AFS Cinema
An Artist on Arts Funding
RECEIVED Sat., Nov. 2, 2024
Dear Editor,
Belated thanks to Richard Whittaker for illuminating the problems with the city’s arts funding model ["City Arts Funding Skipped Established Arts Organizations. Will They Survive?," News, Oct. 25].
Based on conversations with independent artists and directors of small arts groups as they’ve attempted to navigate the process, I can attest that increasing funding to historically underfunded people and groups is a goal that most independent artists are behind. As an audience member and as a former arts critic for the Chronicle, I can point to artists – some of whom have received zero city funding over the past two years – with decades-long practices of hiring and collaborating with artists of color, artists of all genders, LGBTQ+ artists, and artists representing ideas, sizes, shapes, and socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds that are underrepresented in their genres.
Some of them have been doing this in Austin since the 1980s and '90s. No one had to tell them to do it.
These artists were already part of the solution. And yet instead of amplifying their work, the current city funding process places on them the outsized responsibility of proving (through the inadequate scoring system that Whittaker explains) how they alone are correcting the legacies of systemic racism and bigotry.
Granting an unexpected sum of money, or not, once per year isn’t a great way to fund deep-rooted, sustainable art. But at the very least, the city should aim for a process that reflects the work that artists do, which almost always involves considering nuance and questioning assumptions.
Belated thanks to Richard Whittaker for illuminating the problems with the city’s arts funding model ["City Arts Funding Skipped Established Arts Organizations. Will They Survive?," News, Oct. 25].
Based on conversations with independent artists and directors of small arts groups as they’ve attempted to navigate the process, I can attest that increasing funding to historically underfunded people and groups is a goal that most independent artists are behind. As an audience member and as a former arts critic for the Chronicle, I can point to artists – some of whom have received zero city funding over the past two years – with decades-long practices of hiring and collaborating with artists of color, artists of all genders, LGBTQ+ artists, and artists representing ideas, sizes, shapes, and socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds that are underrepresented in their genres.
Some of them have been doing this in Austin since the 1980s and '90s. No one had to tell them to do it.
These artists were already part of the solution. And yet instead of amplifying their work, the current city funding process places on them the outsized responsibility of proving (through the inadequate scoring system that Whittaker explains) how they alone are correcting the legacies of systemic racism and bigotry.
Granting an unexpected sum of money, or not, once per year isn’t a great way to fund deep-rooted, sustainable art. But at the very least, the city should aim for a process that reflects the work that artists do, which almost always involves considering nuance and questioning assumptions.
Jonelle Seitz