Editor’s Note: August 2017
Welcome to our Fall Arts & Culture preview! In this special edition we dedicate most of the magazine’s space to the one thing that serves as a steady reminder of the richness and diversity of our existence –the arts.
The arts also tie us to our human aspirations. Whatever dreams and desires (and fears) we have, collectively or as individuals, are reflected back at us in our theatres, museums, galleries and performance arts spaces. I know the power of the arts firsthand, having been moved in my younger days by the plays of Arthur Miller and today as a ASU Gammage season-ticket holder. The theatre, the museum or the concert hall – pick your happy place. This is where we go to understand what it means to be human.
It’s also where we go to spend money. Going to a show is more than just going to a show. It’s eating dinner and having drinks before the performance. It’s shopping at stores nearby the venue or at the shop within it. It may involve dessert or a nightcap drink. It will more than likely mean paying for parking.
In Phoenix alone, total 2015 spending by the non-profit arts and culture industry totaled $401,780,785, according to a new national study by Americans for the Arts, supporting 12,815 full-time jobs and generating $19.5 million in local revenue. That’s big business.
In fact, the Department of Commerce estimates that nonprofit and for-profit arts in the U.S. is a $704 billion industry, accounting for 4.1% of gross domestic product. That’s bigger than industries such as tourism and construction.
The Americans for the Arts study shows about a third of attendees live outside the area in which the arts event took place. Event-related spending among outside-the-area attendees is more than twice that of their local counterparts (nonlocal: $39.96 vs. local: $17.42). That means the arts attract visitors who spend money while maintaining a vibrant following close to home. All of it helps neighborhood businesses.
But their titanic economic impact cannot measure up to the effect the arts have on our souls. They’re what help us make sense of the past. They affirm our thirst for something more in this life.
We live in some extraordinarily interesting and, if we’re being honest, divisive, times. But during wars both political and actual, the arts will always be there to bring us together through the stories created by artists and then told on the big screen, on stage, in a painting or in a song.
Strip all that away – the plays from the theatres, the songs from the chorales, the paintings from the galleries, the sculptures from the museums, the books, the poetry – and we’re living in a world gone dark, disdainful of grace and beauty. The arts are our lights.
