A flurry of messages swept the Capitol after Natrona County Republican Rep. Jayme Lien suggested tapping the Cultural Trust Fund to pay retired state employee salaries.
Opinion
She cited these “playtime” funds as secondary needs for the state, igniting a statewide advocacy outcry from Wyoming’s arts and culture sector. In less than 24 hours, a scenario Lien had not anticipated quickly unfolded. Wyoming’s arts and culture people showed up.
Could Wyoming learn from the state’s artists, historians and preservationists — the cowboys of my heart? With the Cultural Trust Fund’s budget remaining intact, the answer is clear.
Cowboys build with what they’re given.
If you’ve ever had the pleasure of loving an artist, you know their collective superpower: They can see potential beauty in even the most unlikely trash. (And they probably store it in a pile somewhere in your home.) Scrap metal becomes molten possibility; junk mail becomes collage poems. It’s not just visual artists, either — look what Bob Dylan did with the Vietnam War.
The creative sector can do the extraordinary with what most of us leave on the curb for the garbage truck.
Recently, our country has faced its share of “junk.” I’m talking about the threats to funding, hawk-eyed diversity, equity and inclusion critics, rising censorship and dizzying leaps backward in humanities discourse. It’s far from beautiful. And yet artists take what they’re given and invite audiences to think more deeply. They spark conversations that change minds and, sometimes, swing votes.
When the trash pile is overflowing, there are all the more tools to make art.
What have you done with the junk in your world lately?
Cowboys show up when the lights are down.
For every performance, there are dozens of rehearsals. For each print, there’s a stack of almost-there proofs.
A “win” doesn’t appear out of thin air, it comes after countless hours invested behind closed doors.
The creative sector has an incredible network for solving problems — an underdog’s silver lining.
Need a porta-potty for an outdoor show? Ask a festival musician. Unsure about grant resources? Ask a mural artist. Looking for someone who’s been writing legislators for years? Look no further than your local arts and culture people.
When the Cultural Trust’s funding was threatened, it was no surprise that Wyoming’s creatives could mobilize with next to no notice. They show up, even when no one is watching, because that’s how the work gets done.
Cowboys use their words for good.
When I was an angsty teenager, my dad would prod my sister and me toward semi-productive conversation with one statement: “Use your words.”
He couldn’t translate our teenage dinner-table pouts, just as lawmakers can’t do much with unclear mumbling and eye rolls. Posting snarky memes may feel satisfying, but it doesn’t move policy. Change begins with conversation — at our dinner tables and in the Capitol.
In the hours after the Cultural Trust Fund’s funding was threatened, Wyoming’s artists, historians and preservationists put this lesson into practice. Advocates delivered personal stories through calls, texts and messages to their representatives, answering two essential questions:
What do you need?
Why does it matter?
Together, these voices inspired the amendment’s withdrawal, and words became instruments of change.
Cowboys exemplify resilience through their work.
Artists find abandoned corners and nurture them into studios for turning mud into delicate sculpture. Wyoming’s creatives take the stories of their communities and craft poems that resonate across party lines. They play tear-jerking songs on guitars held together with duct tape from the bed of a pickup.
They’re as resilient as the cowboy tales we grew up on.
Wyoming’s creatives don’t stop just because someone deemed their work unimportant or frivolous. If that were so, our museums would long since be abandoned and our library shelves would collect dust. Instead, they keep going — making art, telling stories, preserving places for Wyoming’s people.
What if every industry fought with the heart of an artist, even when paid pennies for pouring their heart on a page?
Cowboys know what they’ve won.
Arts and culture advocates quietly celebrated saving the Cultural Trust Fund — a victory not for the first time, and likely not the last, in the organization’s history.
It’s never a flashy, Gatorade-cooler-splash kind of win, but a deep sigh of relief after hours spent in persistent, patient work.
If the funding had been lost, the impact would have ripped through all Wyoming communities, knit together by their arts and culture neighbors — a loss no budget line could ever measure.
This abandoned amendment proved what arts and culture advocates already know: The work matters. We keep riding.