Thoughts from Bob: Arts in a Global Context and Mayor Brainard
August 8th, 2007 at 11:57am Chad Bauman
An item about Iraq in the last Sunday’s Washington Post caught my attention regarding our ongoing discussion about the arts in a global context. Megan Greenwell says, “Baghdad’s once flourishing community of artists has all but evaporated. Streets formerly lined with galleries are now deserted and the artists who remain say they have not sold a piece since the U.S.-led invasion. Samarrai (a ceramicist) estimates that 90 percent of artists who were working in the capital in early 2003 have been killed or have fled the country.” There is not enough electricity to fire the ceramicists kiln so he will probably leave too.
We talk about and see evidence so often of the community development value of the arts. You have to start by addressing the joy, pain, beauty, ugliness, and questioning that music or painting or theater or dance bring, whether to kids in a school or people living in a neighborhood. We have all seen the arts’ presence become community energy that makes a better neighborhood, a more productive school, a kid with more options in life. And yes, we often get an economic benefit and a social problem-solving benefit as well. We don’t actually need research to see it all around us. But sometimes we don’t think about the opposite situation where the arts are dramatically stripped away, and the unraveling of those very same benefits that occurs, like what the remaining artists in Baghdad see and fear. Shayma Ahmed, a professor at Baghdad’s Academy of Fine Arts said in the same Post article “The threat to the culture is at least as devastating for Iraq’s future as the political problems. If the artists and the writers leave, who will be here to show what is happening and change the situation?”
When leaders and elected officials recognize the importance of the arts, the very value that the artists in Iraq see eroding, these leaders need to be recognized. The August 3 issue of the Indianapolis Star has a story about such a leader, Mayor Jim Brainard of Carmel, Indiana whom I have had the pleasure of meeting at the U.S. Conference of Mayors meetings. The mayor is fighting City Hall so to speak, insisting on a $700,000 arts appropriation in the 2008 budget. He says “it is very important to economic development that we have art and cultural life in the city.” The article indicates that some city council members disagree and actually voted against the entire city budget in opposition to any arts funding. Mayor Brainard is not backing down even as the dispute shapes up to be a possible fall election issue. Hats off to Mayor Brainard.
-Bob Lynch, President and CEO, Americans for the Arts
