By Cate Fox, Ambitio US Program Director
At the end of January, the White House Domestic Policy Council and the National Endowment of the Arts invited 500 artists, practitioners, academics, funders, and policymakers to Washington, D.C., to gather for the first of its kind one-day meet-up called Healing, Bridging, Thriving: A Summit on Arts and Culture in our Communities. CCI President & CEO Angie Kim and I joined our colleagues from around the country for the pre-gatherings and the in-person summit. It was wonderful to be in the room with great thinkers and friends (some of whom I hadn’t seen since before the pandemic.)
The formal agenda for the day of the summit was broken up into three sections mirroring the title of the event (Healing, Bridging, Thriving), with presentations from national figures, including performers, arts leaders, and policymakers. It served as an external exclamation of the federal government’s commitment to creatives through grant programs that included but extended beyond the National Endowment for the Arts. Seeing policymakers, like the Surgeon General, White House Senior Advisor, representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency, White House Domestic Policy Council, and Health and Human Services, and Congressional representatives, on the stage discussing the importance of the involvement of artists and creatives in issues critical to our democracy felt like our sector was being seen in a new way.
They made the case that arts and cultural practices are integral to a holistic sense of community wellness and foster feelings of belonging that are critical to our well-being. You can catch the livestream from the event here . If you are interested in the details, our colleague Ted Russell, Director of Arts Strategy and Ventures at The Kenneth Rainin Foundation, wrote an excellent summary of the day .
If your time is limited, I suggest listening to National Endowment Chair Dr. María Rosario Jackson’s opening remarks and a closing reflection from Marc Bamuthi Joseph (Vice President of Social Impact at the Kennedy Center). Chair Jackson reminded us that art happens everywhere; the impulse to create is in all of us. She also discussed the importance of creativity as a process. This shows up in our work with Ambitio US Economic Trailblazers, where the arts and creative practices are about everyone participating in something together in order to strengthen the community as much as they are about producing an end product. It made me think about the complicated history and implications of arts funding in philanthropy. In his closing reflection, Bamuthi speaks to the artist’s heart — can our democracy survive without inspiration or belief? If racism is structural, then doesn’t anti-racism also have to be structural? How can we serve communities? What is our role in an equitable future? After a day of amazing presentations, I was so glad to sit with these big questions.
The cross-governmental cooperation on stage and the audience full of amazing arts leaders is a reminder to us of the incredible power that can be harnessed when we share goals and a vision for a better future. This is a tribute to National Endowment Chair Dr. María Rosario Jackson and her staff who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to build relationships with those in other areas of government service and those in the field to determine what could be done together. Congratulations on a tremendous day! And let’s dream about what to do next.
This article was originally published on Medium. Read it on Medium →