A New Column Asking “How Can We Make Our Arts Scene Better Than It Was Before the Pandemic?”

The Dig member edition is a new spin on our traditional street edition that we’ll be alternating with it every other week. So my colleagues thought I should launch a new column focused on arts and culture that will likewise alternate with my long-running political column Apparent Horizon. Given that I wear the Dig arts editor hat but have only rarely weighed in on the regional arts scene myself.

Sadly, I find myself taking on this task in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. Which is remaking our society whether we like it or not. Doing a great deal of harm to the health of our species and to the global economy in the process—and concomitantly to every area of human endeavor, including the lively arts. Which are generally created by artists for consumption by other people. Often in the very public spaces rendered unusable by the threat of COVID-19.

As with every great crisis in history, however, once humanity survives it, we will have to start rebuilding the things that have been damaged. Including the various arts institutions in and around the Hub.

So for the next many installments of this biweekly epistle, I want to ask a broad variety of Boston area arts and culture workers a simple question: How can we make our arts scene better than it was before? More thoughtful, more exciting, more relevant, more enlightening… and more diverse by every conceivable metric. I invite arts mavens around the city to email me at [email protected] if you think I should feature your thoughts on this important matter—or those of someone you admire—in this space.

Jason Pramas is executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston and executive director of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. He holds an MFA in visual arts.