The arts are fundamental to our humanity. They ennoble and inspire us—fostering creativity, empathy, and beauty. The arts also strengthen our communities socially, educationally, and economically—benefits that persist even during a pandemic that has been devastating to the arts. The following 10 reasons show why an investment in artists, creative workers, and arts organizations is vital to the nation’s post-pandemic healing and recovery.

The Compton Foundation supports the arts, including individual artists and filmmakers, with the explicit intention of amplifying critical issues in a way that blends the personal, political, emotional, and intellectual. It makes these grants based on a recently updated mission statement that recognizes “courageous storytelling” as a powerful strategy for “inspiring action toward a peaceful, just, sustainable future.” The family foundation, launched in 1949 and long focused on issues of peace, the environment, and women’s reproductive rights and justice, awards...

Read about how the Lambent Foundation leverages the critical role of arts and culture at the intersection of social justice. Through its grantmaking and creative programs, Lambent explores the impact of contemporary art as a strategy for promoting sustainable cultural practices in New York City, New Orleans, and Nairobi. Learn more about the Foundation’s current work and Executive Director Michelle Coffey’s vision for the future in this paper and podcast interview by Ann McQueen.

In October 2003, Detroit-based activist, cultural worker, and octogenarian Grace Lee Boggs energized and inspired a national gathering of artists, arts organization and community leaders, and activists with her speech at Animating Democracy's National Exchange on Art & Civic Dialogue. Boggs described a United States that is increasingly jobless; that jeopardizes its youth in a problem-wrought education system; and that is resented for its economic, military, and cultural domination. "Can we create a new paradigm of our selfhood and our nationhood?" she implored. In Boggs...

In “What Happened in New Orleans? Reflections on the National Convergence of Artists, Educators and Organizers,” Animating Democracy staff member Andrea Assaf reflects on her experience at the National Convergence of Artists, Educators, and Activists. Inspired by Grace Lee Boggs and conversations on art and social change at the Animating Democracy National Exchange on Art & Civic Dialogue, the National Convergence attracted more than 200 people to New Orleans inJanuary 2004. In her article, Assaf reflects on the impetus, unfolding, and impacts of this convening.
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Animating Democracy has highlighted eight notable blog salons on ARTSblog, covering topics that range from humor's underlooked  role in social progression to the intersection of excellence and equity in arts and cultural practices.