By Marie-Elena Schembri

Despite Sacramento’s vibrant creative and cultural ecosystem, the creative sector faces challenges to its growth. Recent legislative budget cuts coupled with the enduring impacts of the pandemic and statewide industry job losses  show how volatile the arts economy can be.

To gain deeper insights into these challenges and potential solutions, we spoke with Julie Baker, CEO of California for the Arts and CA Arts Advocates — two separate nonprofit organizations with a shared board and staff working to strengthen Sacramento’s creative economy through advocacy at the capital and beyond.

CA Arts Advocate’s mission is “to increase California’s investment in the arts, make creativity an integral part of our economy, and give artists in California a voice in Sacramento.” How do you accomplish this?

Our goal is to make sure that we’re in the conversation, that arts and culture is represented when we’re talking about economic and community development, when we’re talking about a regional approach to building community, when we’re talking about things like Clean California initiatives, when we’re talking about natural resources in the parks, when we’re talking about a small business — all of the different ways that the arts intersect, and health being another big piece.

The key for us is, “How do we show people who are holding the keys to budgets and grants and contracts that this is a part of the solution, and that artists and cultural bearers who’ve been doing this work for decades and hundreds of years are compensated for their contributions to [the] community?” So that’s really where we really focus in on — is ensuring that the artwork is seen as labor and is compensated accordingly.

Let’s talk about the recent adoption of the 2024-2025 CA state budget. CA Arts Advocates announced that it participated in winning back 75% of the proposed funding cuts to the arts. What were the most significant legislative wins and what role did CA for the Arts play in achieving them?

Essentially, the history of arts funding in California primarily goes to your state arts agency, and that is the California Arts Council. … The agency’s budget has not tracked at the same rate as how the economy has grown, or the California budget has grown, frankly, except for these one-time specific program allocations. 

When the May [budget revision] came, the governor announced that he was proposing to cut $10 million from the California Arts Council’s budget ongoing. … So we had to convince the legislature to fight back, to say, “No, this isn’t the right way to go.” … In the end, they restored 100% of SB 1116 funding, and then they cut the Arts Council’s budget by $5 million this year and next year. And then the idea would be to restore it after that, so it’s not $10 million ongoing. 

Tell me about SB 1116, the Performing Arts Equitable Payroll Fund, one of the cuts that CA Arts Advocates fought to keep in this year’s state budget. Why is it important and what is the potential impact on the economy?

So, this is the one that is directly trying to support nonprofit performing arts organizations in rural communities, in urban and suburban communities. … Between inflation, between audience behavior change since COVID and the impact of a bill that is saying everyone needs to be an employee, it has been extremely challenging for these nonprofit performing arts organizations. 

This bill essentially creates a payroll reimbursement, and the smaller your budget, the larger the reimbursement because we’re really trying to lift up the smaller arts organizations and get them to a place of more stability. It’s also so that, for example, maybe a mid-size budget organization could hire a development person so that they can start to, again, sustain the organizations, but also to be in compliance with the law. So it’s really critical for that particular reason. 

The other thing is that for every 100 jobs in a performing arts organization, there are [156] downstream jobs. It’s a massive economic impact for a community, and it’s easy for people to understand this. … There’s lots of data too that says performing arts centers in rural communities, for example, rebound faster. There’s more innovation in technology companies or innovation companies that come to rural communities if there is a performing arts center. Your real estate numbers increase if there’s a performing arts center, because again, as people become more and more remote, it doesn’t mean that they don’t want to give up the benefits of what you get culturally from a city. So we need to foster that. 

California’s arts budget has historically allocated less than $1 per capita, much less than other states like New York, despite having more artists than any other state. Do you think California’s creative sector is underfunded?

There was a point when we only invested a million dollars in the arts, and that was over 10 years, so we’ve definitely gotten better. But yes, for a state that represents 25% of the entire creative industries, we are certainly not investing at the level we could. And the thing is that every industry is going to tell you … they are underfunded. There’s not an industry that’s going to be like, “Yeah, we’ve got enough money, we’re good.” But at the same time, we feel it’s disproportionately underinvested in based on the size of its impact. And the reality is that the arts have historically had to rely on philanthropy, which gives it this sense of, it’s just a nice thing to have versus it being essential. But sometimes philanthropy is at the cutting edge of what it is that communities really need and [the] government is not investing in. But the problem with philanthropy — there’s a lot of problems with philanthropy, but one of the problems with philanthropy — is that it’s not concentrated in every community.

I mean, you’re in Sacramento. There’s not a lot of philanthropy in Sacramento, not to the same level as some other places. So if we’re reliant on philanthropy to fund the arts, it’s going to be highly inequitable. Public funding can actually be a more equitable mechanism for access. 

In 2021 and 2022, we saw historic levels of funding across the state’s creative sector. Now, two years later, we are seeing large budget cuts to arts and culture. What happened to create this disparity?

Well, No. 1 is just where the funding was coming from. Federal investment was massive. … Thankfully, there were advocates saying, we need funding for the arts, because I can assure you that if we weren’t collectively there, it wouldn’t have been naturally that they would just go, “Oh, let’s give this money to the arts.” I mean, you have to have that advocacy for it to be prioritized.

Changing the public’s perception, which includes lawmakers’ perception, of the value and impact of what arts and culture brings is a long game. The United States historically has not invested in arts and culture. … So all of us who are advocates for arts and culture recognize that paradigm shift where people recognize that what artists do is real work — that’s our slogan: Artwork is real work. It’s not just something that, oh, you love to do it, therefore you shouldn’t be paid well for it. All of that, that narrative shift is such deep and massive long-term work that we’re all working on, but it’s going to take a long time. That’s sort of the end game. In the meantime, we always have to look for what are the opportunities, what are the doors we can walk through now. And the reality is that while we will continue to fight to increase funding for arts through the state arts agencies mechanism, the California Arts Council, and excellent leadership there now with Danielle Brazell, the reality is that we also have to look in other areas.

What are your organizations’ top priorities in the coming year, and what challenges do you anticipate facing?

We are actually meeting in September, where we’ll start to workshop more of our priorities for the following year. But generally they’ll fall under, of course, always increasing funding for arts and culture. Whether that will mean that we will try to get that $5 million back or we’ll try to to fight for the dollar when things get better — you have to read the room. You can’t be walking in and asking for money in a time when every headline says that we’re in a massive budget deficit. You don’t want to be laughed out of the room. So we always have to reach for that goal and then decide what is our direct action in that particular budget year.

We will continue to be working on implementation of SB 1116, AB eight 12, which was a housing bill for artists and cultural districts, city, state and county-designated cultural districts. Because housing is a big issue and we have a statewide task force on housing for artists, we continue to try and iterate on what public policy around that could look like. 

I think a lot about artist employment programs. What do those look like? The creative core. We need to really unpack what did the Creative Corps do for artists? What did that $60 million investment do for artists and for communities? So analysis of research and analysis of that level of storytelling. Try and get that heard by lawmakers, whether that’s in an informational hearing, that sort of thing, so that we don’t just make an investment and keep moving on. 

Guaranteed basic income has been a big move in arts as well. I think Sacramento is actually doing a program around that. We don’t have one at the state level. That’s something we’re very interested in exploring. The other thing we’re really, like I mentioned, very, very interested in the connection to arts and health. How can artists and cultural bearers be compensated for their role as healers and health practitioners in our communities, what we like to describe as second responders. And there is a way that one can do that through a program called Arts on Prescription, where you literally prescribe the arts. What we used to see was health providers prescrib[ing] gym memberships, the idea would be to prescribe access or participation to the arts, and this is something that has been done in Massachusetts. Social prescribing is done a lot in other countries. There’s a big movement towards that. 

So I think you’re going to see us continue to develop more ideas. 

What do you see as the singular most important action that can lead to more arts funding? Is it just more advocacy at the legislative level, or is there something individuals can do at the local level?

The local level is really critical, right? Because sometimes in certain places there’s more funding at the city level than there is at the state level. So I think that you have to hold your elected officials accountable to the decisions that they’re making, and they’re going to make those decisions based on who’s showing up and who is demanding or urging them to make decisions in a certain way. … Sacramento, for example, made that big plan, your creative economy plan and cultural plan, what’s happening with that? Hold them accountable to that. You invested in it. I’m a big believer [of] that the same thing at the legislature. We spent $60 million. Don’t you want to know how that went? We want to follow up.

So I think the name of the game really is how do we get sustained funding? Because what is historically true in the arts is that it’s often, “Here’s a program we’re going to invest in this one time … and then we’re going to pull back out.” And sometimes that causes greater harm. So we really need to think about what are sustained ways that we can have dedicated funding for arts and culture.

But I would say just from an individual perspective, and a lot of times people will say to me, “I don’t really have the time for this.” … But I don’t know how we don’t make the time for this. I mean, I am really concerned that if we don’t make the time for this, what we’re going to end up with. And so I would just encourage people to engage, to listen and to recognize that you do have power, you have influence, and you can shape the community in which you live if you engage. At the end of that spectrum is actually running for office or run for your school board, run for places where you can have that level of direct influence because this is your priority and you care about it. T

This story is part of the Solving Sacramento journalism collaborative. Solving Sacramento is supported by funding from the James Irvine Foundation and the James B. McClatchy Foundation. Our partners include California Groundbreakers, Capital Public Radio, Outword, Russian America Media, Sacramento Business Journal, Sacramento News & Review, Sacramento Observer and Univision 19.