City releases funding report
CITY HALL Santa Monicans sure love their artists.
Following the adoption of “Creative Capital,” a long-range cultural plan for the city, last spring, the Community and Cultural Services Department released a report last month that looks into restructuring the various grants and funding programs to keep the city’s vibrant artist community alive.
“These recommendations are intended to provide increased funding so that more Santa Monicans can participate in the rich experiences created by Santa Monica artists and arts organizations,” according to the report, which was prepared by Jerry Yoshitomi of Meaning Matters.
The report, which will be presented to the City Council at the end of the month, essentially delves into how the various funding initiatives in the city can be restructured to keep in line with the goals of the Creative Capital plan, according to Jessica Cusick, the cultural affairs manager.
The report recommends the creation of several city-funded grant categories, including $35,000 a year to support youth arts and $10,000 a year to fund so-called “opportunities” programs such as festivals, installations and parades. The latter is intended to support one-time events that are not otherwise available in Santa Monica.
The Creative Capital plan found that approximately 89 percent of Santa Monicans believe the arts are essential to making the city an ideal place to raise children. The youth arts grant would pay for artists and art programs that engage students, according to the report.
One of the beneficiaries of grants awarded by Community and Cultural Services Department every year is the 18th Street Arts Center, a non-profit organization that provides housing and studio space for low-income artists and various organizations.
“Santa Monica is a very forward-looking liberal city,” said Clayton Campbell, the artistic director at 18th Street Arts Center.
Because real estate is expensive in Santa Monica, making it hard to retain low-income artists in the city, grants, like the ones proposed in the report, are necessary in order to fuel the artist community, Campbell said.
The arts center houses about 23 artists and art organizations and those that reside in the apartments at the center’s location on 18th Street pay a subsidized rent, which is roughly 60 percent below market value.
One of the tenants is post production house EZTV Media, which doesn’t directly apply for grants, but depends on artists and groups that receive city funding.
“Santa Monica is instrumental in keeping a place like this alive,” said Michael Masucci, the studio’s director.
One recommendation of the report that Campbell said he found particularly interesting was funding for individual artists, something that was eliminated by the National Endowment for the Arts years ago, he said.
The art fellowships would be available to a “self-defined professional, generative artist” who has lived or worked in the city of Santa Monica for at least five years. The report proposes two different fellowships — a $7,500 “Lifetime Artist Innovator” grant and a $5,000 “Cutting Edge/Recent Artist Innovator” grant. Any one artist can only receive up to one of each award during their lifetime.
The report also recommends that the Cultural Arts Division follow the grantees and measure the effect of funding on public participation in the arts, something that the Creative Capital plan aims to increase in the city.
If adopted by the City Council, the youth arts grant would be the first implemented, along with the artist fellowship program.
“The main goal of the cultural plan is to increase participation in the arts because that is what residents said they wanted,” Cusick said. “People want to make sure our existing artists and art organizations are supported and are able to continue.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 11, 2008. Read the original PDF.