Keeping the Arts Alive: For as Little as Cost of a CD

The good news is that National Endowment for the Arts Chair Jane Alexander will come to Los Angeles in June as part of a series of national hearings, an “American Canvas,” to develop new strategies to fund and preserve the arts (Morning Report, Calendar, April 24). The bad news is that such hearings are necessary in the first place.

Those of us who struggle every day to secure funding for the arts certainly share Alexander’s hope that new partnerships can ease our struggle. A coalition of business, government and community leaders dedicated to supporting the arts is not just a good idea--it is vital. The values that the arts promote and celebrate--beauty, serenity, the exaltation of the human spirit--are the values that our society most requires. Alexander’s mission is a sad testimony to contemporary reality: Hardly anybody, least of all younger people, seems to believe those values are worth more than a cursory nod.

My work with Symphony in the Glen, which offers free classical music concerts performed by a world-class professional orchestra (in Griffith Park this season, as part of the park’s centennial celebration), is mirrored by countless others who seek to make classical arts as accessible as possible. We all scrape, scramble and scavenge for funds from a very small, and ever smaller, pool.

A recent NEA study, by Judith Balfe, identifies one major part of the problem. Balfe finds that “boomers give less to charity, and they specifically give less to the arts.” Our concerts typically draw a better than average audience of families. The “cost” of their attendance is a can of food, which is donated to those in need; at the same time, we also seek from our audience support for our concert season. We typically generate only a scant fraction of the budget we need from those who attend, and enjoy, our concerts.

The NEA study supports what others who have studied the problem have found. It says that what works is “ . . . anything that involves children. Something on a Sunday afternoon. The kids are allowed to move about and fidget. And the parents have a good time.” That is a Symphony in the Glen concert: Sunday afternoons, outdoor parks, very family-friendly.

The odd paradox of our experience lies at the heart of the arts funding problem Alexander and the NEA are exploring. On the one hand, it is clear that young families are hungry for the experience, the sheer joy, of the arts. On the other hand, it is just as clear that nobody has found an effective way of communicating to boomers (or community leaders, for that matter) that support for the arts, beyond mere attendance, can do so much to expand those values.

Consider the compact disc: Boomer parents have happily adopted the technological wizardry that brings outstanding quality into their living rooms. Yet a CD “concert” is a singularly isolated experience--at best, confined to the den. Purchasing a CD expands the beauty and inspiration of the performing arts by the smallest possible numbers.

But when the cost of the CD is donated to the arts it expands the reach and impact of the experience further and wider. The grand and enlightening experience that naturally flows from sharing a performance with an audience is better, the power of the values communicated greater, and the contribution to the general welfare significantly more dramatic. Even a minimal donation to performing arts organizations gets “leveraged” into a much larger result.

The dilemma that Alexander’s “American Canvas” must solve is exactly the paradox Symphony in the Glen faces. Our Fourth of July Concert last year at Hansen Dam offered great music, a marvelous setting and fireworks--all of which served to draw some 10,000 people. It also served to cost us money, for despite the large crowd, we could not generate donations sufficient to cover our costs.

Image the impact on our society if a majority of those who had such an uplifting experience at Hansen Dam--or at any of the other major arts events that can fill the average family’s calendar every single week--had donated the discounted price of a CD on their way out. Their value-rich experience and everything that experience represents could be duplicated time and time again, shared with more and more people.

In a society enthralled with values, the baffling lack of commitment to support the morality that is the soul of art presents Jane Alexander and the NEA with a truly daunting task. Their canvass of America must restore full faith in the arts as a source of values, and translate that faith into support at least as strong as that which their parents and grandparents provided. We hope and pray they can succeed.