Pennsylvania restores arts funding for small arts organizations

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The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts is restoring state arts funding to smaller organizations.

Last year, the council renamed itself Pennsylvania Creative Industries and reorganized its funding criteria, making organizations with budgets under $100,000 ineligible for grants. Organizations that operated under fiscal sponsorships were also not eligible.

The move alarmed arts organizations across the commonwealth.

“We pushed back,” said Patricia Wilson Aden, president and CEO of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance. “We said that if the PA Council on the Arts was to fulfill its originating mandate, they needed to reconsider.”

In a vote Thursday morning, the council approved a new program called Spotlight, which makes state funding available to organizations with budgets between $10,000 and $100,000, and allows for fiscal sponsorships.

“We saw measurable change from our advocacy from our outreach,” said Eric César Morales of Restoring Opportunities for Artists and Residents, which was formed in response to PCI funding cuts.

About 70 people logged into the online council meeting Thursday, with many representing regional arts organizations across Pennsylvania. While they voiced satisfaction with PCI’s decision to restore funding to smaller organizations, they criticized the decision to eliminate the regional partnerships program, which used county-level arts associations to help grassroots artists and organizations apply for state grants.

Amy Elliott Gabriele, chief financial officer, said the council is obligated to use state funding as efficiently as possible. Streamlining and centralizing the application process will lower administration costs.

“Over the past two years, Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts and the Arts in Education partners returned $450,000 in grant funds,” she said. “In many cases, funds were returned because there were not enough applications to distribute the grants. In one area, 70% of residency funds were returned.”

In response, Susannah Faulkner, executive director of Erie Arts and Culture, said that many smaller organizations need direct, personal support to navigate the complex application process.

“We really pride ourselves on being great stewards of those taxpayer dollars,” she said. “Many of these organizations that will qualify do not have any paid staff. They’re all-volunteer run and it is essential for them to have the trusted messengers of folks like us.”

PCI has also eliminated long-standing programs focused on specific types of arts projects: Traditional and Folk Arts, Preserving Diverse Cultures and Arts in Education, which funded teaching artists in schools. Council officials said they want to keep funding such programs through the general Creative Assets or Creative Catalyst funds.

Morales said that without those subject-specific funding programs, connecting state funds with artists will be next to impossible.

“In order to be an individual artist and make use of these funds, my best bet would be to work with the larger established arts organizations and apply for a Creative Catalyst grant,” he said. “But there’s a lot of incredible artists that don’t have access to larger institutional frameworks, who aren’t on the radar of these larger organizations. So what you’re encountering is barrier after barrier after barrier.”

Members of the PCI voting board said they are maximizing funding allocated in the state budget. Twenty years ago, the state budgeted $15 million for arts grants, but it was reduced after the 2008 recession and never recovered. Currently the state budgets $9.59 million for the arts.

The commonwealth spends 82 cents per capita on the arts, ranked 34th in the nation, leaving it far behind its neighbors, New York ($5.63), Ohio ($2.16) and New Jersey ($4.92), according to data compiled by the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council.

“Many of the strategies that we have evolved over the last few years have been designed to leverage the funding that we receive to maximize the benefit to the artists and the arts communities throughout the commonwealth. So, some dramatic decisions had to be made,” PCI member Jeff Parks said. “If funding were different, perhaps we would still be considering different methodologies, but we are trying to do the best we can with limited resources.”

Wilson at GPCA said she and partners at Creative Pennsylvania are lobbying legislators to increase state arts funding to $15 million, but that centralizing the grant application process within PCI alone will create fiscal inefficiencies.

“Each year, we have distributed over $400,000 in state funds to grassroots organizations in our region. We have proven that we are an efficient and effective administrator. Part of the efficiency and effectiveness is our responsiveness to the Grassroots applicants,” she said. “In centralizing the application process in Harrisburg, the state has said that they will not be hiring additional staff. They are going to do this with the three existing staff members that they have and relying upon existing internet-based portals to get this done. That flies in the face of reality.”

Editor’s note: One of the PCI staff members who spoke during the online Teams meeting was misidentified. It was Jeff Parks.