Latest / The Difference We Make: Stories of People Changing Lives / The Silence Between Notes: Why Arts Funding Matters More Than Ever | The Difference We Make
Transcript
- There is a specific kind of silence that falls over a classroom when the music stops, and it’s heavier than you might think. It’s not just the absence of sound; it’s the absence of a voice waiting to be heard. I want you to picture a room for a moment. It’s late afternoon in November, the light is slanting through dusty windows, and the air smells faintly of floor wax and old paper. This is an elementary school art room, or it used to be. For years, this space was loud with creativity. Crayons snapped, paint splattered, little hands slapped clay onto tables with the fierce concentration of architects building worlds out of nothing. But today, the shelves are bare. The easels have been moved to storage closets or sold off to cover budget gaps that no one really understands until they’re standing in front of an empty shelf. Let’s look at the hands behind this. Not the politicians signing the budgets, but the teachers who used to spend their own paychecks on glue sticks and watercolors because they believed that a child who can’t afford supplies shouldn’t have to watch their imagination dry up. These educators didn’t see art as a luxury. They saw it as oxygen. When a child draws, they are processing feelings they don’t yet have the vocabulary to name. When they build a sculpture from cardboard, they are learning that broken things can be made whole again. And when those resources disappear, we aren’t just cutting a line item in a spreadsheet. We are removing a sanctuary. We need to talk about the lie we’ve been told for decades. You know the one. It’s the quiet, persistent whisper in every school board meeting and parent-teacher conference that says arts education is an elective. A nice-to-have. A treat for when the math scores are high enough and the test results are shiny enough. As if learning to play a recorder or mix a shade of blue is somehow separate from learning to solve a complex equation or write a persuasive essay. But stay with me here, because this distinction is dangerous. It creates a hierarchy of human worth in our classrooms. It tells some children that their logic matters more than their intuition. That their ability to follow instructions is more valuable than their ability to imagine something new. I’ve sat in meetings where well-meaning administrators argued that funding music programs was ‘frivolous’ compared to STEM initiatives. And I have to ask, gently but firmly, what is STEM without creativity? Science is just applied curiosity. Engineering is just structured imagination. If we starve the creative wellspring, we eventually run dry on innovation itself. Yet, in under-resourced schools, this starvation is chronic. We see it in the way standardized testing narrows the curriculum day by day. Art becomes the first thing cut because it’s the easiest to measure—and also the hardest to defend in a data-driven world. But we are measuring the wrong things. We are measuring compliance instead of capacity. I remember talking to a young girl named Maya last year. She was nine, living in a neighborhood where the sirens were part of the background noise, louder than her neighbors’ conversations. Maya didn’t talk much in class. She sat in the back, shoulders hunched, eyes fixed on the desk. Her reading level was below grade, and her behavior was often misinterpreted as defiance. Teachers struggled to connect with her because she refused to engage with the text-based assignments that dominated her day. Then came the drama club. It wasn’t mandatory. It was offered after school, funded by a small grant that barely covered costumes and set pieces. Maya joined because she had nowhere else to go. But within weeks, something shifted. Through character work, she found a mask behind which she could safely explore her anger, her fear, her hope. She learned to project her voice. She learned to listen to her scene partners. She began to speak—not just lines from a script, but her own thoughts. By spring, Maya wasn’t just acting; she was leading. She organized the younger kids. She helped design the backdrop. She found her agency. That transformation didn’t come from a tutoring session. It didn’t come from extra math drills. It came from the messy, unstructured, deeply human act of making something together. Arts education gives children a language for emotions they cannot yet articulate. It teaches them that their inner world is valid, visible, and worthy of attention. When we defund arts education, we aren’t just saving money. We are accruing a debt that will come due later, in ways we don’t immediately see. We see it in higher dropout rates among students who feel unseen by the traditional academic system. We see it in communities that lose their cultural memory because there’s no one left to tell the stories through song, theater, or visual narrative. We see it in a workforce that lacks the adaptability required in a rapidly changing economy, because creativity is the muscle that allows us to pivot when plans fall apart. Let’s be clear: this isn’t about creating a generation of professional artists. Most of these kids won’t become painters or musicians. They’ll become nurses, engineers, teachers, parents. But they will carry the habits of mind that art instills. They will carry the ability to tolerate ambiguity. To see multiple perspectives in a single image. To persist through failure because a sketch doesn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful. These are soft skills, yes, but they are essential for survival in a complex world. In under-resourced schools, where stress levels are high and resources are scarce, the arts provide a crucial outlet for resilience. They offer a space where mistakes are celebrated as part of the process, not punished as failures. This is radical. It challenges the rigid structures that often govern marginalized communities. It says, ‘Your expression matters.’ And for many of these children, that message is the difference between feeling invisible and feeling alive. There is a stark inequality in who gets access to this richness. Wealthy districts have full-time band directors, dedicated art studios, and field trips to museums. Their students graduate with portfolios and performance credits that bolster college applications. Meanwhile, in poorer neighborhoods, art classes are taught by generalist teachers who are overwhelmed and under-supported, or they are eliminated entirely. The result is a two-tiered system of human potential. One group is encouraged to dream in color; the other is asked to dream in black and white. This isn’t just unfair; it’s inefficient. We are ignoring half of our population’s toolkit. We are telling a significant portion of our youth that their voices don’t matter because they don’t fit into the narrow lane of standardized achievement. And when we silence those voices, we lose the solutions they might have offered. The problem isn’t that poor kids lack talent. The problem is that we’ve built a system that refuses to recognize talent unless it looks like a test score. We need to stop viewing arts funding as charity. It is infrastructure. Just like roads and bridges, arts programs hold up the social fabric. They keep communities connected. They preserve identity. They foster empathy by allowing us to step into someone else’s shoes, literally and metaphorically. When we cut these funds, we aren’t balancing a budget. We are erasing history. So, what do we do? How do we fill those empty shelves? It starts with recognizing that funding arts education is an act of justice. It requires us to challenge the narrative that some lives are less deserving of beauty than others. It means advocating for policies that protect arts curricula as core subjects, not extras. It means supporting local organizations that bring artists into schools, not as guests, but as partners. That’s where the real work begins. It’s not just about writing checks. It’s about shifting the culture. It’s about parents demanding art classes. It’s about community members volunteering time and resources. It’s about seeing a child’s drawing not as decoration, but as documentation of their developing mind. We need to value the intangible outcomes of art—confidence, empathy, resilience—as much as we value the tangible ones. I invite you to think about your own relationship with creativity. When did you last make something just for the joy of it? When did you last let yourself be imperfect? Those moments are not frivolous. They are vital. And they should be available to every child, regardless of their zip code. Let’s build a world where every classroom has room for wonder. Where every student has a voice, and the tools to use it. Because the silence between the notes is where the most important truths live, and we cannot afford to let them fade away. Thank you for listening, for caring, and for staying with me in this difficult but necessary conversation. Until next time, keep making noise. Keep making art. Keep being seen. I’m Ashling Scallon, and I’ll see you in the next episode.