CLASSICAL MOVEMENTS on the POTENTIAL DEFUNDING of the NATIONAL ENDOWMENT for the ARTS
#SAVEtheNEA
As a for-profit company, yes, Classical Movements does not directly depend on the National Endowment for the Arts.
Of course, the very nature of our work — Moving the Music, Changing the World — would suffer immensely, perhaps irrevocably, should the 114th Congress of the United States of America vote “yea” on the present presidential administration’s proposed budget, an earmarking that so cravenly aims to zero-out all funding for both the NEA and the NEH.
The arts and the humanities in this country struggle to survive as it is; one can easily imagine that any ensemble staring down such in-the-red resources would decide quite quickly that touring to one of our 145-plus destination countries is a luxury ill afforded.
From the beginning, over a quarter-century ago now, Classical Movements has worked almost exclusively with orchestras and choirs that rely on some kind of federal money to ably ply their craft, as ensembles the world over duly depend on fiscal support from their own governments.
Beyond CM’s own personal investment in seeing the National Endowment for the Arts continue, ungutted, we firmly assert it’s absolutely essential to this nation’s continued cultural vitality that American arts organizations flourish, unabated.
Even with the NEA’s $147.9 million purse (a mere .oo4% of the total federal ledger, just $0.46 for every American), U.S. performing arts groups struggle still to overcome many, often multivalent obstacles, all too often at the expense of pursuits that would better fulfill their aesthetic mission.
As a recipient of Americans for the Arts’ BCA10: Best Businesses Partnering with the Arts Award, for the last 25 years, Classical Movements has done its part to help fill in the gaps among local, state and federal coffers. And as a truly global company, we remain committed to facilitating cultural diplomacy throughout the globe — promoting peace through the medium of music.
That all starts, though, from our home office here in Alexandria, Virginia, a scant six miles south of the NEA’s 7th Street headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Last year, the National Endowment for the Arts distributed more than 2,400 grants to some 16,000 communities in every congressional district across this great land. Now, it’s time to pay that fortune forward, to save LBJ’s NEA and, ultimately, the arts in America, insofar as we’ve all come to love them:
Call your Congressperson.
- Don’t know who your Representative is? Find out here.
- Aren’t sure who’s your Senator? Click here.
Write to the members of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees.
Even better? Schedule an appointment for you and your ensemble to visit their offices!
All American art-lovers deserve more, never less, from their audiences, their communities and, especially, their elected officials. To wit, we wholeheartedly believe that defunding NEA and/or NEH would be a devastating blow to our national artistic identity, as well as this nation’s humanity, indeed.
