How has technology changed the way we consume art and entertainment? How can creatives advocate for themselves and their communities? How can art be utilized to promote health, mindfulness, and democracy—and how do artists ensure that they’re being credited and funded to help support those goals?

These are just a few questions Kogod students tackled this semester in Protecting the Creative Class (MGMT304), taught by professor and Business and Entertainment program director Linda Bloss-Baum. The course focuses on the modern relationship between art and technology and what it means to work in creative fields in the twenty-first century, whether securing funding for creative work or understanding how generative AI impacts artistic spaces. These discussions took place in the same semester as the Kogod-hosted Artists’ Rights Symposium, where leaders in the entertainment industry met for a day of panels and talks surrounding pressing topics such as AI, likeness rights, ticket reselling, and royalty payments. Students in the course—and in Kogod’s Business and Entertainment program as a whole—have the opportunity to learn about the modern challenges of the artistic world against the backdrop of experts discussing the same issues on campus.

When I attended the course, the students had just finished learning about the role of artists in advocacy movements. Musician and artists’ rights activist Blake Morgan had visited the class the week before, and the group reflected on his presentation and lessons they learned about using the arts to promote awareness of a wide variety of social issues. Now that they had a better understanding of how creatives can advocate for themselves and the world around them, it was time to get into the details of how to obtain funding for that advocacy work.

The evening’s guest speaker while I was in attendance was Jen Hughes, senior advisor to the chair at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The NEA is a federal agency that researches and issues grants to arts and culture work nationwide to advance opportunities for arts participation and practice. As an advisor, Hughes’ work primarily involves developing partnerships and supporting the chair in determining the agency’s priorities. A DC local who initially trained as an urban planner, she has worked for the NEA since 2011 and has come to Kogod multiple times to speak with Business and Entertainment students about her work.

Over the course of the evening, Hughes explained to the class the NEA’s role in securing artistic funding, its relationship with other government agencies, and the role art can play in democratic engagement. In recent years, government leaders have given more attention to art's role in health, activism, and community involvement. 2022 saw the Biden administration issue an executive order to promote arts, humanities, and libraries as a cornerstone of democracy, and the Department of Health and Human Services, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Endowment for the Humanities all currently fund arts initiatives. Despite this, the United States lags far behind when investing taxpayer money into the arts, especially compared to its European counterparts. The NEA received 207 million dollars in funding in fiscal year 2024—less than one percent of the US budget for that year and a number that equates to less than a dollar per person in the country.

“Right now, we’re in a historic moment of infrastructure and investment in this country,” Hughes said. “Wouldn’t it be incredible if even a percent of it went to artists to do that work?”

Where does the money that the NEA does receive go? As Hughes explained, it is primarily to grants that support artistic endeavors nationwide. The organization receives between five and six thousand applications for funding a year for a wide range of goals, including asset projects, community engagement, and design funding. A major aspect of these projects is a concept the NEA calls “creative placemaking”—the use of art and culture to increase community engagement. Prior to Hughes’ arrival in the classroom, the students split into groups to read case studies on creative placemaking in cities such as Chattanooga, Tennessee; Takoma Park, Maryland; and Greensboro, North Carolina. By the time Hughes arrived, they already had a basic understanding of how creative endeavors can support other sectors, and she further developed that knowledge with examples such as the role of arts organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic in amplifying vaccine messaging to historically hard-to-reach constituencies.