Advocates protest cuts to arts funding outside City Hall

Philadelphia artists and art advocates staged a creative, performance-based protest of cuts to arts funding outside City Hall Tuesday.

A violinist performed in a second floor stairwell, a barbershop quartet roamed the building and a women's choir sang in the courtyard.

The Philadelphia Cultural Fund, a non-profit grant-giving organization, last year received a $1.26 million boost, for a total of $3.1 million, from the city to distribute to arts organizations around the region. The additional funds – which the mayor's office said were meant to be one-time-only – are not in Nutter's budget proposal for next year. The city has planned to give $1.84 million to the non-profit, the same amount allocated for the 2014 fiscal year.

The boost in funding for 2015 had allowed support for a new set of youth education programs, 69 of which are being considered by the fund's applicant review panel, said Maud Lyon, President of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, which advocates for arts and culture in the city.

Lyon said without the $1.26 million for 2016, those youth programs will only be funded for one year. She said about 300 organizations would see their grants sliced in half.

"You'll see (the cuts) in public neighborhood events, at festivals, in arts education programs, all the things that really make the city come alive," Lyon said.

Joy Payton, a member of the Anna Crusis Women's Choir, which received a $8,900 grant last year, said the cut to the group's funding could be dire.

"We're concerned about maintaining our status," Payton said. "It helps our own musical development. We're a social justice and feminist directed women's chorus so we try to benefit social movements and social organizations dedicated to justice and consciousness raising."

As the group staged their protest, several members of City Council taking part in a budget hearing in City Hall asked city officials how the funds could be restored.

"The arts and culture being so important to the city, in particular to community groups that provide services to young people, senior citizens, can't you all try to find some more money?" Councilwoman Marian Tasco asked.

Everett Gillison,the mayor's chief of staff, said the funds were never meant to be permanent.

"We told everyone it was just a one-time thing.," Gillison said. "Of course once you put it in … then everyone says now it's a cut."

The fund's acting administrator, Lois Welk, said it is one of the few groups that provides arts organizations general operating funds.

"There are a lot of funders who want to do project support but no one wants to pay the rent," she said.

Welk, who said she hopes to testify at a city council budget hearing in the coming weeks, said she thinks the arts community will be persuasive enough to get the additional funding back.

"If they really think about it, I think they'll understand this is a very good investment," she said. "It's an investment that you can't quantify the outcomes for… You'd need a 20-year arc to judge the impact of an investment in art dollars on a child."

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