Beginning around the 20th century, with the rapid transformation of societal expectations and demands over time, the modern world seems to place greater emphasis and weight on career-focused fields than the arts. As the coronavirus pandemic left a meager 4% of U.S. institutions fully in-person with budget cuts, limited university funding, and labor force vacancies, arts education is asked to address all of its challenges and losses with fewer resources than ever before. For a field that requires expensive equipment, intimate teaching dynamics, and — most important of all — a stage and a live audience, the arts must rethink its purpose, redefine its education methodology, and revitalize career prospects in order to reinstate its importance as a field, counteracting negative public attitudes and pandemic-produced disruptions all the while.
Over the past year, remote arts education has faced similar issues as other disciplines have, but to a worse extent. One obvious roadblock is the unequal access to essential resources, such as technology and professional equipment. Primarily, visual arts and dance depend heavily on instructors being able to view and critique students’ works. Unstable video, internet connection, or even personal concerns that make turning on the camera uncomfortable could easily disrupt instruction, not to mention the possibility that a student may not own a computer to begin with. In a survey of undergraduate students’ opinions on remote art and design courses, most concerns surrounded the requirement of owning and knowing how to use technological equipment. Students also reported newfound difficulty in implementing skills learned in remote lectures without a faculty member present. Dance in particular requires large physical spaces, and few students are equipped with professional dance studios or open spaces in which to practice. In both these cases, students see a decrease in instruction quality, academic success, and therefore passion for the arts when the university fails to serve as the “great equalizer” of resources.
Among arts fields, music also takes a huge fall. As a subject mainly taught in intimate settings, typically one-on-one, whose practice comes from collaboration in choruses and orchestras, and whose students’ efforts culminate in live performances for live audiences, music institutions and departments must now conduct lessons, recitals, and ensemble practices remotely. For the few institutions pushing for students’ return to campus, the limitations of what can be done to salvage students’ experiences are clear. During the fall 2020 semester, the New England Conservatory of Music allowed students to return to Boston for an in-person hybrid format with publicly-streamed online concerts. Not surprisingly, performers were social-distanced and masked with only string players present. While eliminating heavy-breathing woodwind and brass players reduces the risk of virus transmission, it also severely curtails the quality of education supplied. When benched players are not getting enough practice and active players are unable to hear the dynamics of the entire team, a large portion of an ensemble’s purpose — togetherness and collaboration — is thrown out the window, leaving students unprepared to join larger-scale, professional orchestras after they graduate.
Along with these complications, the pandemic has exposed a myriad of employment insufficiencies in fields deemed more essential for society’s development, leading higher education to largely prioritize STEM over the arts. At the height of the pandemic in June 2020, the Australian federal government introduced financial incentives to funnel more graduates into areas like health, science, and engineering with a combined 128% decrease in tuition in these fields. Concurrently, a 113% increase in student contributions was implemented for students studying the humanities, with Education Minister Daniel Tehan explaining that “universities must teach Australians the skills needed to succeed in the jobs of the future.” The pandemic brought the concerning lack of teacher preparation, medical equipment, and overall support for essential workers to light. The attitude from the Australian federal government has been clear: as a precautionary measure against future pandemics and disruptions, authorities are choosing to assign less value to the arts while attempting to leverage education in order to fill more “essential” positions.
While this contingency plan is beneficial, the decision stems from the growing assumption that students choosing to pursue the arts are unemployable and unsuited for the future state of society. Australia is not alone in these attitudes. In February 2020, the United States’ budget proposal for 2021 — titled “Stopping Wasteful and Unnecessary Spending” — demanded $30 million to close the National Endowment for the Arts. In July, New York City cut the cultural affairs budget by 11% to counteract tax revenues lost during the pandemic. The arts have long been seen as being more disconnected from practicality than STEM fields, and undoubtedly, governments and universities will continue to offset losses by wringing the arts. Should the pandemic end, efforts will still be made to strengthen essential jobs and scientific research for the sake of a “plan B”. In the face of increased problems and decreased support, the arts will need to redefine its purpose and instruction methodology in order to re-establish its presence.
In fact, inspiration for redefinition of the arts derives from being physically away from the classroom with more time to think independently. As people retreated into isolation and social distancing during the rise of the pandemic, the visual arts have become the primary window through which people observe and document the historic state of the outside world. Whether in news articles or live broadcasts, photography and videography are ever present, guiding both people’s understanding of the pandemic and social unrest, as well as their emotional responses to loss, conflict, and hatred in a rapidly changing society. Taking this period of time as an opportunity, art transforms from a field associated with leisure and recreation to its fundamental core — a bond between inward sentiments and outward expression. To counteract the far-from-ideal conditions surrounding remote learning, the future of arts education lies in leveraging this fundamental purpose by pivoting its curricula from routine practice of skills to connecting with the world actively and creatively. The purpose of visual arts education should not end with a display at the museum, but rather with students wielding the knowledge, curiosity, and ability to record and comment on the past, present, and future. The post-pandemic world should see the arts intersected with social activism and inter-human relations. Ultimately, it is in bringing the arts back to Earth that the arts will truly gain greater value — both for the self and for society — in the aftermath of the pandemic.
That said, transformation takes time, and both performers and the listening public must adapt to accept these changes. Additionally, much is still left unknown, including how such secularization must and can occur for the performing arts. In the meantime, the performing arts will likely bounce back later than dining and retail: in the foreseeable future, listeners may remain hesitant to sprint back to concert halls and theaters to enjoy leisure activities since they are either accustomed to following safety precautions or still fearful of contracting the virus. For performing artists in the United States, unemployment shot up from 1.7% in January 2020 to 27.4% in May 2020, approximately twice the unemployment rate of non-performing artists, which landed at 14.5% in May 2020. While future prospects of a career in performance seem dim, the performing arts could leverage its emotional healing effects, especially during a time when interhuman connections and understanding are in desperate demand, and create platforms through which the model could be profitable.
Profitability of a career in the performing arts is a major concern for prospective musicians which has also seen an enormous dip during the pandemic. In the United Kingdom, as of March 2020, musicians have lost approximately $19.5 million in the pandemic. While the government has provided financial packages to provide relief, these packages are distributed to sustain historic art venues and organizations rather than directly into musicians’ pockets. To students, such prospects may seem insufficient to offset the cost they pay for a degree in the arts. According to the United States National Center for Education Statistics, the average total price in the 2019-2020 academic year — tuition costs including fees, supplies, room, board, and other expenses — for a music degree averaged at $53,722, while the net price — taking into account financial aid programs — averaged at $34,376. The pandemic has caused students to recognize the fragility of the professional arts industry and to see that new graduates would be competing for limited job openings with recent graduates who were earlier displaced from employment by the virus. Undoubtedly, to brighten future prospects, the arts community will either need to create modernized employment options for artists — for instance, opportunities aside from pure performance at pay-per-show rates for classical musicians — or students will have to follow the plan B championed by institutions, pursuing another academic path with the arts on the side.
The pandemic proves to be a time that corners the arts in a hitherto unseen predicament. While the duration of the pandemic’s effects remains unknown and unpredictable, arts education must work around its technical and physical limitations, shifting the emphasis of its teachings from traditional repetition and performance to active engagement with society, and creating new opportunities for the future. To do so, the arts must draw from its fundamental purpose — fostering human, emotional connections and passion. Coping with the pandemic through remote learning and incomplete ensembles has only served as a temporary solution. In its essence, the arts must cultivate a new sense of use and importance in order to survive past the pandemic and social attitudes.
Image by Bjorn Boonen is licensed under the Unsplash License.
