dear america, do better
There’s great news for artists in the EU this week. The European Commission just approved a €1.8 billion program called “Creative Europe,” scheduled to begin in 2014. This program represents a 35% increase in the EU’s funding of arts and culture. While over half of the funds (more than €900 million) will go to film and television projects, another €500 million will be allotted to visual (other than film, that is) and performing arts. The EC’s decision follows a 5.1% boost (€50 million) in arts spending by the German government that was announced last week.
These announcements present a stark contrast to the situation in the US, where lawmakers have increasingly threatened to cut arts funding as budget worries grow. Sam Brownback, governor of Kansas, recently eliminated all funding for his state’s arts commission. The total amount cut from the state budget? $689,000, or 0.005% of total spending. Worst of all, the lack of a state arts commission could harm Kansas’s chances of receiving NEA funds, despite the fact that KS taxpayers will continue to contribute to the funding of the NEA with their federal tax dollars.
Governor Nikki Haley also tried earlier this year to completely cut funding to the South Carolina Arts Commission, but her veto of its budget was overwhelmingly overturned by the state legislature. SC’s arts funding was considerably more substantial than Kansas’s at $1.9 million, but the expense relative to the entire state budget was still minimal (0.032%). While the SCAC did end up with a 6% cut in base funding, comparable to cuts made in other state agencies, they get to continue distributing grant money and raising awareness of the arts in a state that needs all the culture it can get. (And that comes with love from a native South Carolinian.)
It’s promising that 92% of South Carolinians favor public funding of the arts, at least according to a poll cited in the NYT article I linked to above. They’re right to do so. Believe it or not, a little public funding goes a long way–according to the University of South Carolina’s Moore School of Business, that 0.032% of SC state funding supports approximately 3% of the state economy ($9.2 billion and 78,000 jobs). Although I don’t know comparable figures for the US as a whole, I’d be willing to bet that they make an even more persuasive argument than those from South Carolina. I strongly believe that people ought to value art for the sake of art, but even from a purely pragmatic point of view it doesn’t make sense to kill off arts funding. German Culture Minister Bernd Neumann was right to call Germany’s recent funding increase an investment–not a subsidy.
