The Denver Post: It will come as no surprise to artists that, for the second straight year, nonprofit theaters contributed $1.9 billion to the national economy in 2010, according to the latest annual survey by Theatre Communications Group.
But it might come as a surprise that no one seems to care. Or at least that figure doesn't hold much sway when it comes to supporting arts-funding measures at the ballot box.
6 comments:
I think that everyone in the arts should have this article in their back pocket to whip out whenever they are confronted with an accusing grandmother or an annoying family friend who asks, "but theater is such a luxury how are you really helping the world by practicing it". So much pressure is put on people to have an immediate effect on the world though their actions. That is such a limiting view. Yes for it is easy to see the impact that fire fighters or doctors have on the individual but just because the arts can not be seen visually or are not immediate does not mean that they are not valuable. Also just the mere fact of having arts makes us more evolved as a species. The majority of us have shifted how we think about survival, it is less of a necessity so we can focus our thoughts on creating an society and a culture. Arts have a huge impact on that. In addition it is both a blessing and a curse that the majority of people that go to shows are people that have money. This means that only those people are seeing your shows but it also means that they are giving to you and the economy (ie the ripple effect). This article is very powerful.
I would never have thought that this number would have been this high, that is a lot of money. The government goes and cost some of the funding for the arts is just wrong and the government should be giving the arts more money because If they were to disappear what would people do if they wanted to go and enjoy themselves at the theater and have a great time and think about what they had just saw and maybe go and live there life in a bit different way. I hope that this study makes the government rethink their cuts.
The "arts ripple effect" described in this article should be a real selling point for people to support the arts, if only to help support the economy. I guess people are generally unaware of this effect. It is unfortunate that so many people see the arts as an unnecessary luxury when the arts are truly necessary for peoples' well-being. That sounds like a bit of a blanket statement, but the arts really do help people cope with life both mentally and emotionally. The arts matter, whether the general public realizes it or not. I wonder what it will take for the voting public and a greater portion of our government representatives to see that supporting arts organizations is supporting the well-being of society AND, as this article points out, supporting other businesses and the economy as a whole.
This number is unbelievable. I would love to see the fuzzy math they used to get to this number.
If we would just require all theaters to do twice the number of shows, we would solve the world's global economy.
I also think I need a raise.
this is interesting as the article went to crevices i didn't expect it to go into. this article does give a validity to our industry as a lasting career or profitable based industry. but, what this article also does, is offer a solid annunciation of conjectures for the use of the industry among other growing and populating industries which rival and often detract from the value of ours. this is a well written non biased article, which comes to be more and more rare in our blog happy society where everyones opinion matters and everyones opinion is fact.
It is great to hear that theatre contributes to the economy in a positive way. These numbers should indicate to our government that the arts are important and it is wrong to cut funding. When the government funds the arts they are also funding small business surrounding the theatre. I am interested to see this survey and look at the samples of theatres choosen. If 2000 theatres were surveyed there must be a very wide range of nonprofits. Maybe theatre is alive and well?
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