly fast-paced and interconnected world is becoming more complex. And to meet these increasingly complex issues and challenges, we must develop in our populace a corresponding increase in creativity; the ability to think out of the box and at a higher level. Music’s potential to teach and inspire creativity is unparalleled.
That said, these technical and creative skills must also be accompanied by the ability to collaborate with others; to bring diverse people and ideas together in a cooperative effort to address those complex challenges. Once again, music’s potential to teach collaborative skills is profound. In fact, many CEOs view creativity and the ability to collaborate with others as the two most important and desired characteristics of the workforce of the future. Public investment in the arts is not an investment in the arts per se because the arts are about more than the art itself. Rather, it is an investment in the positive public outcomes the arts produce, among them economic vitality, positive public health outcomes, and educational and workforce development, to name only a few. From a public policy standpoint, slashing arts funding and attacking the arts community, is myopic, shortsighted, and counterproductive because “starving” the arts community amounts to starving yourself, your neighbors, and your state of the increased wealth, health, and growth the arts produce.
