Jessyn Farrell

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The arts sector includes literature, theatre, music venues, museums, public displays of art, arts education in and out of the school building, design, and more. What role do you see the arts playing in the pandemic recovery? What is your experience with creatives, creative organizations, and the arts in Seattle?

I am a passionate supporter of the arts as both a resident and a former legislator and I understand that with adequate funding and support from the City of Seattle, the arts can be used as a conduit for healing. In the next Families, Education, Preschool, and Promise Levy, I will secure funding that will directly support artists who are doing trauma-related work. These past 18 months have been incredibly traumatic for the entire community and we need to pay special attention to healing as a city. Artists and the arts should play an outsized role in that process.

Total personnel expenses budgeted for 2020/2021 are nearly 30% lower than in the pre-pandemic fiscal year 2018/2019. Artistic and production personnel budgets are those most dramatically affected, seeing 44% and 37% drops, respectively, since prior to the pandemic. Given this statistic from ArtsFund’s economic survey, how will you work to grow the creative workforce sector?

Growing and supporting our city’s creative workforce sector will be vital to Seattle’s post-pandemic recovery. Securing investments for creatives will increase our city’s prosperity in the short term and down the road, and is traditionally a sector of the economy that is incredibly green. Any discussion about reducing the carbon emissions from our infrastructure has to include artists and art organizations. Part of my plan to give Seattle a Fresh Start on climate includes portable benefits for apprentice utilization and could prove essential to growing the creative sector. I plan on building 70,000 units of affordable housing close to transit hubs and where people work. That means building housing in close proximity to our cultural hubs to reduce the transportation costs for creatives just trying to get to work. It is also essential to put back money into the pockets of people across the city and give them a safety net as we begin emerging from the COVID-19 recession. To accomplish this I have a plan to provide universal, free childcare to everyone in Seattle. My birth-to-five childcare plan will take the burden of early life childcare off of Seattle’s families, giving them more disposable income and opportunities to engage in creative ventures across the city. We should also be subsidizing spaces like warehouses and studios, for artists to be able to practice and work without taking on a costly short-term lease.

Growth in creative occupations has outpaced overall job growth (23% vs. 15%, 2012-2017). 2019 saw 4,373 more creative jobs than would be expected if Seattle had followed national trends. At $30.76, the Seattle metro has the second highest cost of living-adjusted, median hourly earnings for creative workers among large and medium metros. Creative industries contribute 18% of Seattle’s gross regional product, compared to 4% of the U.S. gross domestic product. Seattle is a world-class city for the arts and is a thriving hub for creatives with regional, national and international renown. How would you ensure that artists, and arts and cultural organizations, have the support and resources to maintain that status as a thriving hub? What are your plans to help grow the creative class that makes Seattle so vibrant?

We need to support artists through social housing, full stop. My ST3 for Housing plan calls for 70,000 units of affordable housing which will bring down overall living costs in Seattle and make this city a place everyone can afford to live. Part of this social housing needs to be targeted towards artists, giving them a place to live that is close to our City’s cultural hubs and mass transit centers. I would also look into securing grants for the types of equipment artists need to perform their work. That includes painting supplies, recording equipment, and other expensive, upfront costs. The high cost of this equipment can’t be a barrier to our local artists expressing themselves and enriching our city.

Washington state ranks 45th in funding for the arts, while having the second highest absenteeism rate in the USA. Knowing that the arts increase engagement for children in school, what are your plans for arts education, and what role do you see arts education playing in our school system?

As a single mother of three children, I understand the necessity of sufficiently funding our public education system. Short-sighted, cost-cutting has reduced our student’s access to arts education and harmed the overall quality of their education. I plan on securing the funds to properly fund arts in our schools from K-12 and give our lower-income students the same exposure to arts and culture that is par for the course for their wealthier peers. This will increase academic engagement and make school more nourishing for a larger portion of our students.

The arts sector was left out of early recovery dollars, and the impact was a 65% decrease in earned income projected for 2020/2021 as compared to 2018/2019. We know the arts have historically solved problems for our city, as each new job in a creative industry creates a total of three local jobs, according to 2019’s Creative Economy Report. What is your vision for the arts in community recovery, and how will you work with the sector to achieve your goals?

As stated previously, I believe that the creative industry has a vital role to play in our post-pandemic recovery. The arts can be incredibly healing, and Seattle needs a healthy way to express and channel all of the collective hurt and grief we’ve experienced over the past year and a half. We need to be investing heavily in artistic programs and as mayor, I will work with our creative community to discern where the need is greatest and allocate funds accordingly.

Historically, the funds dedicated to the arts have gone to predominantly white institutions serving predominantly white audiences. How will you ensure that available funds are distributed in a more equitable manner and that we invest in diverse communities?

Part of being a self-employed artist means dealing with a lot of financial instability. Unfortunately, the way this usually resolves itself is that people who come from wealthier, whiter families are the ones who have the safety net to pursue this line of work. This also means that a large amount of the work being produced reflects the lived experiences of higher-income earners. In order to make art more inclusive and reflective of the entirety of our city, we have to invest in arts in our BIPOC communities. This starts first with securing education funding for the arts in our K-12 schools. Exposure to these programs early in life goes hand in hand with artistic success later on. We also need to secure grants for supplies and equipment and direct these funds towards communities that need them the most, while simultaneously putting the programs in place to improve their overall economic security. We can use the vast resources of Seattle to even the playing field for our BIPOC creatives, but we need someone in the Mayor’s office with the chops to get it done.