Time to Invest Substantially in the Arts

If you have ever started a business, I suspect you understand what it means to boot-strap your company. It’s a way for entrepreneurs and small business owners to invest minimally, rely on their own sweat-equity and minimal staff to get things going. It’s great at first, especially when you are trying to prove your business model. But it limits growth, which means eventually you have to simply invest a lot more to get the momentum to run your business effectively.

In the Arts, boot-strapping is the most common business model: pay out little, rely on volunteers, and hope for the best. Of course, this model doesn’t work well for the Arts because it means growth is painfully slow. It limits the institution’s ability to sustain the livelihoods of career artisans and likewise the availability of their programming, and arguably the quality of their programming as well. Such was my experience with Heartland Sings in the beginning.

When I founded this vocal arts company 1997, the goal was to invest in the artists first and foremost, embracing the idea that the community thrives when the arts thrive, and the arts thrive when the artists have what they need to create. When we finally were able to fund this concept fully through a substantial investment from some of our donors, we were able to hire full-time artists who not only grew the company, but so substantially that in the past decade Heartland Sings has accomplished more than they had in the first twenty years of their existence. This substantial investment enabled us to be more successful and deliver to the region a 10-fold return on that investment.

For a plethora of reasons, cultivating a robust investment for the arts is difficult. I suspect this is because our community leaders (government, businesses, foundations, and philanthropists) do not necessarily view the arts as an important community resource, misunderstand what it means to be a non-profit, and don’t know about all the proven health and welfare benefits from a strong, thriving arts scene. This case for investment is easily made when you look at the evidence and, in my case, have the benefit of more than 3 decades of experience seeing that it works.

As an example, I can point to Heartland Sings’ commitment to using their art form to help others and build community. As Rene Fleming puts it in her book “Music and Mind,” art for art sake is not the goal but rather art for life’s sake. In recent years, Heartland Sings has presented concerts with the intent to inform and inspire audiences to take action on issues facing the community. These concerts featured area non-profits whose purpose is to address a particular issue and by virtue of their presence at the concert give audiences a great opportunity to find a way to help. What better way to help unite a build a better community around an issue?

Another example is how our artists are interfacing with our students in education, helping them discover their creative selves, which provides them with the skill to cope with life in both healthy and often cathartic ways.

Essentially, the arts are a great investment because it is the best resource for civilized society to achieve overall community social, mental and emotional health. Time and time again, studies reveal substantial evidence that proves we can achieve some of the same medical and societal benefits through the arts. Thus, it makes sense for everyone to seriously consider the arts as an indispensable resource and fund it just like any other project that helps to build a vibrant, sustainable and livable community.

Overall, a substantial investment in the arts is smart. It is cost effective, provides a avenue for citizens to access a huge array of health benefits, thereby mitigating the issues that plague communities, and vastly reducing the extraordinary costs associated with societal ills where the arts are underfunded and/or absent.

I encourage everyone in our community to seek ways to invest in the arts. A little goes a long way. And if we all join together to invest in the arts, I know from past experience that the the results will be astounding.