Lexington’s Director of Arts and Cultural Affairs Heather Lyons says the city’s arts organizations are still seeing less turnout compared to before the onset of COVID-19.

Lyons says turnout has increased slowly throughout this year, but they’re still seeing less tickets purchased to events. She also says some arts organizations haven’t been able to return to their previous staffing levels.

Lyons says the best way to help out is to promote local events.

“Buy a ticket. Buy a ticket for a friend, attend their events, share those events with your friends,” Lyons said. “Social media has a lot of direct impact and opportunities to let people know about events, and it costs you nothing to share or like an event that someone is trying to promote.”

Lyons says she wants to look at new ways to provide funding to the arts in the meantime.

“Organizations cannot operate without the money,” Lyons said. “They can’t have new programs unless they have staff support to create those programs. For those organizations that have facilities, they need operating support to maintain those facilities.”

More with Lyons can be heard on this week’s edition of Eastern Standard.

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