CMU School of Drama


Wednesday, September 09, 2020

Coronavirus impact on Denver's art scene: Years of growth is lost

theknow.denverpost.com: A pair of new reports from the city detail staggering losses in Denver’s arts and culture scene after six months of coronavirus-related shutdowns, which come just after a decade of unprecedented growth.

Issued this week by Denver Arts & Venues, the two reports focus on the city’s creative economy and its music industry, respectively.

3 comments:

Annika Evens said...

This article made me so sad. I know that arts industries are being hit extremely hard because of COVID, but this article talking about the exact numbers and how an area that was really booming in the arts is now declining so much faster than the growth it made. I am scared that it will take the time it took initially to rebuild the industry to what it was before the pandemic, and maybe even longer. Which is really scary to think about because, at least in this case of Denver, it has taken them 10 years to get where they were, and they declined one-third of that in 6 months. So in another 6 months will their industry have decreased by two thirds? I am also sad that I never really know how large the arts industry in Denver was until I read this article about how it isn’t anymore. This article was specifically about Denver but this is exactly what is happening in every city which just makes me so much sadder because all of these cities like Denver that were growing in terms of arts are now shrinking and I just really hope they can bounce back from this and not give up on the growth they were making.

Sarah Bauch said...

This article is just absolutely heartbreaking. To think that a city’s cultural growth that was worked so hard to achieve in the past decade is disappearing due to the Corona Virus is a common story in our current climate is devastating. Considering that the many artists that live in Denver live in the same areas of the city will unfortunately only lead to a large deficit in their local economy, which it sounds like the city itself is already experiencing. When a city is built on the income of its artists, the artists may have a harder time bouncing back due to no one being able to support them. Without proper funding, Denver and many other cities across America, will experience the loss of the beacons of art and culture that once lit up their districts. Without art and culture, cities across America may turn into dangerous places if their creative expression and artistic integrity are not funded, supported, or allowed to flourish.

Ari Cobb said...

Like the other people have said about this article, it’s so saddening to read about all of the losses that the art industry has been taking throughout the course of the pandemic. The fact that it’s taken only six months to take out a third of what Denver has accomplished over an entire decade is horrifying, and it’s not going to come back easily. It’s hard to think that this rapid decline will stop anytime soon considering the US’s widespread denial to the virus and our president who atrociously downplayed the severity of it. Like the article states, it’s only expected to get worse. Even after the pandemic ends, it’s going to take a very long time to try to rebuild everything that fell apart. Dever’s creative industries alone lost nearly 30k jobs so far, so to think what the number of that would be throughout the entire country’s art world is insane.