By Lisa Richards Toney, President and CEO, Association of Performing Arts Professionals (APAP)
In Washington, D.C., spring means cherry blossoms, congressional budget season and a steady stream of advocates arriving on Capitol Hill to make their case. For arts advocates, Hill Days are a rite of passage – a chance to remind legislators why the arts matter and to put a human face on where federal funding shows up in their communities.
Last month, APAP joined Grantmakers In The Arts and other partners for a Hill Day. And judging by how it landed, I sense we’re on to something.
We came, as we always do, ready to make the case for funding the performing arts. But this time, when the conversation turned to what the arts are actually doing – for public health, for community resilience, for the social fabric that everything else depends on, and even for workforce development and cross-sector job creation – I watched something shift in the room.
The practised rhythm of those meetings gave way to genuine interest. “Tell me more about that.” “Can we follow up?” These were people with massive influence who recognised us immediately as a relevant co-builder, but we had to show up to be seen.
And I understood why. Our representatives are navigating terrain that demands more from our sector. We must help them cut through the noise, break impasses and spark the cross-sector conversations that build irrefutable proof. Arts advocates walk through the door expecting a familiar exchange, but when we open instead with the growing evidence base connecting arts engagement to public health outcomes, it reframes what the performing arts sector is and what it can deliver. It connects the dots that were always there but hadn’t been universally acknowledged.
This is the opportunity in front of us; the tried and tested methods are important, but we must go further. Advocating for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) budget and other budget lines like it is essential, but it is only part of the strategy for this moment. The stakes are high, and we must leapfrog the conventional approach.
Arts and health is where this conversation started, but it’s far from where it ends. In previous columns I’ve written about the arts as a natural partner in building community trust and developing technology, or what I recently heard reframed as “human-centred innovation”, which I love. The same logic applies here. Whether the conversation is about public health, civil discourse or innovation, the performing arts belong there. These things thrive in the same soil, and the hunger for shared human experience that inspires us and reawakens our agency has rarely been more acute.
What does leapfrogging look like in practice? First, while we’ve built a powerful echo chamber, imagine what happens when we let that voice carry further — into the conversations we’ve always belonged in. The thing is that it’s really not optional; it’s necessary and urgent. Sitting across from policymakers whose reach extends well beyond the arts, I asked – almost on impulse – whether we could arrange joint meetings with their health counterparts. It ignited a spark we’re actively cultivating, and that moment stayed with me. The performing arts are already doing work that belongs in that room. The question is whether we have the relationships, the data and the courage to walk through that door.
Second, the local level is where this starts. When Washington feels gridlocked, it is easy to forget that this country is still a composition of communities with real agency over how things get done. Demonstration projects are how ideas prove themselves before they scale. The arts and health programmes already emerging across the country are exactly that kind of proof. We need to invest in them, document them and use them to build the case from the ground up.
Third, we need to change how we lead. Not who we are, but how we walk into the room. One of the people we met put it plainly: most Americans don’t understand that the things they love about their communities – the venues they return to, the performances that have moved them – are this close to the edge. They love the arts, but don’t consider themselves advocates, at the very moment we need them most. Part of our job now is to give people language for what they already believe, and a clear next action.
I left Capitol Hill feeling something I don’t always feel after those visits: that the conversation had actually moved. Not because we made our case more loudly, but because we made it differently and found our way to rooms the arts hadn’t always been a part of. Now we’re helping people see something they hadn’t had reason to focus on before. But now they do. That is advocacy in its most powerful form. Not just asking for what we need, but showing that the arts are already driving wellness, innovation, the workforce and other outcomes they care about deeply.
The doors that are closing are real. But so are the ones that are opening. Our job right now is to find them, walk through them and not wait to be invited twice.
