Charlotte arts and cultural groups could receive millions more per year under new plan

Charlotte’s arts and cultural groups would receive $12 million per year from the public and private sectors under a plan City Manager Marcus Jones unveiled Tuesday, a 50% hike from a proposal the City Council has been considering in recent months.

Jones recommended that the city take over arts funding from the Arts & Science Council, which has managed the process for generations. He said in a memo to City Council members that the city would give $6 million per year toward arts and culture groups, up from the $4 million that had been proposed. The private sector would match that amount, bringing the total to $12 million in arts funding per year, or $36 million over three years.

The funds would be administered by the Foundation for the Carolinas. The city would hire an arts commissioner and assemble an arts board of advisers. Those groups would be responsible for developing a long-term plan for arts funding as well as leading the three-year transition.

The arts commissioner position would be temporary, tasked only with helping develop the long-term plan, said City Council member Julie Eiselt, who has been leading a committee studying the issue of arts funding. “It’s not intended to create a City department,” she said in a text to the Observer.

Eiselt said the funding proposal “provides something for everyone. I think it’s great news. We got the private sector to step up with even more funding.”

Council member Ed Driggs likewise called the plan “good news,” in part for guaranteeing that organizations will get at least the same level of funding as they currently receive.

ASC failed on equity, council member says

Council member Tariq Bokhari said the ASC “has had multiple decades to get ahead of the issue” of equity in funding for the city’s diverse arts and culture community, “and they haven’t. They’ve been punting and kicking the can down the curb to solve another day. And we as a city have put in, just over the past 15 years alone, over $50 million directly to the ASC — more than we have put into affordable housing.”

“We’ve been pleading, and many of us have been trying to figure out (what) we need (to do) to fix the problem,” Bokhari told the Observer. “And nothing is happening. And now we’re at a point where we’ve decided the future of the arts and culture sector is far too important for us to continue to just let the status quo exist.”

Private funding partners

In his report to the City Council, Jones said many of the city’s private-sector arts and culture funding partners believe that the initially proposed $8 million in annual funding “will fall short of the true needs of this important sector of our economy.” The new plan would produce $4 million more a year than the committee’s original goal, Jones said.

Jones said the city can raise its commitment by $2 million to meet the match “by leveraging funds from the American Recovery Plan Act.” That would be consistent with how the city used CARES funds to support the arts community, he said.

The ASC would receive $800,000 in the first year, but nothing is guaranteed beyond that.

“I think we’ve got the perfect balance here,” Bokhari said. “We are enabling with a contribution — which is more than we needed to do — of $800,000 to give the ASC some breathing room and time to revisit and hopefully change their own model.

“But that’s just an interim thing,” he said. “Meanwhile, we are going with this $36 million commitment over three years and we are going to be stakeholders and good stewards of the taxpayer dollars that we’re responsible for. And we’re already seeing truly unprecedented results.”

ASC response

The plan raises questions about what the ASC would look like in the future. Under Jones’s plan, it would no longer make key funding decisions.

In a statement to the Observer, ASC Acting President Krista Terrell said she’s “excited about the opportunity for increased funding for Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s arts and culture sector.

“ASC is committed to its grant making, advocacy and capacity building work for creative individuals and organizations of all sizes through a cultural equity lens,” she said.

“Our value of centering community in all that we do will allow us to invest in people, programs and ideas that move our community forward.”

Mecklenburg County commissioners learned of the city’s proposal at their board meeting Tuesday afternoon. The county also provides support for the arts.

County Manager Dena Diorio said the county wasn’t invited to participate in the city’s discussions with the Foundation for the Carolinas regarding the city’s funding proposal. Commissioners also didn’t vote Tuesday on how much they’ll give to the ASC next fiscal year.