I Want You To Support Local Artists This Election Season
This election cycle, your dollars would be far more productive if you gave them to independent artists and musicians instead of politicians.
Your email inbox, like mine, is likely overwhelmed with various fundraising emails from every politician who has ever been near your personal data. Each day, I am inundated with text messages, phone calls, video ads, and personal pleas from politicians across the country who are showing up in every possible space with hands out for donations.
While there is certainly a real-life threat to democracy that should be a major priority for all of us, I am not sure that sending $15 to some guy running for Congress in Texas is the most effective way for me to fight for that democracy. I believe that we should fight, protest, and donate all that we can to the fight to preserve democracy and keep the GOP out of power. But, I believe there are better ways to spend our money to create the world that we want to live in.
Don’t get me wrong, political activism, including campaign donations are crucial to the future of our democracy. I have donated in previous elections, and assuming the tour goes well this year, I’ll be donating again to selective progressive candidates and causes. However, the bulk of the money I would have once invested in candidates, I will now be investing back into the independent arts community of which I am so proud to be a member.
There is no lobbying organization for regional bands. Your city’s repertory theater doesn't have a fundraising wing. No major benefactors are cozying up to the brilliant photographer down the street. Barack Obama and George W. Bush are not out making fundraising videos for your area’s orchestra.
Art, as always, is on its own.
This summer and fall as you are overwhelmed with ads, emails, and robo-calls for your political dollars, you also have brilliant, independent artists in your own city and state that could use your dollars far more than your candidate for Governor could. These artists are also likely to have a much more direct impact on your life per dollar spent than even the most powerful of politicians.
By investing that money into your local arts community you can foster burgeoning artists, musicians, writers, and entrepreneurs. Great art and music and theatre drive tourism, generate tax revenue, and create other jobs within a community. By simply spending a few of your dollars with intention and focus on the artists in your area, you can truly become the change you want to see in your city.
Attend farmer’s markets, seek out local shops, and ask about local artists and musicians. Be willing once in a while to spend a bit more to buy something meaningful and hand-produced. Take a chance on a theater production or a live band in your community.
Instead of chucking money at candidates in the hopes that they will make our lives better and richer, we could begin investing our time, attention, and dollars into the things in our community that already make it unique and exciting. By supporting that small cadre of unique and interesting creators, you can allow a community to thrive. That community may begin as a small and disparate set of artistic pursuits, but one day they will become unique business, shops, cafes, restaurants, venues, and theaters.
With the right amount of financial support, and community enthusiasm, new neighborhoods can flourish and rejuvenate themselves. Even if we elect the right people with the best of intentions, progress like this will be low on the priority list. If we’re honest with ourselves, we know that it will likely never come to pass. With our own dollars and focus, we can shift that ownership of progress from politicians to people on the street.
This election year, I am asking you to support the arts in your community. Get involved, spend some cash, see what it does for your town and for your soul. The results might just surprise you.
Cheers,
Matty C
Followed your suggestion today. Bought my friends book at a signing event and spent some dollars at another pal’s used book store!!! booooooooks