Local arts groups face budget gaps as NEA pulls grants

Transcript

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Geoff Bennett: On May 3, the National Endowment for the Arts abruptly terminated grants to arts organizations across the country. As of tonight, an informal tally shows nearly 560 grants canceled, spanning performing visual, literary, folk arts, and education, totaling more than $27 million.

The sudden loss of federal funding has left organizations scrambling to fill budget gaps and contributed to the resignation of several senior NEA staffers.

Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown has more for our series Art in Action, exploring the intersection of art and democracy as part of our canvas coverage.

Jeffrey Brown: A Harlem theater company that brings classic works to a diverse audience, an organization that supports artists in their communities in urban St. Paul and rural Fergus Falls, Minnesota, and a San Francisco nonprofit that promotes equitable access to skills and supplies to make environmentally sustainable art, three local arts organizations connected by a common thread.

Ty Jones, Producing Artistic Director, Classical Theatre of Harlem: I got an e-mail at about 10:00 on Friday night.

Terry Kochanski, Executive Director, SCRAP: Saying that our potential funding was being withdrawn.

Laura Zabel, Executive Director, Springboard for the Arts: This grant no longer meets the priorities of the federal administration.

Jeffrey Brown: All of them National Endowment for the Arts recipients who last month had grants terminated, as the NEA was — quote — “updating its grant-making policy priorities.”

Laura Zabel is executive director of Springboard for the Arts in Minnesota. Founded in 1991, Springboard helps working artists make a living by organizing events like pop-up markets to sell their work and facilitating delivery of arts programs that address local issues.

Springboard was awarded its $150,000 grant to pay for a new artist-led initiative that aims to counter the mental health and isolation crisis in urban and rural Minnesota.

Laura Zabel: It felt very unsettling and really felt like a gut punch. It feels very urgent right now. And that project was a specific response to the former surgeon general’s announcement of the epidemic of loneliness and all the research around how people are feeling so disconnected.

Jeffrey Brown: Shortly after taking office, President Trump signed an executive action establishing a task force to plan for the 250th anniversary of American independence. A week later, the NEA aligned its grant-making guidelines with an eye toward those celebrations.

So it was a surprise when the NEA’s letter, sent three months later, also identified 11 new funding priorities.

Terry Kochanski: It was a little bit odd, honestly, the 250th birthday celebration of the United States, which is lovely, but A.I. support mixed in with things like supporting Black and Hispanic institutions and Asian communities. It was really an interesting mix of priorities.

Jeffrey Brown: Terry Kochanski is executive director of SCRAP, short for Scroungers’ Center for Reusable Art Parts. Based in San Francisco, SCRAP provides equitable access to environmentally sustainable art making to over 33,000 community members a year. The organization operates a 5,000-square-foot center that sells inexpensive recycled art supplies otherwise destined for landfill, as well as educational programs and workshops.

SCRAP’s NEA letter terminated a $25,000 grant to expand sustainable fashion design, one of its after-school programs for teenagers.

Terry Kochanski: Sustainable fashion design has many goals. One is to teach children about the fact that the textile industry is the number two polluter in the world, really. But mostly it’s to support under-resourced students and primarily give them job skills and training.

Jeffrey Brown: In addition to financial support, the NEA awards were a badge of honor.

Terry Kochanski: This is a brand-new grant. We actually had been trying and applying for the last three years. To have an NEA grant is quite prestigious, and other grants come from getting that grant.

Jeffrey Brown: And that meant a lot to you?

Terry Kochanski: Oh, it meant a ton on us. We were celebrating, because, again, we met that level of excellence that NEA signifies.

Jeffrey Brown: Ty Jones is producing artistic director at the Classical Theatre of Harlem. His NEA letter informed him the company he leads lost a $60,000 grant that for the last 12 years had helped fund production of the annual outdoor Uptown “Shakespeare in the Park” series.

Ty Jones: Getting the $60,000 pulled from us a month before rehearsals would force me to go to different divisions within Classical Theatre of Harlem. And then, of course, there’s a cascading effect. So then I need to find money to replace that which I pulled from those other divisions.

Jeffrey Brown: According to the advocacy organization Americans for the Arts, arts and culture programs contribute $1.2 trillion to the U.S. economy annually and support 5.4 million jobs.

The NEA’s roughly $200 million annual budget makes up a tiny percentage of those numbers. But proponents say federal dollars play an outsized role as a catalyst for investments in local arts, culture and communities.

Ty Jones: It’s not just a show itself. It’s also a loss of employment. I employ about 150 people during the summer, as well as a loss of revenue to adjacent merchants and vendors that we have that line up along the park, including the brick-and-mortar places.

Jeffrey Brown: After receiving its termination letter, SCRAP decided not to appeal the decision, as the NEA’s new priorities seem so far removed from theirs. But after a few days, they decided it was worth it.

Terry Kochanski: I didn’t want to sit silent. I and my organization and our board were really confident that this program absolutely impacts the people that the administration was saying that they’re trying to support, which are people of color in under-resourced neighborhoods.

And so I wanted to tell Washington that that’s how we felt.

Jeffrey Brown: Classical Theatre of Harlem is taking a different.

Ty Jones: We had seven days to respond. And one company going up against the federal government wasn’t a smart strategy. So we decided to just reach out to our community to find a way to cover that 60K.

Fortunately, the community stepped up. So I believe that, by the time we start rehearsal, the 60K, that gap will be filled.

Jeffrey Brown: That stopgap fix is much harder for those working in rural communities, says Laura Zabel.

Laura Zabel: The NEA historically has had money that has gone to every congressional district in the country. And that’s very unusual. And there are not other funders who care that much about reaching that breadth of geography and making sure that creative people and creative activities exist in every community in America.

Jeffrey Brown: How serious is it?

Laura Zabel: Losing this grant isn’t going to put Springboard out of business today. But I think, collectively, the termination of this scale of grants and the communication of a message that we can’t count on our government to fulfill the commitments that it made and that we have a government that doesn’t value creativity and innovation and freedom of expression, like, those are kind of large-scale existential threats for all of us.

Jeffrey Brown: For Classical Theatre of Harlem’s leader, Ty Jones, at least, America’s history of past struggles offers some hope now.

Ty Jones: We can get through this moment. I don’t think that this is a time to panic, by any stretch of the imagination. I think what you do is you organize now. And we have been taught that this is exactly the direction that one needs to go in the face of any sort of adversity. Actually, I think it’s a great exercise in democracy.

Jeffrey Brown: For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Jeffrey Brown.