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2 years ago
New Art in Action: A Proposal
The New WPA
A Proposal
By Paul McLean [Lead Artist, Art for Humans]
©2009
INTRODUCTION
The current recession has adversely and disproportionately impacted the arts industry. Non-profit arts organizations have experienced massive reductions in contributions. Creative class workflow has been catastrophically interrupted, as evidenced throughout the field, by job loss, programming curtailments, and so on. Few of the government’s programs to aid the economy have targeted the arts sector, and none have produced significant improvements.
HISTORY
The New Deal arts programs proved that government support of cultural programming and creative output in the United States yield outstanding results, providing substantial benefits for the Democracy. These benefits applied to the society dimensionally:
• Infrastructure
• Education
• Employment
• Culture/Identity
• Innovation
The greatest achievement attributable to the New Deal arts programs was the re-centering of the global art market, and the aesthetic arena of ideas, in the United States.
ANALYSIS
Due to political interventions primarily, the advances produced by New Deal arts programs have been obviated in recent decades. Problems of aesthetic definition of art and prohibitive biases against applied versus fine art have further exacerbated the scenario. Public art has become a battleground in the so-called Culture Wars. Government programs instituted to support the arts and individual artists in many developed countries have outpaced those of the United States. Artist productivity and innovation in those nations has outperformed ours, as demonstrated in the international arts marketplace. The wealth disparity in the United States has radically reshaped the arts marketplace in this country, as have globalist policies and practices. Technological advances have further contributed to the erosion of American prominence in the domain, compounding a systemic failure to successfully define and value artistic production. Arts education in this country has been displaced by policies focused on other disciplines, and emphasizing testing, rather than creative development. Corporate practices, promoting the market for consumer portable “art” has seriously and negatively impinged on the economic environment for emerging fine artists in every discipline. The lack of local media coverage, a symptom of consolidated corporate media, has directly and adversely affected social recognition of artistic achievement in all but a few, mostly urban, communities. The arts field is almost entirely unregulated. For these and other reasons, art in the United States is underperforming and under duress. The recession has only served to push the arts closer to the proverbial precipice, towards a state of utter disenfranchisement in the commonwealth.
ASSESSMENT
Given the unprecedented numbers of highly educated and trained creative professionals in America, whose education and training over the past several decades have incurred for these emerging artists astronomical costs, the conditions in the economy and the society are particularly dire. For the nation, whose Founding Fathers were nearly uniform in their advocacy for arts and culture as a central feature of the Democracy, the status quo should be cause for action, certainly, but also collective embarrassment, if not shame. As the “leader of the Free World,” America has an inferred obligation to promote the benefits of civilization, and its foundation, free speech. Art is the centerpiece of Democratic free speech.
The nation’s leadership must lead, with respect to arts and culture. The benefits, as indicated by the New Deal arts programs, and many others since, are visceral and visible in communities of all sizes, across the land. An infusion of government funds into arts projects at all levels - national, regional, state, local - can produce an immediate and sustainable positive impact on the economy and the Democracy.
PROPOSAL
The most successful approach to establish and develop a new WPA or Art in Action [New Art in Action: NAIA] program for the United States will be dimensional in structure and application. An NAIA program will utilize both new and traditional media technologies in a broad array of practical and useful projects for implementation at all levels of American government and community.
Costs
The benefits will substantially outweigh the costs. As will be demonstrated below, the program will save money by standardizing payment and practice for outcome, through a system of class-based production definitions and pay schedules. Artists will be able to donate services in the public interest, and opt for tax incentives instead of paychecks, if they choose to do so. Accountability at the action site will be therefore effective and minimal, involving an online system that is uniform and regulated, and which can be monitored through documentation that is immediate and direct, based on results. Initial allocations for the NAIA, relative to those such as the provisions for the financial sector, will be miniscule and yield immediately visible productivity with long-term impact.
Infrastructure
Set-up for commission/hiring of creative professionals for government projects can be handled online. Qualifications for eligible artists can be standardized, based on either past performance, specific to the task, or framed as professional tech-training. Artists interested in participating in the NAIA can fill out a descriptive online form, which will determine job eligibility. Hiring institutions can apply for hires specific to the project at hand.
Additional Structural SupportNAIA Multi-use Facilities
A system of multi-use facilities will be established in a progressive, hierarchical network, to serve national, regional, state and local interests, to showcase output, to educate artists and public, and to provide social context for the value of artistic production. Artist eligibility will be based on merit and potential, although programming will also provide for the promotion of art through non-professional activities and eduction, as in classes open to all as arts introduction or entertainment. The establishment of an NAIA network of multi-use facilities, in both virtual and “brick and mortar” iterations, will provide much-needed economic benefits to a cross-section of American industries (construction, architecture, web design, IT, educators, real estate, and so on). Tax incentives for corporate sponsorship, for example, will promote cross-sector participation. In the current economic downtown, the program will also provide much-needed sustainable jobs for displaced, under- or unemployed arts workers, administrators, educators and support staff.
A primary aim of the NAIA program will be to promote the community-building value of the arts at the local level. The NAIA multi-use facility can be an invaluable tool for re-constituting or enhancing the cultural infrastructure of communities of all demographic profiles, and especially for establishing positive cultural identity for communities that have been under-performing and/or under-served politically and economically.
NAIA Media
The NAIA program must also simultaneously address the lack of coverage of the arts in the corporate/consolidated media. Policy and programming must be instituted to require increased proportions for appropriate arts media. The NAIA Arts Media Program [AMP] will reclaim “the public airwaves,” the internet and press as mediums for advancing cultural and arts literacy in the United States.
Through incentives and regulation, and government-sponsored programs, NAIA AMP will establish the means for productively and effectively employing creative professionals and providing content for television, mobile devices, home computers, print and radio. Eligible participants will apply, be selected and be compensated using standardized methods, as described in brief above. Compensation for production facilities, networks, newspapers, etc., will be allocated through a combined fee/tax reduction schedule applied on the principles of equal value throughout the communication/demographic domain.
SUMMARY
The arts are essential to a sustainable Democracy. As George Washington Carver put it, “Where there is no vision, there is no hope.” The NAIA will help to restore American vision and provide hope for a better society for generations to come. The United States has historically inspired people around the world with ideals founded on the principle of free expression. We must once again dedicate ourselves to that principle. Notes
