Welcome. I'm Rear Admiral Paul Reed,
Director of the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.
Today, we'll be launching the first in a new quarterly video series that will
complement our Health and Wellbeing Matter blog.
In the coming months,
we'll invite partners from across the federal landscape to join us
for a discussion on the work of advancing health and wellbeing for all people.
Now, this past November, the federal government released
the Federal Plan for Equitable Long-term Recovery and Resilience.
And this groundbreaking plan lays out
a whole of government approach to strengthening individual and community
resilience and improving wellbeing nationwide.
The plan was developed and is led
by an interagency work group currently composed, rather unprecedentedly,
of senior career staff from over 45 federal departments and agencies
with a common vision to address the deep disparities in health, wellbeing,
and economic opportunity that have been laid bare through the COVID-19 pandemic.
And to do so by transforming the way the government seeks more meaningful
outcomes of our efforts on behalf of the American people.
The findings that drove this plan make clear that everyone has a role to play
in the nation's recovery, in enhancing our individual and collective
resilience, and in improving our nation's overall health and wellbeing.
And today, I'm thrilled to be joined by
Dr. Maria Rosario Jackson, Chair of the National Endowment
for the Arts, for a discussion on the work her agency is doing,
leveraging the plan for equitable long- term recovery and resilience and her
vision and commitment to building belonging and community connections as
a means of ensuring lasting resilience in our communities.
Dr. Jackson, welcome.
Thank you so much for having me Admiral Reid.
It's my pleasure.
Let's begin with something that I've heard
you talk about in relation to wellbeing, especially in the context
of the intersection of health, community vitality, and democracy.
And that's the idea, the concept of Artful Lives.
Can you tell us something about that? Sure.
So the idea of artful lives.
It's an inclusive concept, and it includes everything from our
everyday experiences and aesthetic choices we make around food, fashion,
how we care for ourselves, how we care for our families.
Everything from that to participation in the arts through more conventional ways
of thinking about the arts at concert halls, museums, et cetera.
So it is that broad spectrum that includes all of these ways of participating not
only as audience or as consumer, but also making, doing, teaching.
So if we stick with that for a moment, perhaps you can share a bit more about how
Artful Lives continues to help realize the value from other sectors,
other segments of our communities, and enhance that value.
I think if you take that inclusive
concept, which contains all of these different ways of engaging individually
and collectively, and you think about the power
of experiencing art, either as a creator or as someone who is
witnessing it, if you think about how we engage head,
heart in hand, intellectually emotionally and physically through the arts.
It's such an important way of being whole,
of really bringing forth your full humanity.
And there's something about that way of being that has impact in all sectors.
So I often think that unleashing, the power of the art requires us to think
about not only the art sector, but our intersection with other sectors
like health, like community development, like so many of the sectors that we rely
on to be a nation of opportunity, the arts are integral to that.
Well said.
You've previously stated, and I'm going to quote you here,
so I'm going to read from this paper, that the ability to be expressive,
tell and see your stories, that is, in individuals or communities
on your own terms, are critical to a just and civil society.
Can you elaborate on that,
more on the importance of this, and particularly in terms of expanding
opportunity and the role that the arts play?
Sure.
For many years, as someone trained in urban planning,
I would often be asked by colleagues, if you care about equity, wellbeing,
healthy neighborhoods, why are you doing this arts and culture stuff?
And it took a while for me to be able
to articulate what I knew in my gut and what later in my career was affirmed
through research and other ways of knowing.
And I'll say this, that if you look around
the world and throughout the ages in strategies to disempower,
the first thing that is tinkered with is one's ability to make sense of the world,
to ask questions, to have dominion over your own narrative.
And these are the things that we do
through art, the ability to tell our stories, to imagine, to express.
And I keep thinking,
if it's so important that it's something that has to be diminished or controlled
when one is oppressing, then why don't we think of it as critical
and central, integral to building healthy communities?
Yeah, regrettably,
in a similar vein, crises like the pandemic disrupt many
facets of our everyday lives, including how we prioritize
those things that are fundamental to our health well being and our resilience.
From your perspective, what's the role of arts and culture in times of crisis?
And
how do individuals and communities benefit from those cultural and artful lives?
There are many ways, I think, in which the arts play a critical role
in our ability to survive something like a pandemic.
And some of those ways have to do with our personal wellbeing, and some of them have
to do with our ability to show up as part of a collective and care for each other.
But if you think about how the arts help
us make sense of the world, that's important
during a time when everything is turned upside down.
The arts help us find different ways of thinking, feeling and being.
They're a source of inspiration and innovation, I think the arts help us
see the humanity in others and allow us to connect and understand our
commonalities as well as our meaningful differences.
And I think that all of that is necessary to survive through something like what
we've been through over the past few years.
The ability to reframe, to retool, to repair.
These are some of the things that are made possible with the arts.
It's inspiring to think of how that might
help us in the months and weeks to come and years.
Yeah.
The Federal Plan for Equitable Long-Term Recovery and Resilience,
it's intended to be a whole of government and arguably a whole of society plan
towards enhancing individual and community resilience.
And many of the discussions centered
around this involve the concept of shared stewardship.
And again, I'm going to read a definition specifically for shared stewardship.
The concept is defined as the deliberate and meaningful collaboration,
investment and understanding of the interconnectedness of communities,
governments, the private sector, and other organizations that impact people
to equitably, achieve and sustain greater resilience for all.
Can you tell us a little bit more about
how the NEA approaches the idea of shared stewardship in particular and discuss
the ways that other various government agencies might take advantage of the NEA
and incorporate the arts into initiatives that they hold that are aimed towards
helping individuals and communities through times of crisis?
Sure.
The thought that we are collective stewards, let's say, of
hopefully places that are healthy, where all of us could thrive,
I think it requires us showing up, as I said earlier, head, heart in hand,
fully, fully committed to our well being and the well being of our neighbors.
And I think that if we understand the role of the arts in helping us to show up
that way, then thinking of the structures
and the mechanisms that we rely on to care for each other, what I think of as our
civic infrastructure I like to think of an arts infused civic infrastructure.
Right.
So there's a civic infrastructure that is about those relationships and mechanisms
that allow us to care for each other and they are made stronger and more
impactful because we can show up in this way.
That allows us to be creative and imaginative and allows us to see
connection and meaningful difference, allows us, I think, to get unstuck.
And I think that integration of arts, culture, design into how we think about
the systems that we rely on to care for each other, it's so important,
and I think we'll be stuck if we don't figure out how to weave that in.
I like that.
I particularly like an arts infused civic infrastructure.
The image of that is that too, is inspiring.
So where do we go from here?
What do you see as the next steps that need to be taken?
And what are the opportunities for the NEA
in particular and particularly focused around advancing health and wellbeing?
Sure.
I think one of the things that I'm very excited about in my role as chair is
helping others to understand the National Endowment for the Arts as
a grant making organization, which we are and have been.
I think also, though, helping us understand the agency or
helping others understand the agency as a national resource.
So our ability to partner with agencies like Health and Human Services,
like Department of Transportation, Housing and Urban Development,
and being able to help discern how integration of arts,
culture and design can be impactful and actually allow us to deliver
to the American public in a way that is what we aspire to.
I think that looking
to the National Endowment for the Arts as a partner in helping to devise solutions
to frame issues and to execute, to deliver and make a difference
in people's lives, that's what we're here for.
Terrific.
This has been a fabulous conversation. Thank you.
I really appreciate our time.
What NEA has to offer to advance health
and wellbeing and improve resilience in this country, I think everyone needs
to hear, and I for one am going to continue to advocate for that as well.
Well, thank you so much for having me.
I appreciate this time with you.
It's been wonderful.
To learn more about the Equitable Long-Term
Recovery and Resilience Plan, please visit Health.gov and to learn more
about the Endowments work, please visit Arts.gov. Thank you.