Effective Arts Communication: Lessons from Kirsten Haddox’s Post on NEA Cuts

Continuing my week of highlighting arts creators on social media, today I’d like to applaud Kirsten Haddox for her post about the cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts.

Kirsten Haddox is a digital and social media manager for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and a professional oboist with a strong presence as a classical music content creator. Her work has earned over 100 million views and 80,000 followers across social media platforms. I’ve been following her for a while as she finished her MBA and was outspoken about how arts organizations need to seriously step up their social media game.

Kirsten’s post about the NEA cuts was remarkable for its clarity: she explained what happened, shy it mattered, and what her audience could do – all in a way that felt accessible and well-matched to her followers. Watch the video, or just read this transcript and see how straightforward it is:

As most of you may already know, there was a major reversal in federal support for the arts over the weekend. On May 2, the National Endowment for the Arts announced a termination of funding across the nation—including awards that were already in progress, as well as many slated for the next fiscal year.

These terminations will go into effect on May 31, 2025. Affected organizations are now facing significant setbacks in their funding plans—months of preparation disrupted in an instant.

This is especially tough for organizations that had already built their budgets around this support. When a major funder like the NEA pulls out, it leaves a huge gap. That said, one silver lining is that organizations do have multiple avenues for funding. Strategic planning around diversified income sources is more important than ever. It doesn’t make this road any easier—but there are things that can be done.

If you want to help during this time, look into your local arts organizations. Explore donation and funding options. There are many accessible and affordable ways to support the arts in your community.

And if you’ve never been to the symphony, the ballet, the museum—or if you know someone who hasn’t—take them. This is your sign.

And if you want me to do more videos like this, let me know. Things in the arts world can change literally overnight.

Contrast this with the statements from many other arts organizations, artists, and arts administrators that talk about how the arts are important for a free society and how a world without art is less aesthetic. All true, and I agree, but those are messages meant for arts insiders who have probably been writing to their elected officials daily anyway.

That works for LinkedIn and staff meetings where we go to commiserate and lick our wounds, but for public statements in email and social media meant to get audiences and donors and community partners to actually take action, a much more concrete approach will be more effective. And most importantly, the message needs to match the audience – something Kirsten does exceptionally well. Nicole Wetzell also wrote about this, with advice on how to really pull in supporters by soliciting their stories of how they’ve been impacted.

Kirsten’s video is a model for how arts leaders can communicate with clarity, urgency, and empathy—especially when asking the public to care and act. If we want to grow support for the arts beyond our own circles, we need more messages like hers: direct, audience-aware, and grounded in real-life impact.

Let’s follow her lead.