Nikki Haley wonders why the arts deserve aid during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here’s why
When Congress recently approved the $2.2 trillion CARES Act in response to the coronavirus pandemic, it allocated $250 million — a fraction of 1% of the total package — to support public television and radio, the Kennedy Center, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Yet despite this relatively tiny allocation for arts institutions, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley sent out a tweet objecting to it. “How many more people,” Haley tweeted, “could have been helped with this money?”
Here’s a news flash: living, breathing people make art, perform on the stage and report stories on public broadcasting in South Carolina as well as throughout America. That’s why it makes sense to provide funding for our cultural institutions — funds that can and should assist the actors, journalists, musicians, painters, playwrights, theatrical workers, support staff and many others whose lives have been upended by the pandemic.
Spoleto’s impact
As the former leader of South Carolina, Haley is presumably aware of the Spoleto Festival USA that’s held every spring in Charleston. But if Haley isn’t aware of it, I can assure her that the opera, music, theatre and dance performances featured during this world-class, money-making event are performed by real people with real lives, families and bills to pay.
And here are some interesting facts about Spoleto Festival USA:
▪ It would have never gotten off the ground without a $35,000 National Endowment for the Arts seed grant in 1975.
▪ It brings in some $2.5 million a day for two and a half weeks.
▪ It directly benefits more than 600 employees, in addition to the hotel workers, wait staff, parking attendants and others who work in the surrounding small and large businesses.
Unfortunately none of this will happen during 2020: like many other events Spoleto Festival USA has been cancelled this year.
So will Haley object if the National Endowment for the Arts uses CARES Act funds to support the working artists in South Carolina and elsewhere who have lost incomes during this unprecedented period?
The shuttering of the American theater has essentially created a 100% unemployment rate for the nearly 52,000 actors and stage managers who are members of the Actors’ Equity Association. And if we don’t support the arts during this economic emergency, small and medium-sized cultural organizations that are crucial to revitalizing downtown areas and local communities will probably not survive.
Whatever we do for a living, we are all suffering now during this pandemic because homo sapiens are a tribal species — we thrive when we are together. And when we reach the other side of this pandemic, we will need each other desperately.
It is our imagination that makes us human. We must do what is necessary to keep it alive in these perilous times.
Kate Shindle is an actress and president of Actors’ Equity Association, a union representing nearly 52,000 stage managers and actors in live theaters.
This story was originally published May 1, 2020 at 4:50 AM.