00:00Hollywood stars, executives, and policy makers are coming together to fight for the arts.
00:05I'm Tiffany Taylor for The Hollywood Reporter here at the Creative Coalition's National Arts
00:10Advocacy Summit, where 50 leaders from across the worlds of entertainment and business,
00:15as well as policy makers, have gathered to craft actionable strategies for the advancement of
00:19arts education, funding, and policy. This is a dream. It's a dream to have business,
00:25industry, policy, and artists together, rolling up their sleeves and working.
00:32Attendees spoke to THR about why participating in this summit in Summerlin, Nevada is important to them.
00:37Because the arts are at risk. You know, I think our art is extremely powerful to our humanity,
00:44to our connectivity, and the only way art stays alive is if we stay engaged. So getting together
00:49with a group of people who are passionate about keeping art engaged, keeping art alive, keeping
00:54art funded, keeping art available for our communities, it's the least I could do is to
00:58show up right now. I always want to be a part of anything Creative Coalition does, and that's not
01:02just me being nice or sucking up. I legitimately love this organization, and every single thing I've
01:06gotten to do with them has just been the time of my life. I just get to work with these cool,
01:09awesome people who are so good in whatever their field is, and it's such a diverse group of people
01:13too. The Creative Coalition, formed in 1989, has long advocated and lobbied for funding for the
01:19National Endowment of the Arts. But this summit marks the first time the coalition has assembled
01:23a group of thought leaders to help draft the plan they'll present in Washington, D.C. this year.
01:28They shared what they plan to accomplish by the end of the summit.
01:31To have the great minds in the room that we're going to have, the combination of business folks,
01:35artists, etc. Hopefully it becomes a catalyst, a catalyst for positive change, a catalyst for
01:40great ideas that we can go out and execute on and make some meaningful changes for years to come.
01:45We're going to have a blueprint. We're having a blueprint. We're going up to Capitol Hill and to
01:48the White House in April with a strategic blueprint that will speak to and be a relatable blueprint to
01:55our policy makers. The arts have been in the headlines this week as President Donald Trump
01:59was elected the chairman of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts after he removed members of
02:04the organization's board who were appointed by the Biden administration and replaced them with
02:08White House officials from his administration, family members of administration officials, donors and
02:13their spouses, all in an effort to move the Kennedy Center away from what he views as, quote, woke culture.
02:18Those attending the summit weighed in on the state of the arts in the current political climate.
02:22Right now we're facing potential headwinds art-wise with the new administration. We're going to see
02:29where that goes as well, but it's quite possible that those headwinds will disappear and we'll have
02:34a nice ride over the next four years. You never know.
02:37I don't believe that arts should be a part of a political conversation. Arts are above politics.
02:43At least they should be. But I guess I believe, sure, there's politics in everything.
02:50But arts should be outside of that sphere of rhetoric because this is about humanity.
02:57For more on the Creative Coalition's National Arts Advocacy Summit, go to THR.com.
03:02For The Hollywood Reporter News, I'm Tiffany Taylor.
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