By Michael Rohd

Now is a time for artists and arts organizations to stand shoulder to shoulder with other fields and disciplines that produce care in our communities.

Editor’s Note:  A reader recently sent me this Substack column by theater artist Michael Rohd. I thought it amplified some of the points made by me and others about what the arts community should do given the current crisis — America’s slide toward authoritarianism. Maintaining business as usual is part of the problem, not the solution. The piece was originally posted on May 15, and it remains challengingly salient.

Last week, I wrote this:

I (alongside many others) recently had National Endowment for the Arts funds rescinded from an organization/project of mine. The story I personally want to tell, in response, is not about how the arts are being decimated, nor about free speech, nor about cultural expression. I want to tell the story of how artists are walking alongside and in solidarity with public health workers, educators, park employees, mental health providers, scientists, civil rights lawyers, and advocates across America whose fields are being dismantled not only to aggregate power, not only to consolidate control, not only to squash dissent, but to destroy the notion that Civic Care is part of our government’s contract with its people… and to panic us into erupting field by field, industry by industry, rather than looking across rooms, networks, and geographies to see millions of people and institutions being shuttered, hobbled, and shamed who all share a common set of beliefs with us: public good is a worthy purpose, creativity is a human need, and care is at the heart of any society that names justice, liberty, freedom, or greatness as a central concern.

This week, I’ve been thinking, alongside so many of you, about what theaters and all arts organizations can do.

1) Narrate your story as an attack on Civic Care

Connect the story of your struggle to the struggle of others in your community, and talk about what that larger struggle means to residents of your place. Learn with some specificity about what’s happening to schools, public health departments, and behavioral health workers—how many jobs are being lost? How many people in your place now have less access to services? How many programs and clinics and resources are shutting down, and what does that mean to your neighbors? Never talk about what’s happening to your organization or to artists without talking about those losses and impacts in the same breath. Describe the hits to the arts as part of an assault on civic care, not just as an attack on the arts.

2) Convene coalitions

Do you have a room in which people can gather? Invite staff and stakeholders from education, health, conservation, local government, and nonprofits to join in conversation. Make space to share stories; invite local officials to listen; invite journalists to cover. Talk about what’s happening and seek intersections: this is happening to all of us, there’s a story here, and our community is feeling it—but perhaps not fully noticing the simultaneous, cross-sector cost. How can we most clearly narrate together what we all do and care about, and how do we articulate the loss to our community as we are collectively, purposefully demonized and marginalized as fields and workers? Gather and plan for ways to show up together — rhetorically and in public contexts — in support of Civic Care.

3) Produce solidarity

You already create and host events. You produce shows, exhibits, concerts, readings. Now, produce opportunities for solidarity: panels, public conversations, and moments where your audiences and the stakeholders of other affected fields can gather not just to rally or protest, but to listen and strategize. Have Civic Care festivals. Hold lunchtime chats. Host virtual readings of testimonies from local residents impacted by what’s going on. Start a podcast called Civic Care, and interview people across your community. Draw attention, over and over, to how losses in the local arts ecosystem are directly tied to losses being felt across your community — because all these attacks are coordinated attempts to strip not just creativity from our lives, but also our dignity and our sense of collective responsibility for one another’s well-being.

4) Center and support youth

This is a rough time to be a young person. Between the chaotic, disruptive changes to resources and services families routinely access and a polarized political environment that offers few models of cooperative leadership or successful problem-solving, things can seem bleak. Host young people. Invite them to workshops, listening sessions, gatherings. Engage teaching artists to design and lead experiences that make space for creative activity. I spent the last eight months on and off the road with a show about behavioral health in mostly rural communities that included workshops with hundreds of high school students. Everywhere we went, we led 90-minute sessions that invited students to imagine a world where they had what they needed to feel healthy and welcome. Out of these workshops, students co-created collective statements that communities now use to set goals for civic care. Invite young people in; help them envision and offer frameworks for how we can think about civic care every day in the places we share. Let them lead.

5) Build trust

Between the “Loneliness Epidemic” our most recent Surgeon General declared a public health crisis and a political environment that nationalizes nearly every local conversation, social connection is profoundly strained. Conversations are charged, and trust—in each other and in local institutions—is at an all-time low. And yet, to tackle big challenges and rebuild an electorate inclined to place leaders in office who value civic care, nourishing relationships across differences will be crucial. I’m not suggesting that you “agree to disagree” with the neighbor who would deny you or another neighbor personhood. I am saying there are many people who are not entirely clear on which policies affect whom, and in what ways. The conversations needed to invite more people into a collective story of civic care only happen through listening and shared experiences. Dedicate energy towards opportunities for people to come together in low-stakes, joyful ways. Don’t limit yourselves to audiences—create participants. Observe how local civic organizations and national bridge-building movements gather people. Consider social connection an artform in itself, one that deserves the rigor and creativity you bring to every event you curate and produce.

Is this your work…?

Perhaps none of this is how you see your mission. But we are in a moment of profound battle around the notion of responsibility: whose responsibility is it to care for whom? You have always believed the arts are necessary ingredients of a healthy community, whether or not you used that language explicitly. We now know, through data and research, that it’s true. Yet, along with other care fields and organizations, we are being cast as unnecessary, as if our worth extends only as far as we can thrive in open economic markets. A collective obligation to care for all signals a type of contract between government and citizen that our current federal administration does not want to uphold. It is a threat to the economy and values it seeks to center in American life.

Now is a time for artists and arts organizations to stand shoulder to shoulder with other fields and disciplines that produce care in our communities. Using our resources and creativity, let’s remind those around us — near and far — that Civic Care matters, and you don’t want to live in a place where it doesn’t.

Michael Rohd is a theater-maker who has spent 35 years leading process and facilitating conversation around complex public issues across the nation, as well as supporting and training arts, municipal and non-profit staff in designing effective community programs, convenings and public engagement work. He’s been a founder and co-leader with three organizations- Hope Is Vital, Sojourn Theatre and Center for Performance and Civic Practice and in 2022, he founded Co-Lab for Civic Imagination at University of Montana, where he serves as Co-Lab Director and as a University-Wide System Dramaturg/Artist-in-Residence. His largest current creative project (2022-2026) is State of Mind, a touring theatre/public dialogue/coalition-building residency about Behavioral Health conducting residencies across the Western US.