A community needs art, but it’s on its heels here

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After I moved to New York to become a student at the Juilliard School, people would ooh and ahh when I would tell them I was from Minneapolis. Long had our city, and the nation, viewed us as “the Minne-apple.” We were able to brag of a robust theater scene that gave us more theater space and seats per capita than the theater capital of the world: New York City.

That is not a small feat. At the time of moving there, Minnesota also had an impressive list of films shot here. We were third to New York and Los Angeles in film production in the nation. We even beat out Chicago.

Why did film production come here? It wasn’t just our impressive tax rebate for productions, it was the massive list of talent that we had. It wasn’t just theater. It was dance and music and stagehands and gaffers and sound engineers.

We still have those people here, though most got jobs at U.S. Bank or some nonprofit to pay the bills and help raise families as they continued to follow their art. Some of us went into teaching (or ran for office). All of us did something to pay bills while still working the craft and advocating for the next generation.

We first lost our film title to Canada and the expiration of our film subsidy “snowbate.” Then we lost our production jobs to Georgia. I don’t know about you, but Toronto is bad enough. Having a film that’s set in Minnesota but shot in Atlanta is almost more than I can bear.

The Guthrie Theater holds on by means of a robust national base, but it relies on local artists to cultivate their craft in smaller venues, filling out its shows.

The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board has come under fire for not paying musicians in its summer music series. This is a valid critique, yet not something ever considered the purview of parks. The fact that even municipalities don’t have the budgets to help out performing artists should underscore how dire the situation is. For the billions of dollars in surplus doled out by the state last year, the Cowles Center is still closing. Sadly, when an entity is dying, the money goes, like the blood flow, to vital organs like schools and infrastructure. Yet, art is what makes life worth living.

Only artists truly understand what has happened to our arts community, and we are going to need more than philanthropists and touring shows to bring it back. We need partnerships with city leaders to make sure our arts corridors are safe both for pedestrians and patrons coming for a show. Let’s be honest — most people with money to spend on a dance show or on a night out at the theater are older. In recent years, older patrons have been subjected to a wave of attacks ranging from auto theft to personal assault. Their disposable income is our arts community’s loss. I went to a show last week in Chanhassen. It was packed. People with their “handicap” placard feel safe there. So why not Minneapolis?

From SoHo to downtown Los Angeles, art always brings community back. Artists are the ones who make blighted areas of the city cool. Art creates space and with it patrons to restaurants and activation of nights. We need art. Without it, we are merely surviving. I hope and pray — not just for our artists’ sake but for our cities — that we recover quickly. Then we can again call ourselves the “Minne-apple,” and the nation and world will remember us beyond the events of 2020 once more.