Top cultural destination struggles with art spending cuts, lower wages

from Deborah BrennanCalMatters

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San Diego’s art scene is one of the most vibrant in the country, but its luster is dimming as public funding dries up and artist pay falls behind the curve amid rising housing costs and inflation.

The San Diego region is in the top 10 percent nationwide based on the number of artists and cultural organizations, total dollars spent on the arts and government funding, according to an analysis of community arts vitality by Texas Southern Methodist University.

The region boasts cultural campuses such as Balboa Park, the Jacobs Music Center and the California Center for the Arts, Escondido. Plus, numerous galleries, performance spaces and concert venues contribute to a robust art scene.

But San Diego’s status has dropped since 2022 from the 95th percentile to the 90th percentile statewide. It’s still a good, but not a promising trend.

That decline comes as federal and local governments cut funding for the arts and as wages for artists and cultural workers lag behind the region’s high cost of living.

“We see that big cities in general are really challenging places for arts and cultural organizations right now, with rising rents and inflation,” said Jen Benoit-Bryan, professor of arts management and executive director of the SMU DataArts Research Center.

A separate report on local arts nonprofits by the University of San Diego found that one-third of arts organizations reported poor financial health this year, and more than half dipped into their reserves to make ends meet.

This squeeze has led to raucous battles over public spending on art. In April, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria proposed resetting city arts funding in this year’s budget. Artists and activists erupted in protest. The city council after all added back some of thatand the Prebys Foundation committed $3 million to make up the gap, but there was still a net loss.

“We know San Diego is an arts-rich community, and arts and culture are part of our fabric and our economic vitality,” said Christine Martinez, manager of Arts + Culture San Diego, a coalition of 150 organizations. “But looking at the report and seeing a slight decline over the last few years in our vitality is no surprise.”

Her organization proposes that a portion of local hotel taxes be earmarked for art funding. The county stepped up with $2 million in funding for new art. And independent artists are finding ways to help each other, too.

Where San Diego rows

Researchers from Southern Methodist University have been collecting and analyzing how communities support and invest in the arts for about a decade, Benoit-Bryan said.

To compare the communities, they pulled data from the IRS to count the number of independent artists and cultural workers, arts organizations and entertainment businesses.

This is combined with “arts dollars,” meaning the income, contributions, expenses and compensation for these organizations. And they look at the number of state and federal arts grants and their total dollar values.

This year, San Diego ranked 91st in arts vibrancy out of 985 areas analyzed in the Southern Methodist University study, placing it in the top 100 areas surveyed, which ranged from smaller cities to metropolitan areas.

Other California cities ranked even higher; Los Angeles is 12th and San Francisco is second. The survey ranked California as the eighth highest state for arts activities and support.

New York, a global leader in the arts and media, ranked first for the third year in a row, “reaffirming its position as the nation’s cultural powerhouse,” the DataArts report said. Other Northeastern states known for strong welfare spending, including New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts, are the next highest. Minnesota, Illinois and Maryland rank just ahead of California.

“Not surprisingly, there are strong correlations between a community’s wealth and arts vitality rankings,” Benoit-Bryan said.

Researchers group areas into clusters of similar cities: areas of similar size, demographics, and ranking. San Diego is grouped with Denver, Atlanta, Miami and Houston, all of which fall in the 87th to 94th percentile for arts vibrancy, according to the study.

Of those cities, only Atlanta has improved its status in recent years. The rest, including San Diego, declined.

Near the top but slipping

San Diego’s for-profit arts sector remains strong, Benoit-Bryan said. But public investment in the arts is declining.

The number of arts and culture organizations per capita in San Diego and nearby cities is steadily declining, she said. In San Diego, the number of employees in the cultural workforce is also declining. Probably because they can’t afford to keep their jobs.

“We’re seeing that compensation levels for these types of cultural nonprofit workers are also lower than peers and have been declining over the past few years,” she said. “And federal dollars flowing into cultural organizations in San Diego are once again lower than others and declining.”

The University of San Diego study produced similar results. Nonprofits of all kinds face financial pressures, she said, with 80 percent of nonprofit leaders reporting a decline in funding from state foundations, individual donors and corporate sponsors, said Tess Tinkler, director of research for the university’s nonprofit institute.

For non-profit organizations in particular, employee salaries are equalized. “When we looked at the wage gap for arts organizations, they just haven’t had wage growth for many years. And it’s worse than other nonprofits.”

Adjusted for inflation, salaries for art workers have not increased in 13 years and have actually declined in real dollars since 2012, Tinkler said. Meanwhile, they face rising costs for essentials like gas and housing; San Diego consistently ranks as one of the the most expensive domestic markets in the country.

Health care costs are another obstacle for art employers, said Jessica Hanson York, executive director of the Mingei International Museum in Balboa Park.

“We are still able to cover the health care costs of our employees, but we are stretched to capacity,” she said.

How do we turn the tide?

Arts and culture programs may seem to fall into the category of nice-to-have expenses, but arts advocates say they lead to community well-being.

The University of San Diego report cites research showing that participation in the arts increases social connections, reduces anxiety and depression, and aids youth development and academic achievement.

University surveys found that nearly half of San Diegans say they have benefited from arts and culture nonprofits, and three-quarters believe that nonprofits play a key role in supporting the arts. Art advocates also point out that cultural offerings help San Diego sustain its tourism trade and spur local economic growth.

“When we have a loss of this kind of arts funding, it really affects the quality of life of the community,” Tinkler said.

Some artists say the unpredictable nature of public and philanthropic funding has led them to look elsewhere for non-traditional financial resources.

“You might have people who don’t believe in nonprofits or the world at large,” said Ramel Wallace, founder and CEO of the Holyfield Organization, which supports storytelling, music and education. “So they’re looking for alternative ways to raise capital.”

The solutions lean toward what he called new economics or social justice financing mechanisms: mutual aid, cooperatives, or credit circles in which members contribute a shared sum of money and then distribute it on a rotating basis.

This system can be used to help fund the costs of art projects, but more importantly, he said, it can support the daily needs of artists struggling with housing costs, medical bills or other expenses.

JerVae Anthony, a musician, performer and artist from South San Diego, said she is creating what she calls a solidarity fund to connect artists together for technical, professional and financial support.

“I’m trying to build a program that seeks to use mutual aid and peer support to fill those gaps because some of us really need extra support and it’s really important to make art-making accessible to all people,” she said.

For example, she uses this network to connect with hosts in other parts of the country who open their homes to other artists who want to travel and make art in new places.

Sometimes an artist with a particular skill—say, Adobe Photoshop—will offer Zoom training to introduce colleagues to the program. Other times, the organization offers basic material support to fellow artists: a month’s rent, a bunch of groceries, or a mobility device.

Paying for it involved a mix of grassroots and traditional fundraising, including grant writing, crowdfunding and a partnership with a North Carolina church, Anthony said.

“It’s an important skill and I think networking is going to be the way we get through these tough times.”

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