Students learn new steps during the weekly hip-hop class offered by the Step Ahead program at the Joy of Motion Dance Center. Lahaina Mondonedo/MNS
WASHINGTON –Meridian Witt, 15, first came to Joy of Motion Dance Center to find work, but she wound up falling in love with dance.
“It was part of a summer youth program when I first came to get a summer job,” Witt said. “I just kept coming back for more.”
Witt is part of Step Ahead, an outreach program offered by the center that was initially a summer program. Now she attends weekly classes for free all year long. Executive Director Doug Yeuell said the program depends on federal funding.
“There are also many programs and initiatives that we manage and produce throughout the year that absolutely would not be possible,” Yeuell said. “Unless we were able to receive funding or additional support to make it all happen.”
Joy of Motion receives roughly $50,000 a year in government funding. This year, that support fell about five percent. Yeuell says it worries him for future cuts and he encourages Congress to look at arts funding as an investment.
“Art is also an economic driver. Art is business. The creative economy and the creative industries that exist are a well-known fact now,” Yeuell said. “The art dollar is a really, really, deep investment in the community, in society and in the world.”
Yeuell also said the arts not only provide additional jobs during the recession, but also improve quality of life.
“This is what makes the experience of life fun, entertaining, joyful,” Yeuell said. “It makes a difference and art in that sense is very powerful.”
Witt agrees.
“I think that the arts not only help your mind and your body,” Witt said. “But it also helps make you a well-rounded person and better person overall. So I think that arts cuts…No, that’s not going to work out.”
In 2010, National Endowment for the Arts funding jumped eight percent . But at the local level arts funding fell by eight percent and fell even more at the state level, ten percent. More than 500 arts advocates, through the non-profit Americans for the Arts, attended Art Advocacy Day on Capitol Hill April 13. They asked Congress to appropriate $180 million for the arts in 2011.