I come from a family rooted in the arts. My grandmother, Enid Flender, was a dancer-turned-public school teacher; my grandfather, Harold Flender, was a writer; and my mother, uncle, brother and I were shaped by a public-school education that prioritized the performing arts. I grew up in Manhattan Plaza in New York City, a federally subsidized building for artists, and fell in love with movies at Anthology Film Archives in the East Village. I have had the utmost privilege of knowing a life with creativity at the center of it.
And yet if it weren’t for the National Endowment for the Arts, I don’t know if I would have pursued a life as an actor.
My first time on stage was with the National Dance Institute, or NDI, a nonprofit that benefits directly from funding from the NEA. Created in 1976 by Jacques D’Amboise, a star dancer of the New York City Ballet, NDI provides dance classes built into the public elementary school curriculum along with free summer programs. When I think of my time with NDI, my strongest memory is when a group of us were standing around a piano, clapping our hands, as we learned to keep the beat to the song “Cement Mixer Putti- Putti.” (We were young.) We couldn’t really find the beat; there were always a few of us a little out of sync. So the teacher had us close our eyes. Within a few claps, the entire group was synchronized. The key was to focus purely on what we were hearing and feeling as opposed to watching everyone else.
Once we got it and opened our eyes, we were ecstatic. We had connected. We were a team. Now we got to concentrate our energy into our common goal: the performance. I remember the pure joy of being on stage at that performance after such hard work of rehearsing — a feeling not unlike what some children describe when playing a game after months of work in the gym.
Some of my friends from the NDI program pursued artistic careers, but many did not. Even those who went into other professions still reflect upon their experience positively, though, for the values it instilled. In learning choreography, we gained discipline. In mastering a new song, we found confidence. We learned resilience, adaptability, and the value of working as a team. All skills that are useful whether you’re a lawyer, a therapist, a pastry chef or a space engineer. (And as an actor, I will happily play any of these characters in a movie). The NEA made it possible.
Right now, federal funding for the arts is in serious danger. The latest budget proposal that the White House sent to Congress asks that the group be eliminated. Many theaters and other arts organizations have already been told that their grants have been revoked, creating a haze of operational uncertainty. Their very survival is at stake.
This is why I recently went to Capitol Hill with the nonprofit arts organization The Creative Coalition to advocate for the NEA, meeting with the Congressional staffers whose bosses are on the fence about the value of federal arts funding. It was a powerful experience to talk with these influential players and walk the halls of our nation’s legislative offices. It was also sobering. We encountered resistance. Taxpayers shouldn’t be supporting the arts, some staffers told us. But the visit reaffirmed my belief in the importance of arts funding. After all, even the skeptical staffers often had a favorite performance memory – a music lesson or play or dance classes that they had participated in. The argument to them almost made itself: if we only relied on private funding, many of them and other middle-class children may well have not had the chance.
Arts funding is often the first thing to be cut by governments, when in fact it should be protected as essential. Creativity gives us purpose. Imagination advances humanity. The arts foster empathy, understanding, and connection. Access to creative expression — whether through dance, music, painting, theater, or film — helps us communicate on a deeper level and provides a bridge into the shared experience of what it means to be human.
The National Endowment for the Arts doesn’t cost very much. The United States allocates just 0.004 percent of its annual budget to the NEA. (In contrast, smaller countries like France, Germany, and the UK each invest a much greater percentage, over a billion dollars annually apiece.) And the money stimulates the economy. NEA grants have a powerful multiplier effect, according to the Creative Coalition: every $1 awarded to an arts organization is shown to typically generate about $9 in private investment or consumer spending, turning that $207 million into roughly $2 billion. That NEA grant isn’t a handout—it’s a seal of approval for a project that then generates all kinds of private dollars that follow.
These projects aren’t Hollywood productions or Broadway shows, but local jazz festivals, museums exhibitions, arts education, and community theater — initiatives that enrich neighborhoods, build cultural identity, and stimulate local economies. These are year-round programs like the Miami Lighthouse for the Blind and the Visually Impaired, which provides music education for the visually impaired. Or Creative Forces, which supports arts programming for active military members and veterans. And hundreds more like them.
The NEA is particularly vital for small and rural arts organizations that would otherwise lack access to major donors or corporate sponsorships. (Forty percent of NEA funding is distributed through state and local arts agencies, ensuring communities have a direct say in how funds are used.) Without the NEA, large cities might still sustain their cultural scenes, but I fear that rural and small-town projects — from arts education in Idaho to community theater in Maine — could vanish.
Senior leaders at the NEA have just resigned en masse in the wake of the cuts. This is disheartening. But it doesn’t make me lose hope. Congress will likely still have a say in what happens. And we can lobby Congress I’ll even include number for the Congressional switchboard: 202-224-3121. If there’s one thing I learned in Washington, it’s that elected officials are tracking the feedback; these calls matter. Nearly every one of our 541 representatives has constituents who benefit from NEA grants. This is the moment to let each one of them know that they should keep the NEA alive.
Every kid who wants to learn how to keep the beat to a song, every visually impaired person who wants to play a musical instrument and every Iraq or Afghanistan veteran who could use a little art therapy to help them recover from their trauma needs the NEA to stick around. Let’s remind our representatives that they’re out there.
On our final night in DC, at a fundraising dinner, a few of my fellow delegates from The Creative Coalition did an impromptu musical jam at the front of the room. The space was filled with many of the Republican and Democratic staff members who we had met with earlier that day. Everyone started singing and dancing. (Or swaying!) As I looked around the room, the value was clear: the arts remind us to connect with each other. To have fun with each other. To sing with each other. The arts don’t just entertain us —they bind us, define us, and give us the language to imagine the future.
Pauline Chalamet is an actor and producer living in Los Angeles.
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