The arts and culture world is decimated by the COVID-19 pandemic and looking for a hero. Last year we introduced you to a foursome of friends who have taken it upon themselves to come to the rescue with a relief campaign called Be An #ArtsHero.

"What we were missing was a unified front of our entire economic sector advocating together for our industry, for our entire sector," said Jenny Grace Makholm, one of the founders of Be An #ArtsHero.

"There are 5.1 million arts workers in the country. Sixty-three percent of the surveyed say that they are completely unemployed, including me," added co-founder Carson Elrod. "And we were the first to close and shut down; we're going to be the last to come back."

Almost five months later, and the group is still fighting the good fight. They recently scored a victory when Congress passed the Save Our Stages Act – which includes $15 billion of federal relief funds for live entertainment venues across the country – and that includes Broadway.

Be An #ArtsHero is keeping up the pressure on the new Biden administration with a letter-writing campaign.

"We have a campaign called 'Dear Mr. President and Madam Vice President,' and I couldn't be more excited about it," said Elrod.

Inspired by an open letter posted to Twitter by playwright Jeremy O. Harris, Carson Elrod and his team collaborated with The Dramatists Guild and some of the country’s most prolific writers to compose arts advocacy letters to the Biden/Harris White House. Playwright Heidi Schreck – who was recently represented on Broadway with her politically charged show “What The Constitution Means to Me” - was told to dream as big as she can, so her letter referenced something from history that she would love to see repeated.

"In the 1930s, after the Great Depression, FDR created The Federal Works Project which basically employed 10,000 artists in all disciplines – writing, painting, theater, design – and he sent them out into the country to create works of art in small towns like the town I grew up in," Schreck said.

That's just one of the steps Schreck says the federal government can take to help revive the country's arts sector.

"I would love for President Biden to appoint a Secretary of Arts and Culture. Most other countries have this. I feel like it would show we as a country value the power of art and culture in this country," said the playwright.

With the curtain rising on new leadership in The White House, Be An #ArtsHero and artists like Heidi Schreck vow to continue to do everything in their power to help revitalize the arts in The United States.