Arts and culture enrich our lives, our communities, and our nation. In this pivotal moment in our history, there is a growing recognition that the arts reveal new ideas, unlock opportunities, and help us confront the many challenges before us. On January 30, 2024, the White House Domestic Policy Council and National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) co-hosted Healing, Bridging, Thriving: A Summit on Arts and Culture in our Communities, a first-of-its-kind convening to share insights and explore opportunities for arts organizations and artists to contribute to the health and well-being of individuals and communities, invigorate physical spaces, fuel democracy, and foster equitable outcomes. In this blog series, you’ll hear from the many diverse perspectives represented at the event—including government officials, policymakers, artists, advocates, academics, and arts leaders—as they share what ideas and inspiration they took from the experience, and how they’re working to advance a broader understanding of how arts and culture can contribute to other fields and unlock new opportunities for artists.

Two repeated salutations were everywhere at January’s Healing, Bridging, Thriving Summit: “I think we’ve met” and “I can’t believe we’ve never met!” I said them and heard them. It is hard to imagine anyone finished the day without conveying or experiencing one of these greetings. 

With Chair Maria Rosario Jackson leading the NEA to energize every facet of life and society with arts and culture, the affinity between people meeting for the first time at the Summit was robust.

The Summit gave visibility and amplification to artists and organizers working in such wide ranging arenas as creative youth development, health and medicine, environmental sustainability, creative workforce, and Indigenous sovereignty. Their voices reached the entirety of the arts and culture field and all levels of government. 

The NEA’s new partnerships across federal agencies model the approach we all need to bring to our engagement with local, state, and national cross-sector stakeholders. Just as the Summit wove artistry, policy, and multiple issues into a cohesive whole, we must champion the wholeness that the arts bring into our lives. This means overcoming the sector delineations that exist in agencies, systems, and philanthropy.

This point was powerfully articulated by Lori Pourier of First Peoples Fund during the pre-Summit caucus on creative youth development (CYD) that I co-hosted with Angelique Power (The Skillman Foundation); Ann Gregg (Renaissance Youth Center); Bets Charmelus (ArtistYear); Kevin Erickson (Future of Music Coalition); Mac Howison (The Heinz Endowments); Omari Rush (CultureSource); and Seth Beattie (ThirdSpace Action Lab/The People’s Practice).

During our discussion, we explored the multiple outcomes that arise for young people who develop their artistry in intergenerational and culturally-rooted settings. These include strengthened mental health, greater economic opportunity, growth in leadership skills, personal agency, and a creative voice rooted to land, culture, and spirit. Just before we shifted to smaller breakouts, we considered having each group focus on a single topic. Lori reminded us that these are not discreet outcomes to be advanced individually but complementary ones experienced simultaneously. We changed our approach and had all small groups inquire more deeply into the full set of topics.

The reason the CYD caucus successfully examined such a wide range of cross-sector impacts is because we prioritized inclusion of young people, youth-focused leaders, and a number of people whose work might seem far afield from typical youth arts conversations. The group included representation from a racial equity community development movement, a national artists’ advocacy organization, an initiative devoted to fostering alternative economic models for the benefit of creatives and AmeriCorps. 

Since the Summit, it has become even more evident that Lori’s guidance to de-silo is integral to advancing artists and the arts in cross-sector spheres. The more we invite and make space for each other to gather and learn, the stronger our efforts will be. We have to practice what the NEA showed us is necessary.

The nature of the creative youth development field we support at The Lewis Prize for Music demonstrates this. The recently launched Creating Abundance Collaborative is dedicated to supporting young people’s stories, ideas, and dreams through creative expression and honoring their lived experiences. The Collaborative is facilitating cross-sector dialogue and learning in four areas: 

• Social connection+mental health

• Workforce+career pathways

• Youth organizing+movement building

• Community development+creative placemaking. 

These sectors are a blend in our lives and experienced simultaneously when arts and culture are at the center, even as systems operate separately. To ensure everyone benefits from the integrity of arts’ holistic alchemy, we must work together to inspire large-scale public and private investment in arts and culture across all sectors. 

This requires us to work inclusively and collaboratively in authentic relationship with each other. Creating connections amongst people that places the arts at the heart of everyday life in any context was one of the Summit’s great outcomes. Just as we must continue moving this work forward, we must continue making connections with each other. To do so, try using one of the salutations above to introduce yourself. I think you’ll find they convey an immediate affinity that opens up a conversation. This is what happened when I was unexpectedly side-by-side for the first time in my life with poet Marc Bamuthi Joseph who powerfully closed the Summit. Our conversation started when he said, “I think we’ve met.”

Dalouge Smith is a champion for bringing people together and strengthening communities through music. He joined The Lewis Prize for Music as its first CEO in August 2018. Prior to his role at The Lewis Prize, he led San Diego Youth Symphony and Conservatory for 13 years and transformed it into a community instigator for restoring and strengthening music education in schools. SDYS' partner, the Chula Vista Elementary School District (California’s largest K-6 district) restored music and arts education to all 30,000 of its students as a result. Dalouge grew up singing folk songs with family and performing in professional theatre productions. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in World Arts and Cultures from UCLA and studied Gandhi’s non-violent movement for a year in India. He is married to Sue Ann and the father of Wright.