San Diego Arts Funding: Change Needed and Change Coming?
At Space 4 Art, we’ve been working tirelessly to solve one of the hardest problems facing our local arts community– the lack of affordable artist spaces. So it was with great interest that we read a couple of recent news articles published in the San Diego Union-Tribune.
On July 6, the U-T published an opinion piece by local business owner and avid arts supporter Adrian Arancibia, titled “Many artists can’t afford to stay in San Diego. Community art spaces keep the scene alive.” In it, Arancibia made some painfully true observations that boil down to this:
“Our city and its housing issues have clearly failed our arts community… The economic situation of the city and country have many artists pondering their next move outside of San Diego.”
Space 4 Art has been trying to tackle the problem of affordable artist housing in San Diego for over a decade already. We couldn’t agree more with Arancibia. Click here to read the entire piece.
Civic leaders are starting to heed the call for increased support for the arts. On July 13, the Union-Tribune’s David Garrick published a piece, “San Diego leaders propose sharp increase in arts funding that would fulfill decade-old promise.” Garrick reported that in a recent City Council budget meeting, city leaders finally proposed giving,
“greater priority in the city’s annual budget process to the council’s unfulfilled 2012 ‘penny for the arts’ pledge– a commitment to spend nearly 10 percent of annual hotel tax revenue on grants to local arts and culture groups.”
Space 4 Art’s executive director, Jennifer de Poyen, was one of many local arts leaders who spoke at that City Council meeting to show support for this new proposal. This past March, during a closing reception at S4A’s art exhibition at Art Produce, we also hosted a panel discussion about Penny for the Arts.
We are hopeful that the city will follow through with “the Penny promise.” Click here to read Garrick’s piece, and read more about Penny for the Arts here.