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schools, and other people professionally concerned with art.  They aid the directors of the art project in maintaining high standards of performance, stimulating local interest in the art projects, and establishing constructive co-operation between the art projects and other activities of value to the community.
The national and state directors of the Federal Art Project believe that public demand--expressed in terms of economic support--is a necessary element in the development of American art.  They believe that the artist must have a public is he is to function freely and fully, and make the contribution he is capable of making to contemporary American civilization.  They are convinced that the art project can contribute a great deal toward building up such a public.  Behind this conviction is a knowledge of the American tradition in the arts, and a belief in its value and vitality.
Five thousand artists are but a fractional part of the American workers on all the various government projects, but in the months during which the Federal Art Project has been in operation it has been demonstrated that the number of people vitally affected by the work of these artists must be reckoned in the hundreds of thousands.
Through the various activities of the art projects the artists and the public have been brought into direct and reciprocal contact.  People never before interested in art have awakened to its cultural potentialities and there has been aroused in many committees throughout the national a genuine desire to participate actively in the many phases of the program.