It had to feel a little like, I don’t know, crossing an illegal border.

Imagine, after all the craziness of the past two months, traveling from Colorado to Washington D.C. right now to advocate for the value of the arts and continued arts funding.

“In some ways, it was business as usual – and in other ways, it was kind of surreal,” said Christin Crampton Day, the executive director of the Colorado Business Committee for the Arts who led a cohort of six Colorado arts leaders in that very pursuit last week.

“It was a little bit daunting going in, not knowing what to expect. Because there’s always something new happening out of Washington – and we are all seeing that every day.”

Almost from the moment of his swearing-in, President Trump has used the arts as a powerful pawn in his larger war on diversity and what he calls wokeness. From his takeover of the Kennedy Center to a clampdown on how funding from the National Endowment for the Arts can and cannot be used moving forward, Trump is freely using the power of the executive order to purge the arts — and virtually everywhere else — of any hint of diversity, equity and inclusion.

The only ammo he needs is the mere threat of eliminated federal funding.

The target here is not so much the arts as it is trans people, a group that makes up just 0.1% of the global population. But DEI is clearly a winning issue among a Trump base that has embraced transgenderism and diversity as mainstream flashpoints. And the arts are already paying a price.

So, a trip to D.C. right now? Foolhardy, perhaps. But that’s what six eternally optimistic Coloradans did last week when they stepped into politically charged territory with a unified and seemingly irrefutable message: The arts help to make better people. And the arts save lives.

“Arts and culture play an important role in the health, well-being and economic vitality of communities throughout Colorado,” said Joshua Blanchard, executive Director of Colorado Creative Industries, also known as the state’s official arts office.

The trip was planned long before the election that changed everything. It happens every two years, in fact. The newly rebranded Creative West, known for 50 years as the Denver-based Western States Arts Federation, exists entirely to support artists in 16 U.S. states and territories. Every two years, the group teaches a cohort of chosen arts leaders how to strategically engage in federal arts advocacy. Then it sends them to D.C. to press the flesh with actual congressional policymakers in their offices – or, more often, with their staffers in their hallways.

For the politicians, it’s a largely obligatory meeting. But, like any effective marketing strategy, repetition works. Or it did, in the Before Times.

Take 2023, for example. The No. 1 goal of the Colorado delegation then was to ask our own legislators for combined funding from the NEA and the National Endowment for the Humanities to be increased to $1 per capita in Colorado. At the time, the national state average was 62 cents. In Colorado, it was 35.

“And now we’re up to 55,” said Day. That’s largely because of successful lobbying efforts by Colorado Creative Industries and others to increase state arts funding by 57%. The NEA, for the most part, has historically matched state funding. More state funding means more federal funding.

“So that is absolutely good news,” Day said. “But that’s assuming that the NEA will continue to be funded.”

And there’s the rub. Trump already tried unsuccessfully to eliminate the NEA altogether back in 2017, making him the first U.S. president in history to propose zeroing out all funding for the nation’s federal cultural agencies. The line item was restored with an annual budget of about $160 million at the time.

The NEA was conceived under a Republican (Eisenhower) and realized by a Democrat (Johnson). But its funding has ebbed and flowed over the years, largely based on who has occupied the White House. The Biden administration brought about the largest-ever increase to the NEA’s budget last year at $207 million. That still accounts for only 0.004% of the $9 billion federal budget. But before Trump, there was an implicit understanding that the arts are a core, common American value – and an economic generator. As of 2022, arts and culture was a $1.1 trillion annual industry that represented 4.1% of the nation’s GDP and supported 5.2 million jobs, according to the NEA.

The Colorado delegation was armed with all those facts last week. They included Day, Blanchard, Downtown Grand Junction’s David Goe, Colorado Theatre Guild President Betty Hart, and Creative West’s Cameron Green and Paul Nguyen. They were received by staffers from the offices of Senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper; and representatives Diana DeGette, Joe Neguse, Jeff Hurd, Jason Crow and Brittany Pettersen. No such luck with Lauren Boebert, Jeff Crank and Gabe Evans.

Their first day of meetings was on the same day Trump was making his contentious joint congressional address. They arrived at a U.S. Capitol surrounded by fences. They tried to see past all the craziness and focus on the task at hand.

“Given everything that is going on at the Kennedy Center and with the NEA right now, I think it’s more important than ever that we are advocating, and that we are present and visible,” Day said.

The delegation advocated not only for NEA funding but also for upcoming legislative proposals like the CREATE Act, which among other things would allow for additional loan opportunities for artistic entrepreneurs. And the Arts Education for All Act, which would expand arts education in schools.

“Did you know that there are only two states in our entire country that have no mandated arts funding for schools?” said Hart. She’s looking at you, Colorado and Maine.

“What that means is if you’re a school administrator and you’ve got to cut your budget, you’re going to cut the arts, because it’s not required,” she said.

“So we made our legislators aware of that and said, ‘Hey, let’s get Colorado no longer in that number alongside the great state of Maine, and have arts education mandated throughout the state.”

This is not about occupying student’s time with electives, said Hart, also a co-artistic director at Boulder’s Local Theater Company. It is about producing well-rounded humans who are better equipped to join the workforce after graduation. It’s about job readiness. And it’s about mental health.

Colorado ranks in the top 10 in the nation for teen suicides. According to multiple studies, involvement in the performing arts reduces the risk of developing depression in adolescence or later in life.

“Art is a definite way to help combat mental health challenges because it brings young people a sense of belonging,” Hart said. “It develops their sense of compassion, it gives them the opportunity to think in multitudes of ways – and it teaches them how to work with lots of different people.”

That has to be something we all can agree is good, right? Because while not everyone cares about the arts (that’s a given), everyone cares about the children … don’t they?

Well, no. And I asked Hart to respond to the point-blank reality that some people out there will read above that Colorado doesn’t have mandated arts education, and they’re going to say, “Good.” Some will intractably see arts education as expendable, especially given the House’s proposed $4.5 trillion in net tax cuts.

What would you say to those people?

“I would say that the people who say, ‘Good!’ are the very same people who say, ‘We want employees who are fully ready for the modern workplace,’” Hart said. “The arts provide job-skill readiness in a way that nothing else does.

“Working in the arts allows you to have greater communication skills, greater problem-solving skills, greater collaboration skills and the ability to think outside the box. And those are all things that employers say they need. Whether you are playing in a band or singing in a choir or working in a play, you get all of those things from working in the arts.

“And then you have people with autism or other special needs. Those students are able to learn differently and more effectively through the arts than by using traditional classroom techniques alone. The data is out there that proves all of that.”

And then there is that whole “saving lives” thing. These days, especially for parents of trans kids, the goal isn’t a college scholarship – it’s to get their kid out of high school alive.

“I would think there is no one who wants Colorado to be in the top 10 in teen suicide,” Hart said. “The arts play a vital role in helping to reduce teen suicide, and I think that is a unifying message. Because I think everyone does indeed care about the education of our youth. Everyone does indeed want a well-educated populace – and it starts with our children.”

Day and Hart say their message fell on largely receptive but, in some cases, cautious ears. “We had some legislators who said very candidly that they’re concerned about what’s going to happen with the budget,” Hart said.

Right now, no one knows what, if any, federal funding will survive Trump’s first fiscal budget. But he has made it plain that any forthcoming funding from the NEA will require the receiving organization’s full compliance with Trump’s anti-DEI and anti-trans orders, which will unilaterally eliminate from consideration many of the very same underrepresented arts organizations the NEA was first conceived to uplift.

But as for the Colorado arts contingent: They came, they championed, and time will tell if they conquered.

“I think all in all, we accomplished what we set out to do,” Day said. “In fact, I think we knocked it out of the park.”