by Bob Nelson

Bob Nelson is the Executive Director of Anthology, inc. and is co-founder of the organization. He has been involved in the arts since 1994, organizing many poetry related events, and founded his own Cafe in 2003. He is currently also the CEO of Brick Cave Media, what he labels as a "microglomerate" business he runs out of his home. His web site is www.boboratory.com.

 March 5th, 2009

Here in Arizona, the state is potentially looking to trim $900 million from the budget for education, this after President Obama has both passed his stimulus package and in essence declared his presidency the education presidency by asked each american to seek an additional year of education.

I suppose I was a little too late to discuss how the Stimulus package wasn’t going to provide any sort of tangible benefit to micro arts organizations especially here in Arizona, and I think that these further cuts in education will only underscore the traditional libertarian underpinnings of those that came to Arizona originally to get as far away from the government as possible.

The fact is, none of this is going to materially impact the micro arts and sub-organized organizations here in Arizona as at some level of government, arts are not a priority.

I am not writing to criticize Arizona’s government, or to point out how great it would be if local municipalities would decide that developing the people that live within their own borders would somehow benefit the community overall. You’d have to catch me in person to have me fill your ears with such.

What I am writing about is how the Arts continue to be marginalized at all levels of government, even Nationally. How, people that supposedly have “real jobs” have placed the label of Arts to be a hobby.

There remains a glass ceiling for the Arts to break into mainstream American culture, the glass ceiling propagated by the multimedia conglomerates, that culturates Americans to a television business model that dates back to the very birth of television. It is a glass ceiling propagated by Americans themselves, who in the last 40 years have come to see the greed and desire for things and position in society as measured by the size of your TV, the number of DVD’s you own and your ability to recite a Seinfeld quote to look culturated to your friends.

And, unless this downturn in the economy is severe enough to force Americans to give up some of these creature comforts and reassess how to raise their families in a way less reliant on the programming budget of a company headquartered in California, this is unlikely to change.

Arts will remain a fringe, a thing that people will happen to do on a Saturday once per year and talk about it to their friends the following Monday like they went to the Moon.

 Fortunately, CNN was kind enough to actually place an arts related story on their front page yesterday, located here, where Jane Alexander responded to Bobby Jindal’s comment that $50 million dollars for the arts in the stimulus package wasn’t going to create new jobs as fast as other foci in the private sector.

She quotes 2 million professional artists in the United States. I'll save that suggestion for another column.

I think you should read the article, but at the end of the day, the real message that should be going out to America is that you need to turn off your TV a couple times a week and find al alternate activity, a local bookstore for a writer’s read, a local poetry reading at a coffeehouse, a small theatre company, something.

All the budget in the world isn’t going to fix apathy.

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