Readings

Why will some people engage with art in one setting, but not another? For example, why will someone watch great drama on television at home, but never darken the door of a theater? Why will someone listen to classical music in a place of worship, but not a concert hall?

Enriching our culture and engaging diverse and underserved communities, small arts organizations pop up, flourish, and sometimes flounder, mostly under the philanthropic radar. They often foster artistic expressions not adequately served by larger organizations.

In 1993 my teen students and I attended a traditional music and dance camp in the remote Popoluca village of Pajapan, Veracruz, Mexico, an hour and a half from paved roads. Local homes were built from thatch.

At the foot of trees, my Chicano students, alongside their Mexican counterparts, practiced instruments and dance of the son Jarocho, a tradition created from generations of cultural encounters among Europeans, Indians and Africans. During breaks between classes the kids played soccer in an open field. At night we slept in a small dormitory visited by goats and chickens.

PLAYWRIGHT:

In recent years the United States has developed into an increasingly pronounced class society. We see it in the growing inequality of income and wealth; we witness it in the expansion of corporate power and influence at a time when blue-collar job status is on the decline; and we view it in the daily depiction of our lives on our television screens.

Strategies for funding individual artists can often resemble the principles and policies of trickle-down economics. Grants to arts organizations secure the physical plant and operations of those organizations, allowing them to offer artists the opportunity to present their work, to be seen and heard — at which point the obligation to the artists is fulfilled. This model does not acknowledge that artists and the things they make defy supply-and-demand economics.