Arts Leaders Fear Philadelphia’s Planned Budget Cuts Will ‘Completely Decimate the Grassroots Cultural Scene’

Last week, Philadelphia Mayor
Jim Kenney revealed his revised budget
proposal for fiscal year
2021, which, if approved, would implement drastic cuts to the arts
in an attempt to counteract losses incurred by the
pandemic.

Among those cuts would be the
elimination of the Office of Arts, Culture, and the Creative
Economy, a government branch that provides grants to hundreds of
cultural organizations in the area, and which cost the city $4.4
million last year. Kenney’s budget would also do away with the
Philadelphia Cultural Fund, a 25-year-old program that distributed
$3 million through nearly 350 grants to creative institutions last
year. 

Mural Arts, which promotes and
funds public works of art in the city, would have its budget
reduced from $2.45 million to $2 million, and the funding provided
to the Philadelphia Museum of Art—the city’s biggest
institution—would be slashed from $2.55 million to just over $2
million.

For the city’s cultural leaders,
the news came as a sign that the city devalues their
work.

“The mayor taking this kind of
action during a pandemic just underscores the notion that the arts
are disposable, that they are something that we don’t need during
this moment of crisis,” says Christina Vassallo, director of the
Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia. “It sets up this false
dichotomy that pits culture against the livelihood and the
economy.”

Like many major institutions in
the city, the Fabric Workshop and Museum receives only a fraction
of its budget from city grants. (It was awarded $10,000 in
operational support last year from the Philadelphia Cultural Fund.)
But to smaller organizations, such money is
critical. 

“That’s a small part of our
budget, but it means the world to many smaller organizations that
receive this funding,” says Vassallo, explaining that the mayor’s
decision could “completely decimate the grassroots cultural scene
in this city.”

Symbolically, she adds, the loss
is much greater. “It
further supports the notion that those of us who work in a
non-profit arts field should just get used to doing more with
less,” says Vassallo. “We’re constantly expected to do more with
less. It’s an affront to humankind, really!” 

“The sweeping reductions to arts
and culture in the revised budget sends a message to these
organizations—and their dedicated employees—that their work isn’t
valued,” says Maud Lyon, president of the Greater Philadelphia
Cultural Alliance, which counts more than 450 arts organizations
across the five-county Philadelphia region as
members.” 

Lyon notes that the arts and
culture sector is a significant economic force in the region,
generating an estimated $4.1 billion annually and more than 55,000
jobs, according to a 2017 economic
impact report conducted
by the Cultural Alliance.

“Ultimately,” she says, “our
audiences are hurt the most by these proposed cuts as we risk
eliminating the performing arts, community arts programs, and
diverse creative expression, which have defined Philadelphia for
decades and even centuries.”

The 2021 fiscal year begins June
1. Prior to that date, the mayor’s budget proposal will be reviewed
by the city council before it’s formally adopted.

“Potential elimination of the
Office of Arts, Culture, and the Creative Economy would be a
difficult loss because it would limit the city’s ability to work
collaboratively with one of the region’s great economic drivers,
the arts and culture sector comprised of many organizations small
and large,” says Timothy Rub, the director and CEO of the
Philadelphia Museum of Art, in a statement.

“I hope that the city can
continue to recognize that this public-private partnership will be
an important part in helping Philadelphia recover from the pandemic
and prosper in the future.”

For many cultural organizations
in Philadelphia, the news from the mayor’s office came at the end
of a particularly hard week. In an effort to reduce his own budget,
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf directed the Pennsylvania Council on
the Arts to retract grant money already awarded to certain arts
organizations across the state, according to The Philadelphia
Inquirer. 

The post Arts Leaders Fear Philadelphia’s Planned Budget
Cuts Will ‘Completely Decimate the Grassroots Cultural Scene’
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