This article on jobs and the economy from the Sunday New York Times Magazine has wonderful parallels to our perspectives on the ‘arts industry’. The article underscores our quick perspective on jobs lost, and our inability to see jobs gained:
In a quickly evolving economy, in which increased productivity constantly makes some jobs redundant, we notice the job losses. It is much harder to spot where new jobs are emerging. Our mental categories tend to be behind the times. When we think of jobs, we see factories, secretarial pools, police officers, lawyers. We forget all about jobs we see every day.
The article goes on to explore the ‘blind spots’ in our way of looking at the working world — many of them reinforced by the oracle of such perspectives, the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
The bureau’s occupational survey, which might suggest which jobs are growing, doesn’t count self-employed people or partners in unincorporated businesses at all. And many of today’s growing industries, the ones adding jobs even amid the recession, are comprised largely of small companies and self-employed individuals. That is particularly true for aesthetic crafts, from graphic designers and cosmetic dentists to gardeners. These specialists’ skills are in ever greater demand, yet they tend to work for themselves or in partnerships.
Beyond the focus above on ‘aesthetic crafts’ — a clear connection to cultural production — the challenge of ‘blind spots’ plagues the arts world, as well.
As long as we’ve been measuring arts and culture in the United States (which isn’t all that long), we’ve focused primarily on the formal, nonprofit and public organizations that self-identify as primarily arts focused. That includes all the usual suspects of theater groups, symphonies, museums, performance halls, and so on. Based on that primary focus, we draw charts and run year-to-year comparisons about industry scope and scale, economic impact, and total philanthropic giving (see the Giving USA chart for the most public example).
The problem is that such focused research can actually reinforce our blind spots rather than resolving them. The Giving USA statistics suggest that only 5.1 percent of all philanthropic giving in 2002 went to arts and culture organizations. But what about arts-related activities of hospitals, churches, social service organizations, educational institutions, international affairs initiatives, and even environmental concerns?
Beyond that, what about the thousands of unincorporated, sole-proprietor, or other for-profit small businesses and businesspeople that provide cultural and creative experience in their communities?
Thankfully, we are starting to shine the flashlight into these hazy spaces of our understanding. A few great examples:
- The on-going Urban Institute initiative called Investing in Creativity: A Study of the Support Structures for U.S. Artists, which now has its own home on the web;
- Mapping State Cultural Policy: The State of Washington, an effort by the Cultural Policy Center at The University of Chicago and The Pew Charitable Trusts to take a more exhaustive look at one state’s support structures for culture. The full report is available for download here;
- National and Local Profiles of Cultural Support, a study that ran from 1998 to 2001 that is now archived here;
- The Creative Communities Index project of Cultural Initiatives Silicon Valley, that seeks to track multiple levels of cultural engagement over time.
We may discover as we explore these ‘nooks and crannies’ of community cultural engagement that the formal, nonprofit, arts-focused organization is, itself, a nook or cranny. It may be that the bulk of new growth and new thinking is happening somewhere we weren’t looking.
