Music Credit: “NY” composed and performed by Kosta T, from the cd Soul Sand, used courtesy of Free Music Archive

Jo Reed: From the National Endowment for the Arts, this is Art Works, I’m Josephine Reed.

On February 19 She’s Got Harlem on Her Mind, an evening of three short plays by influential Harlem Renaissance writer Eulalie Spence opened at Metropolitan Playhouse, in New York City. A life-long high school teacher as well as a distinguished playwright, Eulalie Spence’s work in theater explores the lives of everyday people in the language everyday people speak. She described the plays she wrote as “folk plays” celebrating the humanity of her characters with all their virtues and flaws. Framed by a cappella musical settings, She’s Got Harlem on Her Mind gives audiences a window into daily life in Harlem in the 1920s through the eyes of this pioneering writer. Timothy Johnson is the director of She’s Got Harlem on Her Mind and he’s joining me now to talk about these one-act plays and the extraordinary Eulalie Spence.

Timothy Johnson: Oh, my gosh. Eulalie Spence. Jo, I admit that I have become quite enamored with Eulalie Spence. She was born in the West Indies in the Island of Nevis and she's one of seven girls. One of seven girls. She did spend a significant amount of her formative years growing up there and then her father relocated their family to Harlem, uptown in Harlem is where he relocated them. And she thrived. She went to Wadleigh High School. And then from there, she went to New York University and received a B.A. And then she did some teacher training at this school for teachers and eventually she got a Master's of Arts from the Teachers College at Columbia University. And then eventually, from what I was able to read in the archives, somehow because she was clearly a lover of language, she began to write plays.

Jo Reed: And she brought that love of language into the classroom. Obviously, we’re going to talk about her plays, but I think it’s important to note that she spent her entire life teaching.

Timothy Johnson: Actually, before she actually got her Master's at the Teachers College in Columbia, just based on her training up until that point, her undergraduate degree, she was able to get work as a teacher in the New York City Public Schools in 1918. Yet it was in 1927, that she began her over 30 years of teaching at Eastern District High School in Brooklyn. And she taught English, Elocution and Dramatic Arts. And when I think of teachers, I mean, next to parents, I think that they are the most important roles that one can play in this thing that we call life because of the impact they can have on how an individual sees themselves, how they perceive their possibilities becoming realities. So when I think about the over 30 years that Miss Eulalie Spence taught, ah, what an incomparable contribution to humanity. All of those lives she touched. And one of those lives that I learned about is Joseph Papp. He was a student of Eulalie Spence's at Eastern District High School. And he credits her as being the "most influential person in his life." Wow.

Jo Reed: I know you did a lot of research about Eulalie Spence and her work and I want you to tell me what you found and where you found it.

Timothy Johnson: All the research I did was at the wonderful Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. They have this great, great, great archival collection of things that her estate donated. like, the personal letters, the correspondences that she had with various folks. And, oh, my gosh, I got to tell you, I felt like I was getting this window into her world reading these letters. Like in particular, there was some correspondences between her and a gentleman named Frank S. Horn, actually, Dr. Frank S. Horn. And in these sequences of letters of correspondences between the two, it became quite clear to me that he served as a mentor in her life. And what was so crucial and vital about things that were happening around this time, I'm talking like the early 1920s when the Harlem Renaissance was beginning to truly kick off and people like W.E.B. Du Bois, he started Crisis Magazine, which was an outgrowth of the NAACP and this magazine had playwriting competitions. And one of the stipulations was that it be in a one act form, so Dr. Horn was encouraging her throughout numerous of these letters, "You need to submit your plays to the Crisis Magazine competition." So she did connect with W.E.B. Du Bois and have her work actually presented and produced at the Krigwa Players which was this really wonderful theater company that W.E.B. DuBois started.

Jo Reed: And that turned out to be a fortunate submission. What happened?

Timothy Johnson: In 1927, there was the Fifth International Little Play Tournament and the Krigwa Players decided to submit their production of "Fool's Errand," which was a play by Eulalie Spence, and the set designs were done by none other than Aaron Davis. And please, for the listeners who aren't familiar with Aaron Davis, just Google him and put next to it "Opportunity A Journal of Negro Life." And up will pop his numerous covers for this magazine, his illustrations that will knock you down with the resonance of passion, of bravery, of culture. And so Aaron Davis did the sets and they entered this competition and they were one of the four winners, which meant that they won $200 dollars. So her work was getting a platform. She went on to have no less than four award winning plays. She wrote a total of 14 plays. Only one full length, though. Ah, how I wish she had written more full lengths. And unfortunately, this full length play titled "The Whipping" is not published. It never got a production, though, but the film rights were optioned on her script and she got $5,000 dollars for that which was a sizable amount of money back then in the thirties.

Jo Reed: Will you tell us what made her work so distinctive, Timothy?

Timothy Johnson: Oh, happily. She was able to specifically and personally write her characters in such a way that she made the "ordinary everyday person" extraordinary. And she did this because she was indeed so painstakingly honest about portraying them as human beings, not as some cardboard copies of what someone might think someone who lives in Harlem is like. No. Every single character in these plays that we're presenting are so fully realized. And some of these characters aren't the nicest people in the world. Some do things that aren't the most noble or even just moral. But yet they're human. And we actually, I think in some ways, see them and can take them because of how there is this range in the writing of giving us a window into who they are as human beings. So that's what's so distinctive about the writing. And along with it, she wrote these characters with dialects. And I celebrate the way she did that because as we know, this was a time of the Great Migration where so many moved from the South to the North in hopes of a better life, not only a better life in terms of employment but just a better life in terms of getting away from, oh, my gosh, the Jim Crow in the South which was different from the Jim Crow in the New York City and in Northern States. And my mother was one of those very people who migrated from Salvisa, Kentucky to Cleveland, Ohio. And the thing about these dialects, Jo, I hear my mother in the dialects of these characters. There are these rhythmic patterns in the dialects of her characters that inherently create beats of sound and thought that transmit beyond time and space, connecting the character and the listener to something more which is ancestral and spiritual.

Jo Reed: But this brought her into conflict with W.E.B. Du Bois.

Timothy Johnson: I’m so glad you brought that up. Yup.

Jo Reed: And it was a conflict that was mirrored by Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston. Tell us what was going on.

Timothy Johnson: Oh, I'd be happy to talk about that. Clearly, there were so many voices like you mentioned W.E.B. Du Bois who wanted to do the best they could once they were able to create these platforms for themselves like Crisis Magazine, like Opportunity. They wanted to put our best foot forward in terms of how we were perceived by the world around us. So some of them thought that to write in dialects or to do “folk plays” a term for which they characterized the plays of Zora Neale Hurston and Eulalie Spence, which are plays about these everyday people. They felt like that wasn't really presenting us in a way that was going to move us forward in the eyes of just the white world in which they were attempting to find some sense of footing and equality. But yet from her perspective, she was like, I'm going to write about these people because these are people who matter and this is real and this is reality. And I'm paraphrasing what she wrote, but she didn't feel as though she had to placate that. She felt like it was important to her that she celebrate who these people were as human beings. And these plays do it. They advocate for representing people in a way that truly was authentic. But she chose to do that and the way she did it. And if you come see this production, let me tell you, you're going to see just how powerfully it is in the writing and the way we give our hearts and souls in artistry to convey it on stage.

Jo Reed: Well, she, like Zora Neale Hurston, told stories about everyday people in the language that everyday people speak. And that was rarely done back then. It was rarely done throughout the 20th Century. We really can see August Wilson as inheriting that mantle and carrying it forward.

Timothy Johnson: Yes. Yes. I have to admit. I've been in love with the theater since I was a kid. I had all the original Broadway cast recordings. I'd go to my Cleveland Public Library and I'd pull out scripts and album covers and I would just sit there for hours. And other than "A Raisin in the Sun," prior to that, I admit, I was ignorant of the writing of other African-American playwrights that told stories about my people in America. So what I find so important is that this unsung work of a Eulalie Spence be given its due because as you said, Jo, here we are, August Wilson, thank goodness, he is indeed talk about one of the giants, not only of African-American theater but of life in America. He is an iconic American, period, because of the way he tells these stories in such a provocative and beautiful and powerful way. And if you were to draw a link back, it was being done earlier, way back in the twenties by a Eulalie Spence, by a Willis Richardson, by a Marita Bonner. I mean, there's so many people. So as you said, yes, Jo, talk about a comparison that's so valid.

Jo Reed: Well, let's talk about the three one-act plays by Eulalie Spence you're directing for the Metropolitan Playhouse. Can you give us a brief glimpse into each?

Timothy Johnson: Oh, I'd be happy to do that, Jo. We're going to start with the play called "The Starter." I should say that all three of these plays are set in Harlem. "The Starter" was written in 1923. It's going to be followed by "Hot Stuff," which was written in 1927 and then "The Hunt," 1927. So "The Starter," "The Starter" is set in a park in Harlem and the story centers around these beautiful characters, Georgia and T.J. And on this particular day, T.J. decides that he's going to get up the nerve to ask Georgia to marry him. So in the course of the play we find out how that all turns out. And I don't want to give it away. And in "Hot Stuff." Ah! It's set in Fanny King's home. Fanny King happens to be a numbers runner. She also has a couple other businesses. She sells dresses. She sells stockings. And she is the central character in this play. It starts out Fanny's on top. She's gotten in a good take of all the people coming and doing numbers and in the course of the day some things turn around for Fanny; So it takes us on a journey of these things and then Fanny gets to confront some of the choices she's made in her life. And then in the final play, "The Hunch," the central character there is Mavis and Mavis has migrated from Raleigh, South Carolina. And she's come to the big city I think with stars in her eyes. She meets a man and gets engaged. And there is a love triangle. And that's all I'll say. I don't want to give away any more of these-- of the good-- of the juicy stuff in these-- in these stories.

Jo Reed: It strikes me that three distinct one-act plays would be very challenging to direct. They may be short, but these are three separate plays. So how did you approach them?

Timothy Johnson: I approach it by being extremely specific about what is driving the text. And the thing that was a thread for me, Jo, in terms of why these three plays, well, as I had mentioned, they're all set in Harlem yet within each one of these plays there's crossover of characters wanting universal things to happen in their lives. There are people who want to experience love. They want some material wellbeing. They want a family. They want to have fun. They want a sense of loyalty. They want to get through the day. And that actually finds its way threading throughout all of these plays. So through the process work -- actually we are about to have our second week of rehearsal tonight-- and last week we spent a significant amount of time just really digging deeply into what is driving these thoughts. Because as you know, drama doesn't exist without conflict and I'm always looking for not only the obvious conflict that's more often than not the external that's coming out of character from an outside source. But what is the internal conflict with the character themselves? What are the things they're wrestling with that are getting in the way of them achieving their objectives? So I get really specific about that, and the relationships between the characters and the whole arc of the journey of the plays, each one having their own journey that all again relate to these overall themes of just wanting to get through the day. And wanting something to happen that can bring them a sense of light. Ah, Eulalie Spence, I think she wants people to experience some light in the course of what it is to get up in the morning and maybe eat a little breakfast if you're able to do that and then you go and do what you do. I think she wants them to experience light. There are moments throughout each one of these plays where that also is a thread, where there is clearly light that enters the space, light as in hope, as in possibility, as in understanding, as in realizations where you see a character grow before your eyes. So that tells you a bit about the process that I'm just so humbled and excited to be on with these plays. And the marvelous company that we're getting to work with at Metropolitan Playhouse.

Jo Reed: And how do you work with the actors? Do you come to a play with a sense of what you're after? Or do you and the actors figure it out together?

Timothy Johnson: That's a great question. I do both. As I would imagine so many directors do, I happily spend a lot of time doing text analysis, just breaking down every single line in terms of what is the action; why is that character saying it; and what do they want and why do they want it? What's the need? What is the personal need for them to want to say these words? And also conflict, what's getting in the way of them achieving these wants? So I spend a lot of time doing that. And I re-read the play literally every day for weeks and weeks before the first day of rehearsal because every time I read it I'm going to learn something new. So by the time I come in the room with the actors, I'm ready in the moment to share with them the impulses that have come to me in terms of what is driving this. And that's where we sit down and do the table work. And yet, I welcome and invite them to share their thoughts. So then it does become a collaboration, particularly when we get up on our feet, when we're moving and we're staging through the space in which we're playing and setting each one of the one-acts, I want the actors to follow their impulse in terms of where a thought is leading them and why. So it's definitely a collaborative relationship. Yet as a director, I feel a tremendous responsibility to come in there ready to actually guide and to lead in service of the text. The text, that's my "Bible." I got to honor that playwright's text. I got to. And yet, yeah, I can have a vision about it, but my vision's got to stem from what I'm sensing from the text.

Jo Reed: Do you like to get actor's on their feet and off book early on in the process?

Timothy Johnson: I love to get them up as soon as possible. And I asked the company the first day of rehearsal, I said, "I'd like you to be off book within a week." And of course I said, "Hey, you can have the script." I think what it does, the sooner you get off book, then the more you can play. The more you're not having to depend upon what am I saying. And If you need a line, oh, we have great stage managers who'll give you your line. So I think that it affords you more freedom to get up and go in as soon as possible. That's been a lot of fun, too, to watch them just grab it and run with it.

Jo Reed: The Metropolitan Playhouse as I remember has a smallish stage, which could be another challenge, especially when you're dealing with three one-act plays in a small space.

Timothy Johnson: Yeah. It's one of the things, I must say, Jo, that I love about the Metropolitan Playhouse. And Alex Roe, who is the Artistic Director. Oh, my gosh, talk about someone who dedicates so much of his heart, his intellect, his passion, his artistry to the Metropolitan Playhouse whose mission is "Finding America one play at a time." And this space, it's a thrust space. It's three-sided. I think there's only 51 seats. We were talking with the designers about ways in which we could simply use the space and decide that from the top of the show, I'm going to make it clear that hey, we're a group of actors and we're going to do some storytelling. It's theatrical. Right from the top of the show, the actors are going to come out and they're going to break the fourth wall. And they're going to be singing. They're going to be signing some music that is very evocative of Harlem. Like I've actually written the music myself and the first song that they sing I titled "Welcome to Harlem," because that's going to be their intent, it's going to communicate welcome. We're here. We know you're there. We know you see us. We want you to see us. We want you to participate in this experience. And then of course there will be a shift and then we'll go into “The Starter” and then there will be a light shift and then the fourth wall comes back up. And so the designs are really simple in that we're having just enough of what we need to stimulate the audience's imagination. That's what we're going to do in that space. We want to stimulate their imagination with the set pieces as well.

Jo Reed: You directed a couple of plays virtually during the pandemic, including "Compromise," which I just mentioned. And while I am so deeply grateful, as are many people who thought of theater online as a lifeline during the pandemic, I wonder what that experience was like for you.

Timothy Johnson: I got to say, I was appreciative that that became a means for not only myself but so many other artists to continue to actually do some work. What it did for me: it made me focus, remind myself to focus again on what's driving the text, what's going on. Of course there was that the screen, and I kept saying to myself, "Timothy, think outside the box in terms of what the audience can see in their own little square Zoom box or their computer screen or their TV screen, however they're viewing this virtual production." You want it to be presented in a way that thinks, that is able to transcend beyond just that square. So that was always driving me too, that I was not going to be limited, nor did I want the actor to be limited. For example, if there was a moment when an actor had an impulse to leave the screen because the character wanted to go get something. I was like, "Get up and go. You do that in real life." So it truly was actually exciting for me to discover that yeah, you got to think outside the box because you want it to truly transmit a sense of reality, not limitation.

Jo Reed: Okay. So let's hear about you now. You were born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. We've been talking about your career as a director. But you're really a Renaissance man. You act. You sing. You write. You teach. And you're an award-winning flutist. So I'm wondering how important the arts were in your life when you were growing up?

Timothy Johnson: Oh, my gosh, Jo. My mother, Jo, my mother raised three boys by herself in Cleveland, Ohio. She was a domestic worker. She got up every day and went to work and cleaned somebody's house. And my mother did it with integrity. And I, interestingly enough, it was through school that I found myself gravitating to the arts. And it was teachers that realized that I could sing a little bit and they encouraged me to sing as well. It my fifth grade school teacher who said, "Timothy, there's a songwriting competition. I know you like music. And they want people to write a song. You got something you want to write?" And I was like, "Okay, I'll come up with something." So I wrote this song. And it ended up winning and then on the radio a woman sang my little song. And it goes like this,

(Sings)

"Spring is here and the birds sing clear, all on a new spring day. Flowers will grow and the children will go, out to play. We'll go on singing long. Love will root as I play my flute. All on a new spring day." And that was the song I wrote, Jo. <laughs> And I hadn't even started playing flute yet, which is crazy, so--

Jo Reed: Oh, my God, that is so charming. And you hadn't even started playing flute yet?

Timothy Johnson: I hadn't even started yet. So it was in junior high school going to music and the teacher said, "What instruments do you want to play?" And I said, "Flute." And because I had heard it and so and I got my undergrad degree in Music Education and flute was my major. Oh. Again, my teachers-- Mr. William Hebert who played piccolo in the Cleveland Orchestra was my flute professor at Baldwin Wallace Conservatory of Music along with Deidre McGuire, who was also my flute professor there. And the encouragement I got. And it was, oh, to tell you a great story about what he taught me about hard work. I wanted to audition for the Concerto Competition, the annual one they had at the Conservatory my junior year and I went to Mr. Hebert and said, "Can I audition?" And he said, "You're not ready." And what that did for me, Jo, I said, "You know what?" to myself, "I'm going to be ready next year. I'm going to be ready. I’m going to be ready." So a year later I'd been working on this piece, a serenade by Howard Hanson and I said, "Mr. Hebert, may I audition this year with this piece?" He said, "Yes. You're ready." And when I won first place, the first person I called was Mr. Hebert. So it just, yeah, talk about a wonderful full circle thing with him. And I started dancing in undergraduate school as well. And I had done, like, one play in high school, "Cheaper by the Dozen."

Jo Reed: It that when you started acting?

Timothy Johnson: Yes. It was in undergrad as well.

Jo Reed: And where did you find the time to do all this?

Timothy Johnson: Where did I find the time to do all of this? (laughs) I did. I did a little theater and then I did some summer stock that the college had a summer stock theater, Berea Summer Theater. I did shows there. And so, and I started dancing, training right there and got a scholarship to Cleveland Ballet and I taught junior high school music; I taught junior high school music for Cleveland Public Schools. During that same time, I had a scholarship in dance at Cleveland Ballet. And then "A Chorus Line," the national tour came through town and they held auditions. I auditioned and I didn't get it but they said, "Stay in touch." And I moved to New York like a couple months later, because I was, like, "I'm going to go try to do this thing." And then about a year later, I auditioned in New York at the Shubert Theater where "A Chorus Line" was then appearing on Broadway in its original run. And lo and behold, I got that, so that began the performance career, yeah. And eventually, I always knew I was going to go back to school. I went back to school and got my MFA in Acting at University of Washington and then started teaching on the college level. I knew I was called to teach as well, because for me, I’m humbled by that relationship of having had so many significant and just compassionate teachers who made me believe that I could be more than maybe I even thought I could be if I was willing to work. And they were going to help me figure out <laughs> what I needed to do to grow, to "reach places in myself that I didn't know existed." They really helped me to do that, so teaching for me has been a marvelous way to do that. And then the directing just kind of happened through teaching at colleges where they'd say, "Hey, do you want to direct something? Or would you do this?" And then I went, "Oh, my gosh. All these things that I've been so fortunate to do as an artist actually are things that can feed this idea of how you actually direct a play." So then I started seeking out some directing work and really fortunate to work with none other than Ruben Santiago-Hudson. I mean, come on, talk about an artist, right, I mean? And so I've been fortunate to assist him. And then Alex Roe gave me that great opportunity to direct "On Survivor's Row" at his theater. And so, yeah, lots of fortunate fun things I've been able to do.

Jo Reed: This is a hard question, but I wonder what you get from theater that you don't get necessarily from music and vice versa, what you get from music that you don't get from theater? I can see how they're similar but I wonder how they're different in terms of fulfilling you?

Timothy Johnson: I think that the thing if I were to put them two on a plane next to each other in terms of comparing the two: with music, there's this remarkable, audible sensation that can happen like playing the flute, yeah, it requires breath support to create the sound. But back to Mr. Hebert, what he used to say to me was that, "Timothy, I don't want to hear you play like a record. If I wanted to hear something perfect, I'd just put on a record. No. No, no, no. I want to hear what is coming from your soul in response to honoring that composer's music." So I find music to be this remarkable means to just truly find its way within every fiber of us through that audible sensation of it entering us and affecting us because it's spiritual. And the theater, I think it, too, can of course offer that audible sensation but also you have these human beings who are also taking on characters who are taking on these stories with a beginning, middle and end that these playwrights craft for us. So I think that's what makes it different. But music and theater—it’s an experience: we as the people in that space that are there, all of us coming in with our own individuality and our perspective, we become connected in that experience.

Jo Reed: And finally, circling back to "She's Got Harlem on Her Mind." What would you like audiences to take away from that play?

Timothy Johnson? I'm hoping that they take away a sense of light, that she truly illuminates in these plays a sense of hope, a sense of understanding. I’m hoping they take a sense of joy away in the ordinary, that they recognize how extraordinary is them getting through the day. I'm hoping they can take away that light, that sense of jubilance, that sense of maybe also looking to their left and right as well and going, "Oh, so I'm not alone in doing this." And maybe encountering conflicts throughout the course of that, of each and every day, let alone the full day but moment to moment. I’m not alone. I’m a part of the greater community of humanity. So I'm hoping they take that realization away. Not that they don't already have it with all due respect, but a greater sense of it and a joyful sense of it because these plays celebrate that light, that realization, that accomplishment to see that yeah, I'm all right. We are all right. We can be better. We can rethink. We can reconsider how we do that, too. But yet let's do it. Let's allow light to maybe be the thing that leads us to want to do more, to exist and co-exist in this precious thing we call life.

Jo Reed: What a good place to leave it. Timothy Johnson, thank you so much. And thank you for all the wonderful work that you do.

Timothy Johnson? Oh, Jo, it's been an absolute honor. I cannot thank you enough for giving me this opportunity to have this conversation with you. And please come out, folks, and see the play. I promise you you're going to have a really joyful experience.

Jo Reed: Timothy, thank you.

Timothy Johnson: Thank you, Jo.

Jo Reed: That was Timothy Johnson—he’s the director of She’s Got Harlem on Her Mind, an evening of three short plays by influential Harlem Renaissance writer Eulalie Spence. It’s running at the Metropolitan Playhouse in New York City until March 12. We’ll have a link to Timothy, Eulalie Spence, She’s Got Harlem on her Mind and the Metropolitan Playhousein our show notes.

You’ve been listening to Art Works produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. We’d love to know your thoughts—email us at artworkspod@arts.gov. And follow us wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a rating on Apple, it helps people to find us. For the National Endowment for the Arts, I’m Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.

Jo Reed: Welcome to “Quick Study,” the monthly podcast from the National Endowment for the Arts.  This is where we’ll show stats and stories to help us better the value of art in everyday life.  Sunil Iyengar is the pilot of “Quick Study.”  He’s the Director of Research & Analysis here at the Arts Endowment.  Hello, Sunil.

Sunil Iyengar: Hi, Jo.

Jo Reed: What’s on the docket for today?

Sunil Iyengar: Yeah.  So Jo, in one of these episodes I began by saying that I’d taken piano lessons at a young age, only to later drop them, to my parents’ chagrin, and ultimately my own.  What I may not have mentioned though is that this transition from taking piano lessons to not taking them happened when I was leaving eighth grade and about to enter high school.  I know.  Hardly a major revelation, and who really cares? <laughs> Still, I just got a kick out of a research paper I was reading the other day where the entire focus is on understanding what are some reasons children stop learning music at just that point in their lives, between eighth and ninth grade?  You know, actually, as it happens, for many years now among music educators there’s been a question about persistence.  What makes some children more likely to continue lessons or training in music versus other children once they select into these opportunities?

Jo Reed: Well, wouldn’t it be natural to assume that the decision to take music classes in school is based largely on the economics of the school district, the kids living there?  I mean, just--

Sunil Iyengar: Yeah.

Jo Reed: --having access?

Sunil Iyengar: Yeah, and, you know, I would’ve thought so too, and surely that plays a factor, and in fact the authors of this study write that based on the literature students who initially enroll in music classes in school are more likely to be from more privileged socioeconomic backgrounds than students who are not, and that stands to reason and we see this all the time with data.  By the way, they also tend to be more white and often female, and they have higher GPAs and test scores than students who are not enrolled in such classes on average.  But remember, here for this study we’re talking not only about the decision to enroll in such classes or programs in the first place but really the choice to persist in them from middle school to high school.

Jo Reed: Okay, got it.  So this study wants to discover what makes some children go on with their music from eighth grade to ninth grade and what makes others drop it?

Sunil Iyengar: Yeah.

Jo Reed: So what did the study find?

Sunil Iyengar: Well, so first of all, rather confirming those fears I mentioned earlier among music educators, the majority of students who had taken music in eighth grade dropped music upon entering high school.  Only 24.5 percent, that’s one in four students, persisted in some type of music education in ninth grade after eighth grade.  So for chorus, orchestra or band, or, you know, for each of these types of music, between 20 and 22 percent persisted, while for guitar instruction, you know, which some schools offer, it was lower, 12 percent.  But now, admittedly among students who had taken more than one music activity in eighth grade, over 30 percent persisted by taking at least one music activity in ninth grade.  But Jo, the kicker really is that <laughs> what the researchers found to be the most significant predictors of music persistence among these students.  So previous research has shown that a multitude of demographic and socioeconomic factors affect, as I said, whether students are likely to opt into music education in the first place if it’s offered, but this study suggests that students’ decisions to persist in music training is less reliant on factors such as ethnicity, gender, poverty status or whether the student is deemed gifted or has been even held back a year.

Jo Reed: Okay.  Before we get into those findings, which I think it will be fascinating, can we just backtrack for a moment and tell me just a little bit about the study itself?

Sunil Iyengar: Yeah.  Yes, for sure.  So the paper is by Tevis Tucker and Adam Winsler.  Adam, from George Mason University, is the co-investigator of one of our NEA research labs which supported this work.  It appeared in last fall’s issue of the Journal of Research and Music Education.  So just to continue the background, the study included 189 schools, a database with 189 schools with music students fairly evenly split by gender, though they were mostly non-white or Hispanic.  Also, most students were in poverty, with 77 percent receiving free or reduced-priced lunches in eighth grade.  So for their study, tucker and Winsler looked at a host of different variables for these students based on whether they chose to join a music class or program upon entering high school, and these factors included demographic characteristics such as gender, race and ethnicity, school readiness as measured by standard assessments and academic achievement as measured by grades.  So they looked at all these factors.

Jo Reed: But what’s interesting is you said the study suggests that the students’ decisions to persist in music is less reliant on those factors.

Sunil Iyengar: Yeah.  Yes, but--

Jo Reed: So what are the factors? <laughs>

Sunil Iyengar: Yeah.  So many of those factors, like race, ethnicity, kind of didn’t seem to make a difference, and some of the other school readiness factors, but they did find some academic achievement factors to be very highly correlated with music persistence from eighth grade to ninth grade.  So in fact only GPA, reading and math scores were among the academic achievement factors they found to be really highly correlated with whether people went on to ninth grade, but they also found-- this is interesting-- disability.  Students with disability who were in music classes in eighth grade were more likely to go ahead and continue in ninth grade than other music students.  So we looked at the academic side of things, GPA, reading and math scores, the researchers found, for example, that a 1-point increase in GPA improved the odds that a student would persist in music from middle to high school by 25 percent.  So you ask, you know, “Why do music students who are more academically accomplished in eighth grade carry on with music when they go on to ninth grade?”

Jo Reed: Yes, I am asking.

Sunil Iyengar: <laughs> I just anticipated your question.  So among reasons that have been kind of hypothesized is that academically accomplished students have habits of mind that enable them to thrive in other learning environments such as a practice room or rehearsal hall, or that the cognitive skills they use in math and reading or reinforced by their music training experiences.  Plus, the fact that they’ve been doing well academically before joining ninth grade may embolden them to feel they can stick with music electives while maintaining their GPAs.  But to me it’s far more interesting that 8th grade students with disabilities who were enrolled in music carried this tendency into ninth grade.  So consider this from the study.  After controlling for academic achievement, music students with disabilities had a 36 percent greater odds of persisting in music than their peers without disabilities.

 Jo Reed: Were the researchers able to draw any conclusions about why this might be?

Sunil Iyengar: Yeah.  The researchers suggest it could be because eighth grade music students with disabilities find music classes or extracurriculars to be a welcome environment and that they hold onto them for assurance as they may face greater challenges than usual in adjusting to high school.  That’s just one idea.  But more broadly, the researchers say that the study itself provides assurance or reassurance of still another type.  That is even though there are many barriers to student entry into music classes, whether demographic or socioeconomic barriers, there are relatively smaller number of barriers for students who are already in music to stick with it into high school.  It’s as if once you clear the hurdle for getting music education despite larger systemic disparities, once you’re in it may be easier to ride it out.  As the authors say, the fact that students are not, quote, “being systematically pushed out of music disproportionately once in” is reassuring.

Jo Reed: I guess that is some comfort for music educators.

<laughter>

Jo Reed: Does the study land on any recommendations for that?

Sunil Iyengar: Yeah, that’s what this is really all about.  The authors are good at making a distinction between the types of student engagement that’s required, on the one hand to recruit students into music education in the first place, and on the other hand to keep them there, you know, the kinds of best practices that might be used there.  They say that specific strategies around retention should be a more active force within music education, and they refer to some literature on the subject, which I won’t <laughs> attempt to summarize here.  Instead I’ll note that, quote, “The experience within each music classroom should first and foremost be catered toward fostering a love and appreciation for music,” this is from the article, “not just, for example, proficiency in one’s major skills,” end quote.  So <laughs> -

 --back to my own reason for quitting piano lessons before ninth grade, that may have been the problem.  Too much emphasis on practicing my skills.  Not to blame poor Mrs. Cheatham if you’re out-- listening out there, my former eighth grade music teacher.  Just sayin’.

Jo Reed: <laughs> Gosh, I hear that, Sunil.  I really do.  Well, thank you, and it’s a pleasure as always.

Sunil Iyengar: Thank you.  It’s a very specific subject, but I thought you’d be interested.

Jo Reed: I am interested.  Thank you.  That was Sunil Iyengar.  He’s the Director of Research & Analysis here at the Arts Endowment.  This has been “Quick Study.”  The music is “We Are One” from Scott Holmes Music.  It’s licensed through Creative Commons.  Until next month, I’m Josephine Reed.  Thanks for listening.

Timothy Johnson: Eulalie Spence! She was able to specifically and personally write her characters in such a way that she made the "ordinary everyday person" extraordinary. And she did this because she was indeed so painstakingly honest about portraying them as human beings, not as some cardboard copies of what someone might think someone who lives in Harlem is like. No. Every single character in these plays that we're presenting are so fully realized. And along with it, she wrote these characters with dialects. And I celebrate the way she did that because as we know, this was a time of the Great Migration where so many moved from the South to the North in hopes of a better life. And my mother was one of those very people who migrated from Salvisa, Kentucky to Cleveland, Ohio. And Jo, I hear my mother in the dialects of these characters. There are these rhythmic patterns in the dialects of her characters that inherently create beats of sound and thought that transmit beyond time and space, connecting the character and the listener to something more which is ancestral and spiritual.

Music Credit: “NY” composed and performed by Kosta T, from the cd Soul Sand, used courtesy of Free Music Archive

Jo Reed:  From the National Endowment for the Arts, this is Art Works, I’m Josephine Reed

Maria Rosario Jackson:  The ability to have art, culture, design in our lives as part of our daily lived experience that is a really critical element of places where all people can thrive, and it's part of what we aspire to as a just society.  And I think that the NEA is a national resource that helps to ensure that all people have the ability to lead artful lives. This includes opportunities to explore our creativity and imagination, opportunities to express ourselves, to tell our own stories on our own terms, and learn about others, all the while acknowledging and celebrating our common humanity.  So the NEA is a key player in making sure that the arts are an important part of our collective efforts to truly be a nation of opportunity and possibility.

Jo Reed:  That was the Chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, Dr. Maria Rosario Jackson. Chair Jackson was sworn into that position a little over a year ago. I had spoken to her then about her thoughts about the arts in all its possibilities and the arts endowment at that moment of reopening and reimagining the art sector…and we thought that her one-year anniversary was a good time for a follow-up, for her to share her reflections, observations and some of the agency’s accomplishments of the past year, as well as her ideas, plans, and initiatives for the Arts Endowment going forward. 

Jo Reed:  Chair Jackson, welcome.

Maria Rosario Jackson:  It's great to be with you, Jo. 

Jo Reed:  You came to the agency at a really challenging moment, but also at a time filled with opportunities.  The creative sector was severely affected by the pandemic, and I know you've traveled across the country speaking with artists and arts administrators, so I'm really curious what you have observed both about the challenges that the arts are facing but also the vitality of the arts and arts organizations across the country.

Maria Rosario Jackson:  The last three years have been really complicated.  They've been tough.  All aspects of the cultural sector were impacted, and everyone was challenged to think differently and adjust to how to work in a new environment.  I hear some stories of hardship and loss, but I also hear stories that are really heartening:  people re-imagining how to connect with communities, how to support artists, how to advance opportunities to live artful lives, all in an environment that we couldn't predict, and without question there's so many lessons in our experience over the past three years.  We need the opportunity to harvest what we've learned.  I believe that.  And as I've spoken with different audiences in the past year, I always talk about how we can't just uncritically aspire to snap back to what was pre-pandemic.  We have to take stock and figure out what we've learned, figure out what's been affirmed, what's been challenged, what might even have been debunked.  Our arts ecosystems are much like our natural ecosystems, they're shifting, demanding new ways of working and new ways of gauging success and progress.

Jo Reed:  Well, what part can the Arts Endowment play in encouraging this taking stock and rethinking the arts and creating an environment for that rethinking? 

Maria Rosario Jackson:  I'm really excited about leaning into our identity not only as a grant maker but also as a national resource.  We are in a moment when the arts sector has to reckon with what the next version of itself needs to be, you know, what it needs to look like, how it needs to function and, again, relatedly how we gauge progress and hold ourselves accountable.  The Arts Endowment has to be a partner, I think, and a source of support in that process, and to me this means bolstering our ability to convene, to create learning communities, to create the forums for much-needed conversations and explorations.  I think we have a role to play in lifting up important ideas and new and more impactful ways of working.  I think we have a role to play in encouraging creativity and imagination and in helping people to dream big and think outside of the box as we create the next version of the cultural sector.  The sector creates opportunities for people to live artful lives, that's our work.  And to understand how to do that in a different environment is part of what the Arts Endowment has to encourage. You know, a sector that recognizes that the arts have the greatest power and impact when they don't exist in isolation, when they don't exist in the bubble.  I think this is something that we need to advance.

Jo Reed:  Well, you've noted that many arts organizations are thinking very creatively about engaging with audiences, and I wonder if there are any examples that particularly stayed with you as you traveled throughout the country. 

Maria Rosario Jackson:   You know, I actually prefer to think beyond the notion of just audiences.  For many years in my own work when I talk about arts participation I've used the concept of publics rather than audiences.  I think it includes participation as audience but it also holds many other ways of engaging, you know, thinking about making, doing, teaching, learning, in addition to participating as audience or to consuming art.  But I think to your larger point, organizations around the country are showing a lot of imagination and creativity in reaching people and making arts experiences available.  So many organizations have deeper experience with virtual participation now, and know better about the possibilities and the limitations of that modality.  Many organizations have kept parts of virtual participation practices that they resorted to during the height of the pandemic, and they're re-imagining the connection or even interdependence of virtual participation and live participation as it pertains to audience engagement as well as instruction even in some cases.  In recent years I think people have had to deal with the challenges of touring and getting audiences to their conventional presenting venues.  And some organizations have turned to increasingly lifting up artists from their own communities in the absence of being able to tour, and they've expanded presentation practices to more frequently include community venues like churches and community centers.  So I think there's a lot of innovation in that, and also there's a lot of lifting up of practices that were on the margins before the pandemic that became the way of working in the last three years, so they've shown up as we emerge from the pandemic possibly as continued practices that are not so marginal anymore.

Jo Reed:  You and I had a conversation when you first came to the Arts Endowment as chair, and in that interview last year you said you wanted to listen to what people in the arts sector were saying, and I wonder if anything in particular resonated with you.

Maria Rosario Jackson:  So much.  I think travel in the last year has been so interesting and instructive.  I went to a wide range of places in all regions of the country.  So I visited urban, suburban, rural communities, and talked with artists and arts administrators from all artistic disciplines as well as people from other fields like the health and transportation community development who are also working with artists and arts organizations.  I met with mayors and elected officials, and I had the great honor of seeing the work of many of our grantees as well as visiting with people who benefit from the work of our grantees.  And in many conversations and site visits we learned much more, with much more nuance, about the impacts of the work that we're supporting, the direct impacts and the ripple effects.  So for example we saw evidence of Our Town investments from many years ago that are just now bearing fruit because of the nature and tempo of development.  It was really heartening to learn that an NEA seed grant that supported a planning process or a feasibility study 5 to 10 years ago, and 5 to 10 years later there's a huge state of the arts artist housing complex that actually counts the NEA's seed grant as part of its origin story.  That was an example from LA, from Los Angeles.  Similarly, we saw a beautiful performing arts center, a regional performing arts center, in a small town in Oregon that also had a similar origin story.  It started with an Our Town investment from many years ago.  So as we did a site visit to understand the work at the intersection of arts and health with the Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs through our Creative Forces program, it was really exciting to see the replication of that program and its evolution to include programming and services beyond clinical settings but now in communities outside of clinical settings to serve military personnel and their families.  That was really exciting to see the growth of that program and the impact that it's having.  One trip that I did with staff members to Alabama, we visited Montgomery, Birmingham, Selma, and we actually did the tour with the director of the state arts agency as well as the director of the regional arts organization for that part of the country.  And it was so invaluable to learn about how they function and how they can imagine more strategic alignments among all of us. So how can federal, regional, state, and local agencies work more effectively if we're aligned?  There was an opportunity to explore a bit of that.  We were also able to talk with grantees and gained deeper insights about the possible removal of barriers to access to resources for historically marginalized communities, and there were really terrific insights that came from those conversations.  In that same trip in Alabama we also saw evidence of how the NEA can be inspirational and catalytic.  When we were in Montgomery we were able to visit a place called King's Canvas.  It's a creative and cultural hub on the west side of town, and it was started by a local resident, Kevin King, and his intention was to give artists in this primarily Black community, a space in which to connect or reconnect with each other and with their own creativity.  Kevin told us that he had initially been inspired by the creative placemaking work supported by the NEA many years ago.  It was exciting to see the impact of that work on something very real in that particular community and to understand how it gave Kevin a greater vision for what's possible in his neighborhood.  That trip was really rich.  There's more, I mean, over the course of the year I had the opportunity to meet National Heritage Fellows as well as jazz masters, and learn not only about their artistry but also about the roles that they play in their communities through their art forms, and the roles that they play in the ecosystems that support the art forms themselves, again, learning more about how the arts don't exist in a bubble or in isolation. 

Jo Reed:  You've said very interestingly that the art process can be as important as the product, and I'd really like you to say more about what you mean by this, and also how the NEA can support this.

Maria Rosario Jackson:  Sure.  This idea that art process can be as important as or in some cases even more important than art product, that's been one of my guiding principles for a large part of my career.  And I believe that being engaged in an art process or a creative process not only for the purposes of developing the product at the end but for the benefits that being engaged in creativity has to offer, I think that that's important in so many different ways.  There are many examples of work that the NEA supports whether it's around arts therapy or art in public health or arts in education, sometimes focused on trauma informed learning environments, or the work of the Our Town Program that focuses on community engagement and creating healthier communities, all of these are very process focused.  And I think it's important to lift up artwork as product when that is what the artist or the creators intend to deliver, but equally important is the emphasis on just lifting up that creative process and recognizing that sometimes the thing at the end isn't the point. The point is being engaged in creativity, in imagination and that that journey itself has value, it has value related to health, related to the discovery of your own potential as a maker.   I can go on and on about that because I feel strongly that our human participation in creative process is part of what makes us whole.  I'm really happy to share that we just added creative process to our definition of artistic excellence in the NEA's newly published grant guidelines, and that adjustment I think helps us lean into advancing a more meaningful focus on the creative process and art making. 

Jo Reed:  You've used the term "arts in all", and this is central to your vision.  So this is another two-part question which is first, can you really define that term for us and then explain its centrality to the work of the arts endowment?

Maria Rosario Jackson:  Sure.  I think unleashing the full power of art requires animating the work at the intersection of other dimensions of our lives, so arts in education, arts in community development, economic development, climate, the very important work happening at the intersection of arts and health and wellbeing.  I've been referring to the necessary integration of arts in our daily lives and to the integration of arts in other areas of policy and practice as arts in all, so arts in all refers to the intention of full integration of the arts in how we live.  Not only does the concept push up against the relegation of arts as something separate or just extra, but we're also leaning into arts integration that will create new opportunities and unlock resources for artists and arts organizations.  I mean, there's lots of examples of this in the NEAs work.  A recent one is a collaboration with the General Services Administration, and that's a collaboration to encourage a diverse range of artists to join the National Art Registry and have their work considered for upcoming artist commissions.  In that collaboration together with GSA there's about 17 million dollars in commissions around the country that we hope to make more available to artists.  I certainly hope that we can continue to work with GSA and other federal agencies to help unlock opportunities and lift up the many ways that the arts contribute to society.  As I've said before, the sector doesn't and shouldn't exist in a bubble. 

Jo Reed:  You've expanded the NEA's ongoing work at the intersection of art and health.

Maria Rosario Jackson:  Yes, this is an area where the NEA has worked for many years.  It shows up in our grants, our research, our national initiatives.  We've worked for a number of years with the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs on our Creative Forces Initiative, which I mentioned earlier.  And last year we announced the inaugural grants in our Creative Forces Community Engagement Program, and these grants aim to improve the health and wellbeing and quality of life for military service members and veterans exposed to trauma as well as their families and caregivers through art making experiences.  We also recently partnered with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or the CDC, and the CDC Foundation to launch an initiative that helped engage artists and arts organizations to promote COVID vaccine readiness in their communities, and as a result, with funding from the CDC, the CDC Foundation awarded grants to 30 organizations nationwide to support these efforts, and we're really proud of that.  It's also important to recognize that arts and health work also extends to the impact of art space strategies in our communities.  So building social cohesion and paying attention to community wellbeing, that's really important.  Last year the NEA contributed to an equitable long-term recovery and resilience plan, and this is something that was led by the US Department of Health and Human Services.  It's utilizing a whole of government approach, and the plan emphasizes arts and culture is critical to achieving success in a number of domains including belonging and civic muscle, and there's a lot more. I mean, I've always admired NEA's work at this particular intersection and believe that we have so much more to contribute as the nation seeks to heal and mend in so many ways.  There's lots of interest from colleagues in other federal agencies about how the arts play a role in addressing mental health and our social fabric among other issues, and we'll step up to be good partners in that work. 

Jo Reed:  Well, speaking of a whole of government approach, in September an executive order on culture vitality advances a whole of government policy for the arts, the humanities, and museum and library services.  And its purpose, as I read it, is to integrate the arts and humanities, and museum and library services, into policies and programs and partnerships throughout the federal government which of course this aligns so nicely with your vision of arts in all.  So I'm curious how you see the agency continuing and expanding its outreach and collaborations with other agencies.

Maria Rosario Jackson:  So I'm hopeful that this executive order bolsters our work at the intersection of arts and other sectors in ways that are both known and surprising.  I have appointed a senior staff member dedicated to moving this work forward, and staff at the NEA as a whole recognize this is a priority.  Advancing partnerships with other federal agencies to extend the mission in reach of the NEA is something that's very central to us now, and I'm very much looking forward to continuing to build relationships with other agency leaders and staff that can carry out the work hopefully in very durable ways.  These are win-win relationships.  I really do believe that when we say we aspire to be a nation of opportunity and possibility, arts, culture and design have to be integrated in all our efforts to do that, and that certainly includes work at these intersections. 

Jo Reed:  Well, let's look at the year ahead.  The NEA of course, we fund the arts, but you also want to emphasize the agency's role as a national resource for the arts ecosystems.  What are some of the ways you see the agency assuming this role? 

Maria Rosario Jackson:  So these are the ideas that we've been talking about with arts in all.  Our work with other agencies is impacting how the NEA is and will continue to show up.  We continue to be a funder, a grant making organization, which is how we're primarily known, but we'll also focus on our role as a national resource for creating and bolstering healthy arts ecosystems, and these are ecosystems that contribute to building healthy communities where all people can thrive.  As a national resource, the NEA will access all of its assets, all of the assets that it has at its disposal, and this includes grant money and financial resources, and it also includes our relationships to other federal agencies like the Department of Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, all the while identifying ways in which the arts can contribute in these realms and, again, unlocking opportunities for new investments and opportunities for arts organizations and artists.  We also have access to the bullhorn of the executive branch and the imprimatur of the federal government, and this is also an asset that we can use strategically.  The infrastructure of state arts organizations, regional arts organizations, and local arts agencies, as well as other networks, that's something else that we can leverage more intentionally as we go about this work.  Another asset is the view and analysis that we can render from a national perspective.  That's not something that everyone has available to them, so the ability to share that and make sure that we're making the best use of it as we deliver information and understanding about trends in the field, that's another important role, and our ability to commission and conduct research about the roles of arts in our society focusing on health and wellbeing but also other areas. And last, I think our ability to connect and convene communities of learning and communities of practice, our ability to catalyze and amplify more effective ways of working, that's something that I'm really excited about. 

Jo Reed:  With Executive Order 13985, the Biden administration advanced equity and justice across the federal government by calling on federal agencies and departments to assess whether and to what extent their programs and policies perpetuate systemic barriers for historically marginalized communities.  How is the NEA responding to this directive?

Maria Rosario Jackson:  So last year the NEA introduced the Equity Action Plan for fiscal years 2022 to 2026, and this plan builds on our advancement of community engagement and inclusion and equitable access to the arts for all Americans.  This has resulted in changes such as making our grant guidelines available in Spanish, and working to provide additional outreach and resources about the NEA's grant opportunities.  We're also working on a pilot program with the regional arts organizations focused on advancing the work of organizations that can help us increase access to arts opportunities to underserved populations, and we hope that these are going to be systemic investments that are durable.  Additionally, the concepts of artful lives and arts in all, those inherently have a focus on inclusion.  They embrace a diverse range of art forms, and create pathways for more opportunities in which the arts can impact people's lives and benefit us.

Jo Reed:  Obviously there is a lot going on at the Arts Endowment, and I wonder what is on the horizon that you are really excited to see? 

Maria Rosario Jackson:  So I'm, again, really excited about the NEA showing up as a national resource.  There are some specific things that I'm looking forward to in addition to things I've already talked about, and one is a series of national conversations that the NEA will host about the future of the sector, the intersection between arts and other areas of policy and practice, the role of the arts in civic infrastructure at the local level, and on a related note the creation of learning communities that help people harvest lessons from the last few years and not just uncritically snap back or aspire to snap back to what was pre-pandemic. So I think that these national conversations are really necessary, and I'm so delighted that the NEA can play a role in helping to make that available.  We're looking at bolstering some existing programs and program areas like our work with the Mayors Institute on City Design and the Citizens Institute on Rural Design, so the enhancement and augmentation of those and possibly adjacent new programs that, again, help to build capacity around art design and impacting in communities and cities, that's really important to me.  Another thing I'm really excited about is helping to unlock opportunities for artists and arts organizations to contribute to mending our social fabric, alongside federal investments and our physical infrastructure.  So as we think of rebuilding the physical structures in communities and cities, we also have to look at the social fabric and understand that there are really important connections between our work in physical infrastructure and social fabric and social infrastructure.  There's some work underway that I think is necessary and really important, and it's focused on local arts agencies, how they operate, what they need how they can be most impactful going forward, and that's a body of research that will be underway soon.  There's also some research on historically Black colleges and universities that will help us better understand their roles in communities in relation to local arts ecosystems, and more generally to the cultural sector.  This will help us understand how we as the NEA can be most helpful in relation to those institutions.  So I'm excited about the NEA'S role in walking alongside the arts community as we adapt and dream big together. 

Jo Reed:  And I think that is a good place to leave it.  Chair Jackson, thank you.  Thank you for giving me your time, and here’s to the year ahead!

Maria Rosario Jackson:  Thank you, Jo.  It's been wonderful talking with you. 

Jo Reed:  Thank you. That was the chair of the National Endowment for the Arts Dr. Maria Rosario Jackson. We have a video of Chair Jackson discussing in depth the principles for engaging in and living an artful life. You can find it on the NEA’s YouTube channel, and we’ll have a link to it in our show notes.  You can keep up with the work of the Arts Endowment by following us on twitter @NEAarts and by checking out our website at arts.gov

You’ve been listening to Art Works produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. We’d love to know your thoughts—email us at artworkspod@arts.gov. And follow us wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a rating on Apple, it helps people to find us. For the National Endowment for the Arts, I’m Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.

Maria Rosario Jackson: I think unleashing the full power of art requires animating the work at the intersection of other dimensions of our lives, so arts in education, arts in community development, economic development, climate, the very important work happening at the intersection of arts and health and wellbeing. I've been referring to the necessary integration of arts in our daily lives and to the integration of arts in other areas of policy and practice as arts in all, so arts in all refers to the intention of full integration of the arts in how we live. Not only does the concept push up against the relegation of arts as something separate or just extra, but we're also leaning into arts integration that will create new opportunities and unlock resources for artists and arts organizations. I mean, there's lots of examples of this in the NEAs work. One example is our collaboration with the General Services Administration, and that's a collaboration to encourage a diverse range of artists to join the National Art Registry and have their work considered for upcoming artist commissions. In that collaboration together with GSA there's about 17 million dollars in commissions around the country that we hope to make more available to artists. I certainly hope that we can continue to work with GSA and other federal agencies to help unlock opportunities and lift up the many ways that the arts contribute to society. As I've said before, the sector doesn't and shouldn't exist in a bubble.