Arts Funding – Page 2 – Robert Bettmann

Marketing the Arts in DC

I just had a really good meeting with Amy Melrose. She is the proprietor of the Free in DC blog, which lists hundreds of free arts and culture events in DC each month. You can see her blog here.

We’re gonna do some cross-marketing between Bourgeon and Free in DC. I know this will be good for both of us. I’m hoping that she might also come on as an editor/acquisition editor for Bourgeon, but I don’t know if she wants to.

We talked about how we are doing similar things in a way – providing information about upcoming arts events – but that there is no need for us to be competitive. There are a number of really great people doing great stuff out there right now, including:

Ayo/Eric/Adrian and Dissident Display
Day Eight and Bourgeon
Betsy and DCShotlist
Todd and TheDCPlace.com
Amy and FreeinDC
Philipa and Pinkline

And that is a very impartial list (off the top of my head.) If I’ve missed you please message or comment and I’ll add to it. Of course there are also the larger sites, including:

Culture Capital and CityPaper for arts listings.

Just like arts education, there are lots of ways for people to get the service. There’s no need for competition amongst us. In fact, if we found ways to work together, we would serve our communities better, and probably get better return for ourselves.

Amy and I were talking about how the DC Commission doesn’t directly fund arts marketing. I was saying that is not exactly true, because they do fund arts service organizations, many of whom spend a lot of their time and budgets marketing the arts. But for smaller folks, she is right: the DCCAH doesn’t fund arts marketing. She said she thought that should change, and I disagreed. I think that artists are best being funded at a level where they can spend the time and money to market themselves. The organizations can already do this, and for individual artists, you can always list events in many places, try and get traditional press coverage, and get coverage from any of the places I noted above. I know that Bourgeon is happy to publish an article by any artist promoting their work.

The city and other funders have to have priorities in funding. If Marion Barry taught us anything it’s that just cause you’re popular doesn’t mean you’re spending the city’s money well. The mayor for life won election several times even while driving the city into receivership and leading the schools into a nosedive of failure (or rather, failing to lead them into the flight of success.) There’s no parallel there to the city’s DCCAH – currently or in the past. But I think the city’s arts budget should go to the arts, not arts marketing.

I have to add that I don’t think Bourgeon is arts marketing. Non-profit journalism, including non-profit arts journalism, is not marketing. But that is a post for another day….

3 Facts About Earmarks that the City Council Should Know

This isn’t a policy paper below. These are my thoughts after working out at the gym. I do think I’m right, I’m just hedging for the reasons you’d imagine. Here it goes:

3 Facts About Earmarks

1. They infantalize the arts community.

The earmark process turns professionals into professional suck-ups. Filing grant applications is reasonable. Making us need to establish succubent relationships with you to get what we need is dis-respectful to all involved. Everyone likes people who give them money. We’ll bring you flowers if you let us. But it exposes that somewhere in there, politicians think of artists/the arts community as pets. The city would benefit from being a real world class arts center. If you make the arts community a petting zoo, thats all its gonna be. You have to take yourself out of the equation. The work we’re doing isn’t meaningless. You need to respect it beyond politics. It’s like religion. It’s art. Please participate, and get out of the way.

2. They undermine the ability of the State arts agency/ DC Commission on the Arts to effectively design integrated community support/granting programs.

Using earmarks – two or three a year – is one thing. But using em constantly to grow organizations and fund special projects It would be absurd if I was walking into the DPW and after listening to a friend of someone who lives on a street spend one quarter of the DPW budget on something more or less out of the blue. Its nonsensical. Thats what you are doing when you write earmarks. Haphazard support is wasteful support. Support must constantly evolve and it requires attention. The decisions you allow yourselves to make in a few hours undermine all that attention. Put your faith in the experts youve hired to get it right and make certain they do. If you are committed to getting the maximum return on the citys investment, you need to give the commission more money (including a discretionary fund that could be used – with oversight from the commissioners – to handle emergency-type need), and make us stop grabbing for scraps at your table.

3.They skew the success curve toward fundraisers, away from artists.

Artists – and the arts organizations that serve them – are notoriously NOT politicians. Right now the organizations that are getting the extra pieces of the pie are the ones who are the best at development work. Are you trying to fund an arts program or are you handing out pie to people who court you well? Do you know enough to really know what our community wants/needs? What it already has, and is already developing? Have some patience, and faith in the process you oversee. I know you’re only trying to help, and they’re all around, and very nice, and very convincing. I know that. And you do help with earmarks – a few a year. But for the reasons outlined above, its not really good for the city.

To sum up I’d like to add two things. One: I really want an earmark, and would make excellent use of the one-time investment. Two: the problem with earmarks isn’t transparency, or funding unworthy things. Infantilizing, skewing programming, funding fundraisers not artists… that’s the problem.

Why the cuts to the DCCAH don’t make sense

I just got off the phone with the DCCAH’s budget officer in the OBP, and have been corrected about some of my misunderstandings in reading the proposed 2010 budget.

District Arts funding appears in the DCCAH’s budget in two ways. Money approved for management by the Commission, and earmarks. The grants are competitive. You apply, go through panel review, and if you are selected, you receive money. Earmarks are written into the budget. They are non-competitive, there is no review, and no oversight.

Looking at the planned FY 2010 budget, it looks like the general fund is down over 50% from the 14 million FY 2009 level. In fact, the planned FY 2009 budget looked very similar to this year’s budget at this stage. Last year, five million in earmarks were tacked on outside of the agency’s budgeting process. This year the same thing is happening. They are apparently still closed-door haggling about the exact earmarks, but in the end, the FY 2010 budget will look quite a lot like the FY 2009. Looking at the FY 2010 budget right now, it looks like we’re experiencing massive cuts. But that is only because the earmarks haven’t yet appeared. They are not public – in consideration – and only appear on the actual, approved budget. Excuse my alarm in misreading the budget. Things haven’t really changed at all. It’s just that almost half of local arts funding dollars go through politicians, not the DCCAH budgeting/granting process.

It should be noted that the earmark system – while wickedly abusive of political influence and back room pandering – is currently necessary. The largest grants that the DCCAH offers is 250k. If you are a District arts org needing major funds the only way to get them from the District is through an earmark.

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As some of my readers already know, local arts funding has been particularly targeted in DC’s recently submitted FY 2010 budget. The DC Advocates for the Arts, and I as chair, are engaged in conversations considering what might be an appropriate response to the slashing of local arts funding.

The cuts to the DCCAH dont make economic sense. The only way to understand the cuts is to understand how our priorities shift – as a whole – based on economic trends. For a number of years Gallup has been tracking the interaction of economic issues with concern over environmental trends. The poll below shows that we stop prioritizing the environment when the economy is in trouble. This may not be in our best economic interest. For instance: green economy/green energy jobs would be local jobs, not exportable, based on creation of energy in the United States. Even if we are cutting, the government still spends a lot money. How should we prioritize that spending? Our public officials need to look beyond poll numbers to make decisions in the best interest of the local economy.

Funding local arts is an efficient means for government to stimulate small business, and support livable communities. The Districts FY 2009 budget was a 9 Billion dollar spending plan. The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities granting budget – which is the money distributed to local artists, was 13 million in FY09. It is easy to look at rising deficit numbers and assert that we have to cut everywhere. But cutting money that makes you money — that isnt where you start if youre smart. Local arts grants stimulate local tax revenue from emergent and small arts businesses. On top of that – the cuts are far too small to make any difference to the big numbers.

From FY 2009 to FY 2010, the DC Department of Human Resources has been cut from 17 million to 15.3 million, a cut of 10%. The Office of Finance and Resource Management has been cut from 246 million to 240 million, a cut of 2%. The Office of Contracting and Procurement has been cut from 15 million to 12.8 million, a cut of 15%. From FY 2009, the budget of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities has been cut by 37% overall, and the general fund (the grants) have been cut 51%, for FY 2010.

Cutting the arts is the wrong decision economically. If cuts must be made, the arts should not be cut more than other lines in the budget. Local government arts spending provides services to district residents (through arts and continuing education) and contributes back through tax revenue. While it might seem antithetical, now is the time to increase, not decrease, individual grants to artists and small arts organizations.