ARTSblog

Kim Kober

State legislators met over the past two days to consider overrides of Gov. Nikki Haley’s vetoes to the state budget. Two of these vetoes impacted funding for the South Carolina Arts Commission.

Veto #1 completely eliminated funding for the South Carolina Arts Commission, resulting in the agency closing its doors on June 9.

Veto #21 eliminated $500,000 in additional funding for the arts commission to distribute in grants.

To override a Governor’s veto, the item is first considered by the State House of Representatives and if two-thirds of the House vote to override the veto, it will then move on to the Senate where a two-thirds vote is also required.

Yesterday, the House voted to override both of the vetoes with votes of 110–5 to restore funding and 89–25 in favor of the $500,000 for arts grants.

Today the Senate has done the same, voting 29–10 to restore funding for the arts commission and 29–12 to override veto #21.

It’s great to see South Carolina policymakers recognize the value of the arts commission and it was amazing to see how arts advocates in the state stepped up and make noise when Gov. Haley’s vetoes were announced.

If you’ve been reading about the arts online over the past week and a half, there is a good chance you were reading about what was going on in South Carolina. On Twitter, #SaveSCArts has been mentioned hundreds of times and a Change.org petition received more than 7,600 signatures of support.

On Monday, one week after the arts commission closed their doors, advocates held a rally in the state capitol of Columbia where arts supporters gathered to play music, dance, and paint. We know their efforts did not go unnoticed by policymakers. Read the rest of this entry »

As the South Carolina House currently debates which of Gov. Nikki Haley’s vetoes to override (the Senate will do the same tomorrow), I couldn’t help but post the following video of arts advocates outside the State House last night:

Although the weather didn’t cooperate, hundreds of artists and arts supporters came out to protest Gov. Haley’s veto of funding for the South Carolina Arts Commission budget and a video from The State website captures it nicely (too bad they didn’t include embedding code for me to share it here).

Keep your thoughts with your fellow artists, administrators, board members, and advocates in The Palmetto State over the next few days and be sure to follow along on Twitter using the #saveSCarts hashtag as well as via the South Carolina Arts Alliance on Facebook and Twitter.

I hope everyone can take a moment to send a tweet or post on the Arts Alliance wall in a display of solidarity with our friends in South Carolina today and tomorrow.

And, although I probably shouldn’t, I’ll have to leave you with a picture of my new favorite arts advocacy bumper sticker:

Bumper sticker created by artist Ellen Fishburne protesting Gov. Nikki Haley’s veto of S.C. Arts Commission budget. (From The State via Ellen Fishburne)

Jay Dick

Here we go again…

On Friday, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley vetoed the South Carolina Arts Commission’s budget. This is the third year in a row for such a veto, two by Governor Haley and one by former Governor Sanford. It should be noted that prior to Governor Sanford’s veto, he systematically cut the Commission’s budget over the seven years leading up to the veto during his last year in office.

To complicate matters, the legislature failed to submit a budget to the Governor until after the start of the new fiscal year that began on July 1. The Commission, under the veto, has no budget and thus, has had to shut down pending the legislature voting to override the veto on July 17 (House) and 18 (Senate).

Governor Haley issued 81 vetoes totaling $67.5 million for everything from a slight pay raise for teachers to a North Myrtle Beach museum, the preservation of African-American history sites in Charleston, a commuter mass transit service between Camden and Columbia, prescription drugs for AIDS patients, and a nonprofit that serves sexual assault victims.

But, it was only the Arts Commission and the Sea Grant Consortium that were totally eliminated—a move that puts 38 state employee’s jobs in limbo.

House Speaker Bobby Harrell is calling legislators back July 17 to consider overrides. He had planned to wait until mid-September, but Harrell said the two agencies’ predicament, as well as the money for teacher raises, should be addressed sooner. The Senate is coming back on July 18.

Governor Haley’s reasoning for her veto of the Arts Commission is that she would rather let taxpayers decide what charities they want to support. She said it’s not a government function.

The Arts Commission is a charity?! Read the rest of this entry »

Randy Cohen

This post is one in a series highlighting the Local Arts Index (LAI) by Americans for the Arts. The LAI provides a set of measures to help understand the breadth, depth, and character of the cultural life of a community. It provides county-level data about arts participation, funding, fiscal health, competitiveness, and more. Check out your county and compare it to any of the nation’s 3,143 counties at ArtsIndexUSA.org.

Today we release Local Arts Index indicators #4 and #5 (out of 50).

The arts are supported by public funds from municipal, regional, state, and federal governments. A telling measure of the competitiveness of the arts organizations in your county is how well they are competing for public dollars compared to other counties.

Two indicators show arts county funding over multiple years to grantees by (1) the National Endowment for the Arts and (2) your state arts agency.

Total NEA grants per 10,000 population, 2005–2009

This indicator is a measure of National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grants dollars per capita in the county. It is calculated by summing NEA funding to grantees in each county over the years 2005-2009 and dividing by the 2010 population.

For ease of comparison, it is presented as a figure for every 10,000 residents. The benefit of aggregating over five years is that it avoids single-year spikes and dips, and gives a better sense of how NEA funds serve the county over time rather than at just one moment. Read the rest of this entry »

Image from ArtAndSeek.net

Yesterday, the Obama Administration released their fourth budget request covering all federal agencies, including the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

We learned early that morning that President Obama is proposing an increase of $8 million (from $146M to $154M) for the NEA, which was a very positive start.

In the past two years, NEA funding has dropped almost $22M and has yet to recover from the enormous cuts from its high of $176M in 1992.

The fine print of these budget proposals to Congress are read by federal affairs types for additional news and direction about the programs for which they advocate.

With that mission in mind, the following details may be of interest to arts supporters (You can see the full budget document here):

While the NEA’s budget proposal increases several grant categories, it is the Our Town initiative that receives the most significant support: doubled from $5M to $10M.

The Our Town program made a big debut in 2011 with 51 grantees from 34 states receiving a total of $6.5M. More than half of these grants were awarded to communities with a population of less than 200,000 and seven went to places with fewer than 25,000 people. With $10M to spend in 2013, the NEA could make Our Town grants to 115 communities. Read the rest of this entry »

Barbara Schaffer Bacon

Grantmakers in the Arts asks, “What can private foundations learn from public funders who are working with marginalized communities?”

I think public support programs, some old, and some more current have a few lessons to offer. Though neither was without problems or controversy, both Roosevelt’s Federal Arts Projects in the 1930s and The Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) in the 1970s suggest that light structure can produce great results.

They provide evidence that talented artists will answer the call and can produce great works that are relevant to and reflective of the communities for which they are created. While the Federal Art Project was more prescriptive, artists had a very public platform and some latitude to create their work. The public works created and the artist’s interaction with the public is credited with stimulating national interest in American art and laying the groundwork for the National Endowment for the Arts to be established.

As a jobs (not an arts) program, CETA had a looser structure. Artists and creative administrators were deployed, often creating their own job descriptions as they went to work in neighborhoods and community centers around the country; but they found their way and many of the programs created had staying power. Read the rest of this entry »

Richard Stein

When government support is reduced or non-existent, when philanthropic support wanes due to the sagging stock market, and when corporate support is increasingly tied to direct shareholder interests, the local arts agency funding model is in jeopardy.

Unlike the organizations we serve—the producers and presenters of art—arts services organizations don’t typically incite passion for the cause the way a love for Mozart, Mondrian, or Mamet will. The major gift model of cultivating members up the ladder into large donors is far more difficult when your product is a grantwriting workshop as opposed to an opera production.

A trending topic in recent years is “social enterprise.” The term means something slightly different to different people. It often reflects the creation of a for-profit company to serves philanthropic goals.

Social enterprises may also be adjunct funding mechanisms to traditional nonprofit organizations or agencies. One of the biggest examples of this in the arts world is the California Arts Council.

When its general fund allocation was eliminated by the state legislature (except for the $1 million required match to its National Endowment for the Arts block grant), the council was forced to rely entirely upon the proceeds from selling its “arts license plate,” designed by famous California pop-artist Wayne Thiebaud, and introduced in 1994. Read the rest of this entry »

Jennifer Armstrong

At our statewide arts conference this year, held un-ironically in Normal, IL, our theme was The Creative Breakthrough. We wanted to acknowledge that there is no ‘normal’ to pinpoint right now, but that it will be the creative who will break through to sketch out a new normal.

The gathering was a unique opportunity for arts leaders from across the state to come together and break through old ways of thinking, spark new ideas and connections, and to leave with the affirmation that we have the power and resources to break through if we use the force within ourselves, our communities, our sector, and the creative collective.

Our keynote speaker Bruce Mau of Bruce Mau Design and Massive Change Network, posed a theory that the only way to break through the noise is to come together. His key takeaway was – a network changes everything.

According to our post-conference survey, what leaders need most in order to have more breakthroughs is a sounding board, mixing open-mindedness, and institutional knowledge. Our Illinois Local Arts Network (LAN) provides for this and more for local arts agency leaders, and it wouldn’t be possible without the collaboration of two statewide institutions and a core team of Local Arts Agency (LAA) leaders. Read the rest of this entry »

Cornelia Carey

Nearly a month has passed since Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene blew up the East Coast affecting 17 states and territories from the Virgin Islands to Maine.

The deep river valleys of New York and Vermont were among the most severely impacted. And just as those communities were beginning to dig out, Hurricane Lee caused another round of flooding in parts of Pennsylvania and New York.

Further, drought fueled wildfires had homeowners, businesses, and firefighters scrambling for control earlier this month in Texas. In Bastrop County, TX, alone 34,068 acres burned with 1,553 homes destroyed.

Needless to say, it’s been a busy time for those of us who work as emergency responders. While Montpelier, VT, where the CERF+ office is located, narrowly missed devastation, experiencing the disaster from the front lines has been a humbling and heartbreaking experience for our staff.

Recently, Laura Scanlan, director of state and regional partnerships at the National Endowment for the Arts organized a conference call for all of the states and territories affected by Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene. The news coming out of the states and territories, with the exception of Vermont and Puerto Rico (and with a few states not on the phone) is that arts organizations fared relatively well. Read the rest of this entry »

Maya Kumazawa

It seems that “community engagement” and “community arts” are paving the way to a new paradigm in the local arts sector.

By browsing through some local arts agency (LAA) websites, I got the sense that most organizations were somehow relating to their local communities already. But what exactly IS community engagement and how do you do it?

Of course, by sponsoring a public art installation or creating a cultural district, the community benefits. There’s no clear line between community outreach and actually engaging citizens in conversations.

An article in the New York Times describes the shift towards community engagement in MFA programs as, “[capturing] the evolving contemporary art world, one in which awareness of the social, cultural, economic and political context in which art exists has become increasingly important. “

However, even this description doesn’t clearly distinguish how the arts world is changing – the arts have always reflected an awareness of social and cultural contexts. By defining the paradigm more specifically, LAAs will be able to plan more efficiently. Read the rest of this entry »

Since South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley threatened funding for the state arts commission early in the budget process this year, it wasn’t a surprise when she used her proverbial red veto pen to cut funding yesterday.

In anticipation, the South Carolina Arts Alliance had already been lobbying the legislature to overturn Gov. Haley’s veto as early as last week, and it all paid off when both the House and Senate overturned veto #15 today.

The legislature displayed its overwhelming support for the South Carolina Arts Commission by overturning the veto by a large margin in both houses.

The House passed it by a 105-8 vote.

The Senate by a 32-6 vote.

Congratulations to arts advocates in South Carolina and a big “thank you” to the House and Senate for recognizing the power of the arts.

For Americans for the Arts’ official statement on the override, visit our website.

Harlan Brownlee

Once again, Kansas has distinguished itself as a “trendsetter.”

Yes, those are the words of Kansas Governor Brownback when he refers to his action to eliminate the Kansas Arts Commission and put in place a private foundation to fund the arts in Kansas.

Sorry to break the news governor, but those of us who live and breathe the arts on a daily basis, those of us who are in the trenches and have witnessed firsthand the economic and community building benefits of the arts, particularly in rural Kansas, think your approach is misguided.

Both the Kansas House and Senate understood why your plan was not in the best interest of Kansas citizens. In fact, both unilaterally approved funding for the arts and a Republican-led effort in the Senate overrode your executive order to eliminate the Kansas Arts Commission. Read the rest of this entry »

Kathy Smith

The recent events in the Kansas state government were like “déjà vu all over again” for those of us in Topeka. In 2005, our city council decided that our local arts council would no longer receive funding from the general budget, or any budget for that matter.

In response, the Topeka Community Foundation moved ahead with plans to create a privately funded entity, ARTSConnect, which would be a part of the United Arts Fund network.

This was a welcome concept among those in the arts community – a stable, sustainable plan for general operating funds, plus an organization who would help to provide that umbrella for all organizations and individuals who are passionate about the arts and our community.  Read the rest of this entry »

Gov. Sam Brownback vetoed funding for the Kansas Arts Commission today (May 28), thereby ending a scuffle with the legislature, which funded the commission over his objections.

According to the Associated Press, Gov. Brownback said:

“The arts will continue to thrive in Kansas when funded by private donations, and I intend to personally involve myself in efforts to make this happen.”

In light of this action, the following statement has been released by Americans for the Arts President & CEO Robert Lynch:

Americans for the Arts is disappointed with Governor Sam Brownback’s decision to eliminate the Kansas Arts Commission (KAC) by vetoing the legislative branch’s budget for the agency. His action not only robs the citizens of his state of access to quality arts programming, but is also a direct affront to his campaign platform to create jobs and rebuild the state’s economy. Kansas now holds the dubious distinction of being the only state without a functioning state agency in charge of promoting the arts and culture.   Read the rest of this entry »

Porter Arneill

From my perch on the far western edge of Missouri overlooking Kansas, I’ve been watching feuds on both sides of the state line as the two state arts agencies face the political and economic challenges du jour.

To the west, the Kansas Arts Commission recently faced abolishment as part of the governor’s executive reorganization order.

Fortunately, with help from legislators, individuals, and the Kansas Citizens for the Arts, they persevered. Unfortunately, the struggle isn’t over—the state legislature still has to resolve the Kansas Arts Commission’s annual budget and the Governor has a line-item veto.

To the east, the Missouri Arts Council was zeroed out by the House, despite the Governor’s recommendation of funding at $1.2 million.

Ironically, this is in part because the Missouri Arts Council has a trust fund that was created and intended to grow as an endowment.

They’ll have grant funds for next year and perhaps beyond but without approved budgetary allocations, spending those funds now is effectively cannibalizing future resources.   Read the rest of this entry »