My recent copy of Ed., the magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has a fascinating article about how the recession is affecting arts in education.

The arts are incredibly important because creative expression gives students a way of processing their experiences and emotions, provides a way of engaging students who traditionally feel left out of the educational process, and makes children active participants in culture.

As in the past, arts are cut during economic downturns. The article points out that arts programs still manage to survive due to resourceful and passionate arts professionals and teachers who always find a way to make due with less.  When funding dries up, you can still create art with found objects, take advantage of free programs (although these often rely on the same disappearing grants), perform guerrilla theater, and make music on nothing more that re-purposed cans and other household objects on a small or non-existent budget.

Reassuring as that is, I am still concerned.  Arts teachers shouldn’t make martyrs of their credit ratings just to buy supplies, professionals should be compensated for their work, and talented young artists should have access to supplies, tools, and instruments.

More worrisome is the message we send when we slash arts budgets to next to nothing.  Artistic expression is not superfluous, a nice extra only to be enjoyed during the fat times.  Rather, the arts are the air we breathe and essential to, if not literal survival, at least a rich life and thriving culture.

Photos: Smashed by Tim Parkinson and Smash it! by rhobinn