_The Creative Wealth of Nations_

- _“Who knew? Arts Education Fuels the Economy”_<sup>_77_</sup>

## || Box 5 || **The Contribution Arts Education to the United States Economy**

“In December [2013] in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis released preliminary estimates from the nation’s first Arts and Cultural Production Satellite Account. The account is meant to trace the relationship of arts and cultural industries, goods, and services to the nation’s ultimate measure of economic growth, its gross domestic product.

The numbers are still a work in progress. In this context, "arts education" refers only to postsecondary fine-arts schools, departments of fine arts and performing arts, and academic performing-arts centers. Yet even for this limited cohort, the findings are impressive:

- In 2011, arts education added $7.6-billion to the nation’s GDP.

- In that year alone, arts education as an industry employed 17,900 workers whose salaries and wages totaled $5.9-billion.

- For every dollar consumers spend on arts education, an additional 56 cents is generated elsewhere in the U.S. economy.

Again, these figures do not include design schools, media-arts departments within schools of communications, or creative-writing programs—to name just a few notable omissions from the world of higher education. And yet the results are in line with a series of claims that have fueled arts advocates in recent years. While not grounded in economic theory, those arguments have portrayed arts education as a conduit to greater creativity and innovation in the work force.”<sup>78</sup>

**<u>Source</u>** : The Chronicle of Higher Education

Such instrumental outcomes of arts education are indeed useful in crafting education policy in both developed and developing countries. They are evidence-based and measurable, and hence support the value of the arts in chambers of tight budgets and cost-benefit analyses. But, as we have just seen, the non-measureable aspects of arts education are also valuable.

It is especially important to emphasize this in development policy, because the traditional models of education are not sufficient to address challenges like youth unemployment. Arts education is not all about making children first-rate artists to get jobs in the arts world — although that may not hurt. It is about giving them skills for social behavior, innovation, risk-taking, and much more. As widely cited, these traits are not only important in job creation in the so-called new economy; they also equip people to lead a better quality of life aided by development in full dimensions.

# **<mark>Case Study</mark>** **<u><mark>|| The Afghanistan National Institute of Music</mark></u>**

The World Bank, which has committed more than USD$2.69 billion for development projects in Afghanistan (as of 2013), was one of the earliest donors to the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM).<sup>79</sup> Located in Kabul, ANIM is a place that, among other things, seeks to foster social inclusion in a country that has had its share of long-running wars. Students come from diverse ethnic, religious, and economic backgrounds. They include orphans (from such provinces

> 77 Sunil Iyengar and Ayanna Hudson, “Who Knew? Arts Education Fuels the Economy,” _Chronicle of Higher Education_ , March 10. 2014, accessed May 28, 2014, http://chronicle.com/article/Who-Knew-Arts- <u>Education-Fuels/145217/.</u>

> 78 Ibid.

> 79 The World Bank, Afghanistan, accessed April 9, 2014,

<u>http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/afghanistan.</u> <mark>22</mark>