Funding for the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities has been gutted in the last three years, from over $14 million in FY 09 to under $5 million in FY 11. The District’s FY 12 proposed budget contains further cuts; the current proposal is $3.92 million to serve all of the arts organizations, artists, and arts education providers in the District. That is $3.92 million within a total District FY 12 budget of $10.8 billion.
Contraction in the non-profit arts community is to be expected in this economy, but policy-makers need to protect those least able to bear additional burden.
To support the agency that we all benefit from, on Wednesday April 27, 2011 – Arts Advocacy Day – please take a minute to ask DC policy-makers to support the arts in the District’s FY 12 budget.
Contact Mayor Gray via email at eom@dc.gov or by phone at (202) 727-6300, and Council Chair Kwame Brown at kbrown@dccouncil.us or (202) 724-8032 and ask the Mayor and the Council Chair to support the Arts, and to do that by restoring funding for the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities to FY 2010 level – $5.16million.
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"While no government can call a great artist or scholar into existence, it is necessary and appropriate for government to help create and sustain not only a climate encouraging freedom of thought, imagination, and inquiry but also the material conditions facilitating the release of this creative talent." -- National Arts and Humanities Act of 1965
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