Interviews by JASMINE J. MAHMOUD
Published: Issue 1, Summer 209

Tuesday, May 12, 2009 will be remembered as the new day for the arts in national politics. That morning, a group of sixty arts activists met with the White House Office of Public Engagement for a briefing about the role of the arts in the national recovery.  [The meeting was organized, in part, by Arlene Goldbard, who contributes the lead Special Report essay to this issue.]  In the evening, the President of the United States and the First Lady hosted a White House Poetry Jam with slam poets, musicians, and actors such as James Earl Jones.  TAP spoke with activists who attended the White House arts briefing—Judy Baca, Dudley Cocke and Jeff Chang—as well as Poetry Jam performers Ayelet Waldman, Eric Lewis and Mayda del Valle.

What did we learn? Muralist and community activist Judy Baca reminds us to save our murals, implores us to educate new policymakers about arts activism, cautions us to understand that public art can sometimes be used to cover up bad development practices, and encourages us to foster positive relationships between small arts groups and large arts institutions. Theater director Dudley Cocke details the untold arts recession of 1997 sparked by unfavorable NEA changes, calls on us to get someone in the White House with an arts activism background, and reminds us that the civil rights movement—as with most social justice movements—was won, in large part, through the arts. Cultural critic Jeff Chang reminds us that creativity is at the heart of community sustainability, warns against the privatization of imagination, and calls for a whole-scale rethinking of 21st-century arts policy. Writer Ayelet Waldman reminds us that arts are essential to our common humanity. Musician Eric Lewis lends an example of his own arts-led entrepreneurial success, leading a full-time career without a record label. Poet Mayda del Valle warns of a society that pushes the arts too far into the margins, asks politicians to see the world through the eyes of artists, and inspires us to think of the arts as the transformative place to imagine the future of society, the place where we can honor all humanity.

To witness the dialogue, click on an artist’s name, or continue on.  →