The CT Office of the Arts Sees Green

Political and social leaders often toss word salads – press release-ready soundbites that reveal no truths. Liz Shapiro, Connecticut’s Director of Arts, Preservation and Museums, brings the meat.

“Our strategy in arts and culture has [used] what I call ‘the alms strategy’,’ Shapiro said of arts organization’s long-time reliance on donations solicited through arguments like ‘Arts are good’. “If you argue that the arts are part of our innate humanity, that’s not a winning argument.”

Everyone knows that. We instead need to talk about “where the arts act as an accelerant to get you a better product faster, including more inclusively, including more people and, generally less expensive than other solutions.”  

Shapiro is in a unique position to make this happen: her team is nestled in the Department of Economic and Community Development, rather than some bureaucratic hinterland, like most other states’. Our arts office’s organizational placement makes clear that the arts seen are an economic engine in CT. As they should be. State data shows that arts organizations and events contributed $954 million to the economy in 2022; the CT Arts Alliance found arts as a whole added $12.7 billion to the state’s economy that year. 

But the office’s placement is more than symbolic. It expands the group’s network of stakeholders. For example, the state recently worked with the developers behind New London’s Beam Apartments to offer a live-in artist reduced rent and stipend in exchange for creating arts programs that engage residents with one another and the community at large. It is a great trade: the artist gets affordable housing, the community grows tighter, and everyone is safer. Research from The United Way shows tight-knit communities are more resilient and recover faster from natural disasters.

Another notable instance of leveraging art to save money and lives: the state’s collaboration with Arts Pharmacy, a Massachusetts-based initiative in which medical professionals prescribe cultural activities to improve mental health and reduce loneliness, that latter of which costs the economy billions each year and increases people’s risk for dementia, heart disease, and stroke, among other ailments. Already 100 arts organizations have signed on.

Elsewhere, the state’s arts office helps distinct, historically significant neighborhoods become official Cultural Districts. North Hartford is Hartford’s only such district, though there are grass-roots efforts to get Parkville on the map. And this too is more than a symbolic designation: becoming a Cultural District bolsters social cohesion, unlocks new grant opportunities and forges collaborations between businesses, neighborhood groups, and individuals.

But Shapiro’s clear artists and arts organizations are central to all efforts; but they too need to evolve. “Public support of the arts is critical,” Shapiro insisted. “But if artists, and thus, arts organizations, have more money, then they are going to have more power and influence in our capitalist society. We are not going to change the systems until we break that barrier.” One thing’s for sure: grants won’t cut it. “I’m going to work to help [people get grants], yes, but the last 50 years have shown that grants alone are not a successful long-term strategy” to a sustainable arts economy. 

“The bottom line is we need to capitalize artists.” 

Featured image by Paul Sableman.