Americans for the Arts

brings advocates who are working in the arts to Washington, D.C., for a one-day conference every year. The conference gives people a 101 training in doing advocacy work and the current issues that are affecting all aspects of the arts, from funding to creation to distribution.

The Web has allowed for more opportunities for collaboration between artists, creation of new forms of art, and distribution of artistic work. Arts organizations are realizing the need for public policies that keep the Internet open and accessible to everyone and continue to be a low-cost platform where a broad set of ideas can flourish and be created through continued technological and artistic innovation.

On this week's Media Minutes, Jack Walsh of the National Alliance for Media Art and Culture talks about his participation in Arts Advocacy Day and what Net Neutrality means for the future of the arts. Here's the transcript:

The Arts and the Net

More than 500 arts advocates took to Capitol Hill on April 13 for the 23rd Arts Advocacy Day. The event focuses on the importance of developing strong public policies and increasing public funding for the arts.

Advocates gathered to learn about the issues and how to advocate effectively for them on Capitol Hill. Jack Walsh, co-director of the National Alliance for Media Art and Culture, or NAMAC, was among the participants.

Jack Walsh: I went to five meetings with regional leaders’ staff to talk about the importance of, not only funding the NEA and the NEH and asking for more funds for those agencies, because they had been defunded during the culture wars in the ‘90’s, but also talking about such important issues as artist visas to come into the country, the need for arts education to be funded at higher levels, and of course, importantly in terms of our concern, issues like Net Neutrality.

Walsh says that Net Neutrality – the fundamental principle that protects the free flow of information online – impacts NAMAC directly because arts organizations need an open Internet, not only to make media, but to advertise and distribute their work.

Jack Walsh: Since the artists that are supported by our organizations are working in media that takes up a lot of bandwidth, oftentimes that media can be in contradiction to or opposition to commercial media. So I think that these organizations, especially the larger organizations are really looking at wanting to have access to their audiences through the Internet, because they’re understanding more and more that it’s going to be of importance as they move forward.

Much of the work of arts organizations will be showcased on the Web, and they need to be on a level playing field in order to thrive.

Jack Walsh: It could be something as simple as you want to take clips of work that are shown in your performance space and put them out over the Internet. And if you don’t have the same bandwidth speeds to do that with, it means that your work will become much more sluggish, which means – as we all know in the world of the Internet – that things that are troubling and problematic in terms of how we receive them, tend to be the sites that people go to less. So these arts that are primarily in the nonprofit sector will become marginalized as a result of that, if they don’t have the same access to the Internet.

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