By David Read, Executive Director – Yuba Sutter Arts
Last week, it was announced that the proposed White House budget for fiscal year 2018 would defund a small agency called the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). This has sparked a major outcry from arts organizations, large and small, urban and rural, from coast to coast.
Since mid-February, I have had a hand in some incredible local arts projects. We celebrated Sutter and Yuba County students reciting memorized poetry as part of Yuba Sutter Arts’ annual Poetry Out Loud program. We met with community leaders in Live Oak to review over 30 submissions from ten mural artists as part of our Murals of Live Oak project. We invited local Veterans to be a part of our Portraits of Veterans photography project and hung the enlargements in the Yuba Sutter Arts gallery in Marysville. We hosted a reception for our subjects to which nearly 200 people came, most of who had never been in our gallery.
What do these seemingly dissimilar projects have in common? All were made possible entirely or, in part, by funding from the NEA. Once again (it has happened many times before in its 50+ year history), the agency has been targeted for elimination.
The local examples I mention above are typical of programs and projects supported by the NEA. It is important to note that “No American president — Republican or Democrat — has ever tried to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts,” as was pointed out by Dana Gioia, former NEA Director, in a recent Editorial he wrote for the Los Angeles Times.
So let’s look at some relevant numbers. *
- The NEA’s $149 million 2017 budget represents 0.004% of the federal budget. That’s less than 1/2 of one hundredth of one percent or about $.47 per person in the U.S.
- Each $1 in NEA grant funds leverages another $9 from other public and private sources in matching funds.
- The arts return $22.3 billion in tax revenue to federal, state, county and municipal governments.
- NEA funding for the arts plays an essential role in making sure rural and poor communities get their fair share.
- One in ten jobs in California is connected to the arts.
- California ranks 46th out of 50 states in per capita state arts funding.
- The California Arts Council receives funding from the NEA as part of its annual budget.
On its modest budget, NEA funding now reaches every state, every congressional district, and most counties — rural and urban — in the United States. Grants fund programs in schools, libraries and on military bases. Nearly half the grants go directly to state and regional arts organizations to expand grass-roots efforts. NEA grants never pay overhead or annual expenses. They only fund specific programs of artistic and educational excellence that reach the public.
The arts are not a partisan issue. Their importance and relevance are incontrovertible.
This conviction is shared by Republicans and Democrats; by civic leaders who have seen their communities restored through the arts; by businesses who need innovative workers; by veterans who are using the arts to recover from battle wounds; by parents who want their children to succeed in school; and by hardworking taxpayers who know that the arts are essential to their community’s well-being.
So should there be an NEA? I believe the answer is an absolute “yes.” What is a society without its great cultural entities, the backbone of western civilization; museums, libraries, and arts institutions? As our local arts leadership and advocacy organization, Yuba Sutter Arts commits to continue its work and to do all that it can to prove to our great community that the arts play a vital, significant and unimpeachable role in the overall artistic health, happiness and economic prosperity of this place we call home.
* Figures provided by National Assembly of State Arts Agencies and the California Arts Council.