nysca – Three Percent

Well This Is Just Plain Depressing

Chad Post — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 17:28:45 +0000

I haven’t looked into this too much yet (frantically getting ready for trip to NY and PEN World Voices), but I just got a message from NYS ARTS about the Governor’s proposed budget and its impact on the New York State Council on the Arts.

the Governor is proposing a 40% cut to NYSCA’s grantmaking for 2010-2011. Forty percent! That would drop the overall budget from $41.6 million in 09-10 to $25.2 million in 10-11. More striking, if approved, the state’s per capita spending on the arts would plummet from $2.48 to $0.77 dropping NY below the national average of $0.90 and ranking us 26th in the country in arts funding. I don’t even want to imagine which states would be ahead of New York . . .

Anyway, if you want to lodge a complaint about this proposed cut, you can do so by

NYSCA Update

Chad Post — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 22:32:42 +0000

A few weeks ago I posted about the likelihood that the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) was going to have $7 million taken away from it for this current fiscal year, impacting over 500 arts organizations across the state and eliminated hundred of grants (including two to Open Letter).

Well, on Tuesday, this cut became official—the money is gone and all the grants from the Nov/Dec funding cycle have been eliminated. This is really unfortunate, and will probably impact the FY10 NYSCA budget as well. Supposedly, organizations that got stiffed this time around will be first in line to get grants next year, but as a whole, NYSCA will probably have less money to grant and there are probably a number of organizations that won’t make it that long.

Not a particularly good day for news about public arts funding . . .