New Hampshire arts groups face double budget blow as state slashes funding

Transcript

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Amna Nawaz: There’s been a lot of news about federal funding cuts to the arts, but some states are also slashing their arts funding.

Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown visited New Hampshire, where the cultural sector generated some $3.5 billion in revenue in 2023, but where arts groups now face a potential double hit.

His report is for our series Art in Action, exploring the intersection of art and democracy, and part of our Canvas coverage.

Jeffrey Brown: On a hot summer evening at the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music in the woodlands of Nelson, New Hampshire, concertgoers gathered for an evening meal and performance.

The center, celebrating its 55th season, was originally started as a summer music camp for young musicians, and later expanded to include students of all ages with a range of experience levels. In addition to instruction, a revolving faculty of professional musicians offers a series of concerts.

Executive director Sam Bergman says the center has become a staple of the Monadnock region of Southern New Hampshire’s thriving cultural life.

Sam Bergman, Executive Director, Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music: We bring in as many as 300 students a year for our summer chamber music workshop sessions. They live on campus, but they also go into town. Their families come to hear their concerts. They stay in hotels. They go to the restaurants. They go to the bars.

These are people who are coming here specifically for Apple Hill, but then they’re captivated by the whole region.

Jeffrey Brown: But earlier this summer, Apple Hill got news from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts that its funding had been cut. The grant of $13,500 makes up just a small portion of Apple Hill’s $1.2 million budget. But the cut, says Bergman, sends a troubling message.

Sam Bergman: We know that the arts in New Hampshire provide a tremendous economic impact to this state, and also provide a social impact in one of the oldest states in the country, in a state that talks incessantly about the need to keep the young people of New Hampshire in New Hampshire as they grow up, to provide a place that they want to stay and also to be a place that can attract younger people from elsewhere.

We know that one of the key ways to do that is through cultural offerings, through having arts.

Jeffrey Brown: So, that’s at risk.

Sam Bergman: It’s a huge risk.

Jeffrey Brown: The cuts came as the state legislature voted to all but eliminate funding for the Arts Council, about $1.4 million last year, leaving just enough for one employee, down from seven. The stated reason? Revenue shortfalls due in part to recent tax repeals and the drawing down of COVID-19 era federal assistance in a state that doesn’t have personal income or sales taxes.

Republican State Senator Tim Lang heads the Ways and Means Committee.

State Sen. Timothy Lang (R-NH): In good revenue times, these are great functions to have, but we’re in bad revenue times and we have to cut back and limit what government does.

Jeffrey Brown: I mean, the term I heard was wants versus needs.

State Sen. Timothy Lang : Wants versus needs, right.

Jeffrey Brown: Lang insists the cuts are not ideological. He says he believes in the value of the arts, but the state needs new ways to fund them.

State Sen. Timothy Lang : We created the new funding mechanism through tax credits. So we allow in New Hampshire to get donations and businesses can use — in this case, 50 percent of the donation can be used as a credit against taxes you might owe the state. So rather than the money coming in and going back out, we just don’t get the money, and the business gets to get the benefit.

So we felt New Hampshire has a vibrant art community, that there were enough private patrons that would buy the tax credits and that would give funding to the arts to continue the arts program.

Jeffrey Brown: But it’s not that straightforward, counters Sarah Stewart, commissioner of New Hampshire’s Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, which oversees the Arts Council. Those grants, even when small, have outsized impacts.

Sarah Stewart, Commissioner, New Hampshire Department of Natural and Cultural Resources: These are very meaningful. Over the years, we have built relationships, we have built a network. We have a roster of professional artists that we have been able to vet. These are sort of providing a gold standard. To these organizations that are fund-raising otherwise, but with a New Hampshire state grant, they can showcase that they have been vetted properly and that they’re worthy of investment.

Jeffrey Brown: The budget cut, she says, puts her state in an unenviable position.

Sarah Stewart: That leaves us behind all of our states and territories. New Hampshire is now, with this allocation, the least funded in the country behind Guam.

Jeffrey Brown: And that’s not a good place to be for you.

Sarah Stewart: No, but we can only go up from here. It’s painful. And knowing that we have worked so hard to build these programs up to where they are today, and to have to now take a giant step back is a shame.

Jeffrey Brown: Where does this leave arts organizations? Not so supercali, maybe more fragilistic, even as the shows went on, including “Mary Poppins” at the New London Barn Playhouse in the middle of its 93rd season when we visited in July.

Executive artistic director Keith Coughlin:

Keith Coughlin, Executive Artistic Director, New London Barn Playhouse: The Northeast is an interesting sort of area of the country where there are these gems of theaters that have been around for decades that…

Jeffrey Brown: Including in old barns.

Keith Coughlin: Including in old barns, all up and down the East Coast. And I think they carry a rich history of providing entertainment to their communities, but also a breeding ground for young artists.

Jeffrey Brown: The barn playhouse lost a state-funded grant that went towards a program called Improv for Caregivers, working through theater with caregivers of Alzheimer’s and dementia patients.

Keith Coughlin: This program was entirely funded by the state and we were able to offer it for free. That was really an exciting piece to what we could offer the community.

Jeffrey Brown: There are also the hits from federal cuts and unknowns to come. The Barn Playhouse lost NEA funding earlier this year for a program that includes bringing theater into local schools. After appealing the decision, that funding was reinstated.

Keith Coughlin: It’s just a time of uncertainty. Faced with tough decisions in terms of programming, do we need to reduce because this — that funding is not coming? Do we need to change? We hope that we don’t have to push ticket prices or things that end up harming the organization in other ways.

Sal Prizio, Executive Director, Capitol Center for the Arts: We seem to be living in a time where a lot of people are absolving themselves of the responsibility of investing in the culture in which they enjoy.

Jeffrey Brown: Sal Prizio, executive director of the Capitol Center for the Arts, a performing arts venue in concord, also chairs Arts for New Hampshire, a statewide advocacy organization.

Sal Prizio: I have reminded everybody we lost a battle, we’re not going to lose the war, because here in New Hampshire there’s elections every two years. So it’s like the weather, it changes every five minutes kind of thing.

So it is the identity of what makes New Hampshire, New Hampshire. And can we come together under one umbrella to be able to have a louder voice, a megaphone that speaks to whether it’s the elected officials on the Statehouse or just more broadly to the entire state of New Hampshire?

Jeffrey Brown: For now, the music and shows go on here at Apple Hill and beyond, while artists, organizations and audiences await the next act.

For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Jeffrey Brown in Nelson, New Hampshire.