On June 18, Philadelphia City Council announced that it would not decrease the Philadelphia Cultural Fund's budget. In his 2016 proposed budget, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter announced he would decrease the Cultural Fund's budget to $1.8 million - a cut of 40 percent. The City Council has now approved an amended city budget that will keep the Philadelphia Cultural Fund's budget at $3.14 million.

On June 17, California Governor Jerry Brown approved an increase of $8.3 million from the state’s general fund to the California Arts Council, which is $2.1 million more than what he originally proposed for the 2015-2016 budget.

With its additional funding revenues—$1.1 million from the National Endowment for the Arts and $2.5 million in projected donations from its specialty arts license plate program—the California Arts Council’s budget will be $11.9 million, its largest budget since 2004.

Senate Commerce and Tourism Committee Chairwoman Nancy Detert (R-Venice)’s sponsored bill to expand the Florida film tax credit program by $20 million was cut from the state budget. At present, the film tax credit program is due to end in 2016 and has already exhausted its $269 million budget.  Senate Appropriations Chairman Joe Negron (R-Stuart) and Sen. Andy Gardiner (R-Orlando) notified Senator Detert early last week about the cut; the budget did not allow for extra spending towards film tax credits.

Can art fuel a movement?  ArtPride NJ and the Printmaking Center of NJ have teamed up to campaign that art is as much a part of life as food, water, and air.  The two organizations have teamed up with artist Lunar New Year (LNY) and printer Jase Clark to create limited edition silkscreen and digital prints entitled FOOD WATER AIR ART. The art piece promotes the need to prioritize, fund, and support the arts.

Arts Advocacy Day 2014 on March 24-25 brought together 500 arts advocates from 45 states to Washington, D.C., last month for National Arts Advocacy Day, which is organized by Americans for the Arts and cosponsored by more than 85 national organizations. In a time where the arts are currently facing many challenges and there are many voices competing for the same pool of money on Capitol Hill, the timing of this event couldn't have been better.

The Tennessee Arts Commission is offering grants to Tennessee-based arts organizations and individuals for Americans for the Arts' Annual Convention in Nashville, Tennessee this June 12 - 15.

ArtsWave, one of the nation’s oldest united arts funds based in Cincinnati, announced that their recently completed 2014 campaign has been the most successful to date.

In March 2014, the Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF) published its annual State of the Nonprofit Sector. Our VP of Research, Randy Cohen, breaks down the findings for us on ARTSBlog. 

With less than 30 days left to reach its $1.70 million Campaign for the Arts goal, United Arts of Central Florida announced that it has attained 77 percent or $1.31 million. This places them ahead of last year’s campaign by 9.7 percent.  Additionally, United Arts is expanding its United ArtsCard donor benefit, a buy-one-ticket-get-one-free and discount card, to include Broadway Across America.

Since the onset of the euro crisis, Portugal’s government has shrunk in size and sold various assets amounting to about $11 billion. However, the plan to sell off a collection of works by Catalan artist Joan Miró faced much opposition and intense conversation. The debate about how much the state should be allowed to sell led to the question of whether a nation’s cultural heritage is out of bounds.

Today, the Obama Administration released its FY 2015 budget request to Congress, which includes funding for the nation's cultural agencies and programs, such as the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the Office of Museum Services, and the Department of Education's Arts In Education program.

Robert L. Lynch, president and CEO of Americans for the Arts stated the following:

Things are looking up for the nation’s state arts agencies. The National Assembly of State Arts Agencies reports that legislative appropriations increased 10.5 percent in 2014, to $306.6 million. This is the second year of growth following four Great Recession years of budget cuts.

KEY FINDINGS

1) State and jurisdictional arts agencies (SAAs) reported $306.6 million in legislative appropriations for fiscal year 2014.

This past month, 13 arts organizations in small and rural communities throughout the state of Arizona were awarded $111,000 in Community Catalyst Grants from the Governor-appointed Arizona Commission on the Arts. The competitive grant program was established by a one-time state budget allocation for Fiscal Year 2014 and awarded funding of up to $10,000 to support community-focused partnerships between arts and non-arts organizations in communities with populations fewer than 100,000.

With 2013 ending, we at Americans for the Arts find ourselves grateful for so many great arts achievements this year. There are so many partners doing amazing work in towns, cities, and states across the country--and in reflecting on this work, we wanted to especially thank the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and its staff for serving as the national lynchpin for the whole US arts field.

Jan Stevenson writes to the Post Gazette about the ways in which businesses help support the arts in the Fox Valley region. She sites one of Americans for the Arts' Business Committee for the Arts survey in stating cash and non-cash giving by businesses in support of arts programs between 2009 and 2012 has increased by 18 percent, which means they have returned to near 2006 levels.

Americans for the Arts' Vice President of Research, Randy Cohen, joined the National Endowment for the Art's Sunil Iyengar for C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal”  on Friday, November 29 to talk about federal arts funding.