More on the New New Deal and the Arts

Courtesy of Arlene Goldbard (h/t Artssake, btw, thanks for calling me "delicious"!).  In the post she talks about some things artists could be paid to do under a new WPA style employment program and more.  Here's her list:

• teach
• co-create plays and murals with people young and old
• run community darkrooms and workshops
• beautify the built environment
• carve out space for people to dream, invent and communicate about things that matter to themselves and their communities
• assist communities in creating archives of digital stories
• create public art that commemorates generative moments in the history of a community
• devise choral works and pageants, installations and exhibitions, dances and poetry journals that express and embody community identity and aspiration
• create workplace programs that engage workers in participatory management
• facilitate processes that help people dream their way into new approaches to community and economic development….   

I will note one thing and ask one question.  First, the thing... Obama's arts policy specifically calls for the creation of an Artists Corps:

 Barack Obama supports the creation of an “Artists Corps” of young artists  trained to work in low-income schools and their communities.  Studies in Chicago have demonstrated  that test scores improved faster for students enrolled in low-income schools that link arts across the  curriculum than scores for students in schools lacking such programs. 

And now to ask the question.... this one is for people who do not make their living from making art, so you full-time artists out there just simmer down for a moment...

Would you rather (A) work a dead-end meaningless job to pay the rent whilst making art in your spare time or (B) get paid a living wage to do something related to your art that uses your skills as an artist but isn't actually the art that you create (for example if you were a photographer running a "community darkroom" or if you were a theatre artist helping middle school kids make plays)?

Obviously this is a false dichotomy, but just choose one and say why.  I'm guessing there will be some people out there who would prefer to store up their creative energies to use on their own work.