For months, my friends and arts associates have been talking about and lobbying for increased arts funding in the context of economic stimulus. So … I’ll admit, I felt a little excited when $50 million in recovery funds for the National Endowment for the Arts was included as part of the economic stimulus bill. But now the backlash begins, and to my never-ending amazement the media is playing along with the portrayal of the arts as political “pork” on a national level, and on a personal level … the modern-day version of a vomitorium???

I’ve blogged before about my frustration regarding media coverage of the arts. It’s an ongoing theme, but this week was a catastrophe. I wish I could send every so-called objective news journalist a copy of Artists in the Workforce, and take every parent who discourages their child’s participation in the arts to a 10-year reunion of my BFA Theater class, because we all still have our jobs! Which is unfortunately more than I can say for all of my friends with MBAs right now.

Anyway. Getting mad isn’t the solution. We need to get  really smart and really loud and frequent about communicating the value of the arts. Barry’s Blog offers some suggestions in today’s post.

On a tangential note, I attended a performance by Culture Clash on Friday night. They were hilarious. I laughed, I learned, and I enjoyed the wonderful and rare live-ness of the experience. There was a moment when one of the actors was poking fun at hipsters in the Mission District, and all of the sudden he stops and says “hey, we bash hipsters but really this night wouldn’t have been possible without all of the hipsters who worked to make it a success.” And someone in the audience hissed! And the actor shrugged and said “hey, you hiss but I don’t see you at CalArts!”

I am paraphrasing, but the dialogue made me wonder about the demographics of our BFA, MFA and other fine arts training programs. I wonder if these demographics need to change. I wonder how we can change them, and what impact that might have on media perception of the arts and arts funding. And I know that unless we work to change media perception of who participates in the arts, and of what it means to participate in the arts, the backlash will continue.