Over 50 Percent of Americans Live and Work in Suburbs. Are 50 Percent of Them Arts Leaders?

The lack of suburban arts leaders shouldn’t come as a surprise. From 2011-2015, Barry Hessenius published an annual list of the Fifty Most Powerful and Influential People in the Nonprofit Arts. Of the 142 individuals included on that list over the years, just three people came from suburbs. If you’re anxious about the steady decline in arts participation and interested in a fully integrated creative situation, then this is a problem. Because over half of Americans live and work in suburbs.

If equity and inclusion are of concern to you, then the suburbs should demand your full attention. Almost one-third of the nation’s poor live in suburbs; by 2008, the suburbs were home to the largest and fastest-growing poor population in the country. Brookings calls this the “suburbanization of poverty.” And while minorities only represent 35 percent of suburban residents, more than half of all minority groups in large metro areas live in suburbs. They call this the “melting pot suburbs.”