My name is Mark Katz. I'm the director of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I'm also a music professor and I've been teaching at the University level for 15 years. I'm deeply interested in music and the arts and the way the arts exist in society and culture. I'm the co-founder of the Beat Making Lab, which sends beat makers, hip-hop beat makers, around the world, to teach people how to make music. I'm also the director of the Next Level Hip-Hop Diplomacy program, which is sponsored by the US State Department. I'm deeply interested in the importance and value of the arts within society. And I'm here to ask the question, how do we demonstrate the significance and importance of the arts to society? So here's the big problem. How do we convince others outside of the arts of the value of the arts to society? And I should say, by the arts I mean all of the arts. So, from visual arts to poetry, to music and dance. So, we know that the arts are important. I think we all know that, because of a simple fact that they've persisted throughout human existence. Tens of thousands of years. They persist through war, famine, natural disaster. So, I don't think there's any question of the arts, the importance of the arts to society. The problem though is convincing those who are in a position to support the arts. Whether they're legislators or investors or the public in general. That money should go to the arts. And the way I see the problem is this. That people in the arts don't really feel the need or don't think about how to justify the arts in terms of economic impact. And if you ask an artist or a professor of, of the arts why they're, why they're so committed to the arts, they might say something like, well, because it, it reveals underlying truths and, and so on. But, but that's hard to convince let's say an investor or a legislator that they should give hard-earned money or scarce resources to the arts. So it's really a matter of different values, that the way that artists might describe the value of the arts don't really translate very well to those who are in a position to support the arts. So, do we, as artists and suppor, supporters of the arts try to talk in terms of deliverables and metrics and data and economic impact. And in a sense not really be true to the way we value the arts in order to convince others of the value the arts. Or do we try to explain really what's in our hearts about [LAUGH] the value of the arts. And really by doing so convince others that we truly aren't useless to society. So, that's the problem that, that I'd like us to solve. So let's talk about a specific case, which would be the value of hip hop to society. This is something that I think about quite a bit because I'm running the Next Level Hip-Hop Diplomacy program for the United States Department of State. And so, we deploy hip hop artists throughout the world to teach, hip hop to young people. And it's really for the purpose of promoting cultural exchange and fostering new ways of, of resolving conflict among young people. So, how do I demonstrate the success of this program because this is, this is taxpayer-supported activity. And I have to write reports and I have to explain why we should spend all the money that I'm getting to send people to India. Send people to Senegal to work with, work with young people. So, what are the, what are, what are possible metrics? What are, what data could we possibly use? Or just more broadly, how do we explain success in a program like this? So here's another problem. And it connects to what's called intangible cultural heritage. An intangible cultural heritage might be thought of any kind of performance culture that expresses certain values to a society. That is not in, manifesting any tangible way. So we're talking about dance. We're talking about musical performance. We're talking about rituals, but not tangible products like artworks or architecture. So, this could be anything from fiddling in Nova Scotia to re, religious ceremony in Senegal. So these, these practices have deep and persisting value to those who practice them. But right now, the only way that we assign a value to them outside of those cultures is in terms of tourist dollars. How much money is spent to go see these things? So the question is how we might value and understand intangible, cultural heritage outside of its context. So here's another problem. How do we communicate the value of the arts to non-artists? Here's what I mean by this, that there's plenty of data out there that shows the instrument value of the arts. By which I mean the economic impact of the arts to inner cities or the ability of the arts or let's say music study to help brain development. But that's not really how artists think about the value of the arts. No one goes into the arts because they think it'll make babies smarter. And I, as a violinist, didn't go into violin playing because I thought it would help anyone or make anybody's life better. Call me selfish. But we really need to figure out a way to communicate the value of the arts to those outside of the arts in a way that doesn't simply translate them into, into dollar figures. So the question is, how might we communicate the value of the arts in non-instrumental terms? So here's another question, final question. So what? Why should we care about the value of the arts in society? Why should we try to communicate it? After all, shouldn't these artists just get real jobs? Well, the answer is, we really do need to understand the value of arts in society because the arts have been an integral part of human existence as long as we've been human and will persist. And they're deeply embedded in the ways in which we value human life. So, the arts aren't going anywhere and if we really, truly want to understand the arts, we need to be able to, to explain their value. Both in instrumental and in non-instrumental terms. So this is a challenge I put to all of you and it's not a hypothetical question. This is something that I struggle with all the time. How do I defend my existence as a director of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities? How do we communicate the value of arts programs at universities or in communities? So, I look forward to finding out your solutions to these big problems
