284 - COVID-19 and the Arts Part 1: What Has Been Lost and What We Can Regain
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 29 March 2021
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Research suggests that the arts—a sprawling industry of museums, theaters, studios, production companies, artists, administrators and more—have lost over $15 billion in the COVID-19 pandemic. But the losses go beyond financial to the existential: who are we without the arts? Kate Levin, who oversees the Bloomberg Philanthropies Arts program, talks with Dr. Josh Sharfstein about how the losses of these experiences impact everything from people's mental health, to neighborhood and community cohesion, to social services. They also talk about signs of hope for the future including support of the arts in the most recent disaster relief bill.
KEYWORDS: community mental health; performing arts; pandemic response
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Season 3, a Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:12.3 | I'm Josh Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, and a former secretary of Maryland's Health Department. |
| 0:19.6 | Our goal is to bring scientific evidence |
| 0:22.4 | and experience to the public health news of the day through informative interviews with scientists, |
| 0:27.8 | community leaders, policy experts, public health officials, clinicians, and more. If you have ideas |
| 0:34.3 | or questions for us to cover, please email us at public health question |
| 0:38.8 | at jhhhu.edu. |
| 0:40.5 | That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:47.5 | Today, I speak with Kate Levin, who oversees the arts program of the Bloomberg Philanthropies. |
| 0:59.0 | We talk first about the devastating impact of the pandemic on the arts, and second, about how arts can help us grieve, heal, and even come together. |
| 1:06.0 | Let's listen. |
| 1:08.0 | Kate Levin, thank you so much for joining me. |
| 1:14.6 | This last year has been devastating in so many ways. And one of the ways is the bite that COVID-19 has taken out of the arts. |
| 1:20.6 | Can you tell me just how severe a problem that's been? |
| 1:24.6 | The pandemic has been devastating for the arts. |
| 1:28.9 | With the immediate closure of venues, organizations have lost drastic amounts of the monies that |
| 1:38.0 | kept them operating. |
| 1:40.2 | The most recent research suggests that nationally financial losses to the nonprofit sector are over $15 billion. |
| 1:49.1 | In terms of actual artists, the latest stats suggest 63% are now entirely unemployed, and it can vary by different kinds of professions. But the whole nonprofit sector, |
| 2:05.8 | which in so many parts of this country, are real anchors in their communities, have had to |
| 2:13.7 | pivot to different ways of trying to deliver services. So tell me what that nonprofit sector consists of. |
| 2:20.7 | It's the local symphony orchestra. |
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