San Diego County Invests in Art While Cities Cut Funds

from Deborah BrennanCalMatters

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

San Diego County supervisors plan to launch a new arts and culture initiative as the city and federal government cut arts funding.

On Wednesday, County Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Terra Lawson-Remer and Vice Chairwoman Monica Montgomery Steppe announced their proposal to spend up to $2.75 million on arts programs in the first year, with ongoing spending of $2.25 million for several arts programs to serve 3.3 million people in San Diego County’s cities and unincorporated areas.

“We believe this will be transformative,” Lawson-Remmer said. “This is the first time the county has moved to secure public investment in arts and culture for the entire county.”

Supervisors unveiled their plan at the San Diego County Administrative Center in Waterfront Park after children from the Mainly Mozart Youth Orchestra played violin pieces and break dancers performed gymnastic moves.

The county arts program will include a $1 million grant program targeting individual artists in areas with limited cultural resources. It will award $500,000 each to improve access to creative spaces and support an existing Black Arts and Culture District located on nine blocks in San Diego’s Encanto community.

The plan would also allocate $250,000 each for binational arts and cultural cooperation in the San Diego-Baja area, as well as an artist-in-residence program to place local artists in county departments where they will help devise creative solutions to community challenges.

“This means that communities where San Diegans have been underserved, marginalized in the arts for too long, will have support and resources,” Lawson-Remmer said, speaking at a podium where someone had carved a stuffed Mozart figure, a gift from the youth orchestra. “We’re expanding opportunities for artists, increasing public access and cultural experiences, and strengthening connections across our diverse, incredible region.”

The five-member Board of Supervisors will vote on the proposal on Tuesday, May 5.

The proposed program has been in the works for a year, supervisors said, but its rollout coincides with San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria’s plan to eliminate an $11.8 million arts grant program and closed a $146 million hole in the city budget. Arts and culture advocates opposed the proposed cuts, which would cut funding for the city’s arts by 85% and also cut spending on libraries and recreation centers.

The county’s program is not a response to city budget cuts, Montgomery Stepp said, but acknowledged the writing is on the wall as government agencies have backed away from arts commitments.

The federal government under President Donald Trump’s administration last year rescinded money that had previously been given to local nonprofits through the National Endowment for the Arts. Artists are also “pushed to the margins” by rising costs, limited access to capital, unstable incomes and a lack of affordable work and living spaces, the supervisors said in the staff report on the proposal.

“San Diego County’s arts and culture ecosystem is at a critical juncture,” Montgomery Stepp said. “We have all witnessed the resilience of our artists and cultural workers in recent years as their livelihoods have been challenged by pandemic closures and shifting public priorities. But today we also face a new challenge of a society retreating from its long-standing commitment to the arts.”

Jared Osoria, a principal dancer with the San Diego Ballet, said his organization lost $10,000 last year that the National Endowment for the Arts appropriated and then took away. The county arts program can help the ballet company buy new audiovisual equipment for rehearsal studios, cover other supplies and offer free ballet lessons to students in San Ysidro and City Heights.

“It puts shoes on the feet of our dancers,” Osoria said. “It gives us a better budget for props for our main stage productions. It ensures that our Nutcracker continues year after year.”

Alex Villafuerte, executive director of the Pacific Arts Movement, which produces the San Diego Asian Film Festival, said the federal fund awarded his organization $25,000 last year but then returned the money.

“Last year was the first year it was overturned without explanation and without a chance to get a rebuttal or get them to reconsider, and we’re guessing that was largely due to the executive orders on diversity,” he said.

Sponsors of the film festival then canceled their grants, pulling another $50,000, after telling organizers they were concerned the donations would run afoul of federal rules restricting diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Because of that, the organization brought in fewer filmmakers for its main festival and cut its spring performance from seven to three days, Villafuerte said.

Ramel Wallace, founder and CEO of the Holyfield organization, which supports storytelling, music and education, said the county’s contribution is a good start. But he said artistic communities need to become more self-sustaining through grassroots financial structures like revolving savings and loan associations and savings circles that share capital among members.

“Right now, people are going to have to create a solidarity economy, a micro-economy in our individual communities, because we can’t always look to power,” he said.

Arts advocates have rejected the idea that art is a luxury, arguing that investing in the arts increases community well-being, supports tourism, and stimulates economic development.

“The arts are not a luxury; they are a public good,” said Gaidi Finney, executive director of the San Diego African American Museum of Fine Arts. “They’re jobs, they’re small businesses, they’re education, they’re mental health.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.