Artists showed up.

A lot of people stepped up in this tragic pandemic. We as a country have demonstrated our ability to care for one another, to support the most vulnerable, and to fight for those in need. Those people are extraordinary. Doctors, nurses, staff of healthcare centers, grocery store and big box store workers, unemployment office employees...the list continues. The essential workers who risked their lives for us are amazing and we are forever in their debt.

But there's another group of people who contributed invaluably to our world during this pandemic. A group of people whose value to society is consistently demeaned, whose lifestyles are constantly unpredictable, whose unemployment rate is always high, and whose passions won't allow them to do anything else. A group whose industries were the first to close and will be the last to reopen.

Artists. Showed. Up.

We created millions of videos on social media.

We drew and painted and sculpted and created and expressed.

We performed plays in closets, danced in parking lots, and sang in empty stadiums.

We created stay-at-home concerts, juggling technology and restrictions and sometimes being cut off even while playing music that's in the public domain.

We read stories.

We made art exhibits available online.

We developed classes for children and adults into online formats.

We shared our stories through discussions.

We rallied as organizations to keep content alive for our audiences through virtual performances.

We read Shakespeare from our living rooms, performed bedtime stories for the world, and danced in our backyards.

We made masks at our own expense.

We told jokes, created cartoons, and made cocktails while talking in a funny accent.

We kept each other safe.

We kept each other sane.

We wrote. We expressed. We played. We consoled. We sang. We danced. We lived. We laughed. We celebrated. We cried. We lamented. We joined together through time and space.

95% of us have lost work due to the pandemic. But we did our work anyway. For the world. Often with no compensation. We raised money for food banks, COVID-19 support endeavors, women's and LGBTQIA and immigrant and disability rights organizations, arts leagues, humane societies, and more.

We heard that it could be years before it will be safe to perform our work as we know it. We have spent years and years and years hearing that what we do is non-essential. That it will leave us "starving." We've begged for work, waited in lines to audition, submitted our videos and work samples and audio. We've banded together to create our own companies.

People have always turned to us. But during an era of such uncertainty, grief, and worry, we were relied on more than ever. Artists provided expression, relief, beauty, respite, education, and hope.

Arts organizations rallied. Facing hundreds, thousands, or even millions of dollars in losses, we forged ahead, trying to figure out a solution to a problem that not even the most experienced arts managers were ever taught to cope with.

We lost jobs, had contracts abandoned, fought with unemployment offices, and wondered how we would pay our bills.

And still, we showed up and shared our passions with the world.

Funders of all stripes have argued for years that the arts don't reach enough people, and have misconstrued free with accessible. (Free denotes lack of value and insinuates that people don't value what they pay for, and that what they're consuming costs nothing or little to make. Accessibility denotes an effort to help mutliple populations take part with a sensitivity to price, location, and interest level.)

But that distinction didn't apply during this pandemic, as we're facing unprecedented economic turmoil. The world needed us. So we showed up. For free. Or to raise money for someone else.

Now it's time to remember.

Remember the song that made you smile when you thought the world was ending.

Remember the dance that made you marvel.

Remember the painting that inspired you to create.

Remember the play that told a story that moved you.

Remember the history exhibit that excited and surprised you.

Remember the film that brought you to tears.

Remember the poem that spoke the words you couldn't find to express yourself.

Remember the arts educator that helped you do something you never believed you could do.

Remember the art that brought light in the darkness.

Remember that these things were there in the worst of times. And the organizations that support them kept bringing you beauty when the world was ugly.

As we re-evaluate our country's priorities, let's make the arts one of them. Let's stop cutting the arts from our schools. Let's quit decimating state agencies that fund arts activities and creators. Let's stop foregoing local arts activities in the name of staying in (since we're all sick of staying in anyway.) Let's advocate for funding for arts programs, particularly those that reach underserved demographics, by supporting accessible, innovative programming. Let's prioritize payment of artists through individual, corporate, and government support that rewards compensation and impact. Let's look to the arts to bring us together, even if we're six feet apart.

Let's remember that behind a work of art is a person or group. People whose passion is to create and touch our souls and ask us to reflect, enjoy, feel, inspire, move, affect change, and give of their product-themselves-for you, the audience.

Artists showed up. As we enter the new normal, please, don't forget us.