The effective arts advocate needs to articulate the value of the arts in as many ways as possible—deploying the right case-making tool in the right situation. Consider these “10 Reasons to Support the Arts” as your Swiss army knife for arts advocacy. Like so many sequestered at home during COVID-19, I write this while mindful of our challenging times, and yet inspired by how the arts still have found a way to permeate our lives. I have watched Yo-Yo Ma concerts online, visited the Smithsonian Museum with a click, and joined my neighbors for daily 6 p.m. outdoor singalongs. Even in this difficult environment, the arts are providing personal experiences and promote social cohesion (see tools #2 and #8 on your army knife!). While I am uncertain what we will look like on the other side of this crisis, tool #1 makes me optimistic that when it is time to stop practicing social distancing, it is the arts that will unify us. 

Like most of you, Americans for the Arts has been watching the breaking news about Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) and we are seeing inquiries coming in from the field and through our national service organization colleagues. While gathering and sharing pertinent information, we are also working to understand the long-term effect on arts and culture activities from performance to festivals, touring artists, and school field trips. We are monitoring responses and preparations and will share more information as it becomes available. You can help us and the nonprofit arts field by sharing with us how you are responding in the immediate and in the long-term. There is still much to learn about the outbreak, and we hope the following information assists you in preparation for both you and your loved ones, your organization, and your community. 

First launched in 2012, the pARTnership Movement is a program and online platform of Americans for the Arts which demonstrates that by partnering with the arts, businesses can gain a competitive edge. Over the past seven years, Americans for the Arts has developed toolkits, shared stories of success, published how-to workbooks to engage employees, and continued to celebrate America’s best businesses supporting the arts—all for the purpose of supporting the work of local arts organizations and businesses as they seek to build creative relationships. Our goal has always been two-fold: build the capacity of the arts field to cultivate and sustain mutually beneficial partnerships with business; and make the case to businesses why partnering with the arts is good for their people, their companies, and their communities. We are pleased to introduce a new pARTnership Movement website to help us (and you) further this work.

I was recently awarded the Champion of Arts Education Award by the Center for Arts Education in New York City. As the owner of a business that relies on artists, I am deeply committed to supporting arts education initiatives. The arts bring so much joy both to adults and children alike, but this rarely translates to encouragement to follow artistic passions. This raises the question: Why do parents do so much to dissuade their children from pursuing an arts career? We celebrate our children’s work on the refrigerator until something happens that begins to make us shudder with fear. When our child comes to us and says, “I think I want to be an artist,” we try to avoid showing our panic right away—knowing that this might just be a passing notion for the day. Then comes a day, as you begin to plan for your college visits, that your son or daughter says to you, “I want to go to an art school,” or they might couch it with, “Yes, I’d like a school that has an art program … and of course a strong biomedical program.” But, whether your child ends up in an art career or related art career, or does get that biomedical engineering degree, what you’ve supported through their school career is an incredible gift. At Golden Artists Colors, we support arts education because having a creative life is a something that will benefit and last an entire lifetime.