A Year to Move On From

I am a naturally positive person, I suppose. I live with a half-cupper, so by reaction I tend to always see a few additional drops around any given corner. Which is exactly how this year-end feels to me. A year that began with such hope for continued recovery—back in the spring we were statistically well along in a recovery, remember?—has staggered to its end surrounded by man-made uncertainty and haunted by natural disasters.

The economic divide in American culture continues to inform so much of what we see: outstanding generosity by corporations and individuals who struggle to do good, yet new, gaping needs emerge almost every day. How can we recover a robust economy when half our citizens are sliding into poverty? How will we ever get our education system back on track when there are so many conflicting strategies to do so? And didn’t those conflicting strategies bring us to this point in the first place?

Then we ask, where are the arts, and where is theatre in this picture? We need community more than ever. ArtsWave in Cincinnati has done brilliant work exploring the community-building effect, the “ripple” effect, of the arts in dire economic times. Not only do the arts offer direct economic impact—real estate, peripheral spending like parking and restaurants; but there is also strong impact in giving people a place to come together and experience something together, build community together. And that is where the solutions truly emerge. In a polarized and toxic political culture, our story-tellers are the ones who bring us all together.

Check out this groundbreaking report on what the arts mean to a community at: http://www.theartswave.org/about/research-reports

Gabriel Byrne, the Cultural Ambassador of Ireland, tells a very moving story about a community in rural Ireland that created a community theatre and saved a building in which to house it. “If we can build a theatre, why can’t we build a bank?” they came to ask. That story to me recalls the essence of why what we do matters.

Yes, I am a half cupper. And even at the shank end of a year like this, as we enter 2012 and all the change we hope it will bring, I find renewed trust in the ripple effect. Those ripples are pointing to the future. In 2012, let’s all make waves, together.