Write

ARTS North Carolina encourages all arts advocates to write personal letters to all winners in the 2010 elections.  William Lewis, Executive Director of Pinecone, got right on it.  To follow is an excellent sample letter:

On behalf of PineCone - the Piedmont Council of Traditional Music, Inc., and its Board of Directors, I would like to express my sincerest congratulations to you for winning your district! I am writing to pledge my support and share with you my belief that the arts are a viable solution for economic recovery. Simply put, arts = jobs!

According to a study in 2009 by the NC Department of Commerce’s Policy, Research, and Strategic Planning Division, the cultural industries contribute about 5% of North Carolina’s economy. This is evident in the following findings:

• Cultural industries create and sustain more than 293,000 jobs in North Carolina, or 5.54% of total state employment.

• The market value of goods and services produced and sustained by North Carolina cultural industries is more than $41.4 billion, or 5.86% of North Carolina’s total production.

• North Carolina’s cultural industries directly and indirectly account for 5.31% of the state’s gross domestic product with a contribution of more than $19.5 billion.

• Cultural industries sustain over $10 billion of employee compensation, greater than 4.9% of the state’s total wages and benefits.

A full report is enclosed.

Funding from the North Carolina Arts Council has been critical to the development of many of the state’s cultural organizations, helping to bring stability to our state’s arts community and providing leverage for groups to seek business, foundation, and other agency matching grants. Funding from the NC Arts Council is essential to PineCone’s general operations, as it helps pay for salaries for our two full-time and one part-time staff. Consequently, we are able to produce more than 150 music programs annually – serving more than 24,000 North Carolinians, plus an additional 4.5 million radio listeners.

We realize the difficulties facing the NC General Assembly in this next session. Thus, we ask you to consider those of us in the cultural industries as partners in finding creative solutions to job growth. As the numbers above bear out, the cultural industries make a significant contribution to North Carolina’s overall economy and employment. We are ready and willing to work with you to help provide solutions to several of your key challenges.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me directly.

Bravo, William!