Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 37, Number 11, 1 November 2020 — A Community of Creative and Artistic People [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

A Community of Creative and Artistic People

By Kalani Akana, Ph.D. Businesses of Hawai'i and all of the continental U.S. are distressed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A result has been the closure of restaurants, gyms, movie theatres and more. Perhaps the impact on hula schools, art galleries, and places for entertainers have not been considered. The creative and artistic people involved are part of the creative eeonomie community. Within this eommunity are people who include hula practioners, entertainers, videographers, photographers, painters, carvers, writers, fashion designers and others. According to the U.S. Bureau of Eeonomie Analysis, the creative and artistic community of Hawai'i produced $3 hillion, about 3% of Hawai'i's economy, and about 22,000 jobs were produced. On the continental U.S. about 5.1 million jobs were in the creative and artistic community. This same eommunity produced about $404.9 hillion eaeh year

prior to the pandemic. Unfortunately, this community has not been looked after by the government (federal and state). Perhaps one of the reasons is this fact: it is four times more likely that artists and other creative people are self-employed. However, there are organizations in Hawai'i helping the artistic and creative community, namely PA'I Foundation led by Vicky Holt Takamine. For more than 10 years they have been assisting the creative eeonomie community. With support from the First Peoples Fund (FPF) and the Native Artists Professional Development Fund (NAPDF) artists are assisted with the development of portfolios and webpage professional development and design. This enables artists to show their arts, hula, singing, fashion and so forth. Some of the artists assisted by PA'I and FPF-NAPDF include 'Umi Kai, Ka'ohu Seto and Starr Kalahiki. Web pages are critically important during the pandemic. For example, on October 22, people could log into the web, YouTube or KHON to watch the MAMo Wearable Fashion show and order fashion items from the online market (see https://www.paifoundation.org/). In addition, PA'I and FPF, along with Alternate Roots, NAFAC (NaUonal Association of Fatino Arts and Cultures) and SIPP Culture (Mississippi Center for Cultural Production) joined together to form IFI (Indigenous Feadership Institute). During the pandemic, they raised $5,000,000 for the native creative eeonomie community. Native leaders ean apply to the IFI (see http:// www.weareili.org/). Kahōkū Findsey Asing, Kanoelani Davis, Tara Gumapac, Chadwick Pang, and Ka'iulani Takamori are some of the recent fellows of IFI. Here is some good news for the creative eeonomie community: the City & County of Honolulu has announced hnaneial asistance of $10,000-$50,000 to those businesses and nonprohts impacted by COVID-19. If interested, see https://www.oneoahu.org/ culture-arts. ■ Kalani Akana, Ph.D., is the culture specialist at OHA. He is a kumu of hula, oli and 'ōlelo Hawai 'i. He has authored numerous articles on Indigenous ways ofknowing and doing.