Oregon Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley announced that $450,000 from National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has been granted to Oregon arts and cultural centers in a press statement released on Jan. 17, 2023. The newly announced grants provided by NEA allow for organizations to potentially take a step back from finding the funding to stay open and be able to focus on supporting the community through production of reflective art pieces. The grant, allocated to 24 arts organizations throughout the state, will provide funding for specific artistic projects, with a large emphasis on funding “opportunities for public engagement with the arts and arts education.” They also state that the funding will allow “for the integration of the arts with strategies promoting the health and well-being of people and communities, and for the improvement of overall capacity and capabilities within the arts sector,” according to the NEA mission statement.
As an independent federal agency using annual Congress-funded grants, the NEA reported on their website that they have become the “largest funder of the arts and arts education in communities nationwide and a catalyst of public and private support for the arts.” The NEA provided a report which stated that $5.6 billion has been awarded to arts organizations since the endowment’s inception in 1965.
Though the NEA has been one critical source of opportunity for arts organizations, the COVID-19 pandemic severely impacted operation. This has caused a much higher need for emergency funding for the performing arts sector. The NEA, alongside the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), reported that the performing arts sector became one of the “steepest-declining areas of the U.S. economy” in 2020. The research provided by the NEA and BEA shows that “the value added [to the economy] by performing arts presenters fell by nearly 73 percent between 2019 and 2020,” as more than half a million jobs were lost in the arts and entertainment industry due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Scott Lewis, the Executive Director of NW Dance Project, said that upon the arrival of COVID-19, “we sent home the company and we locked our doors for a good long time.” Lewis described the beginning of a soon-to-be drawn out process of COVID “kicking our asses.” Lewis explained, “We also lost a lot of our artists, and some of our staff…So [COVID-19] was a setback on multiple fronts.”
In response to such economically difficult times , the U.S. Small Business Administration distributed the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant (SVOG), which provided $16 billion as “emergency assistance to eligible performing arts businesses affected by COVID-19” as a part of the $1.7 trillion American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.
White Bird, a Portland-based dance organization that is “dedicated to connecting artists from the best companies across the world with the local Portland community,” was one of the 258 Oregon organizations that received funding from SVOG. Graham Cole, the Executive Director of White Bird, said the funds were a “much needed infusion of support into our organization and so many other performing arts organizations at a very, very difficult time financially.”
Lewis explained the impact of COVID-19 on NW Dance Project, saying, “We still have lease payments, we still have insurance payments, we still have utility costs.” Lewis also sang the praises of the SVOG, saying, “If it wasn’t for that funding, [NW Dance Project] would have been dead a long time ago. That federal money that came from COVID relief is what we are living on right now.”
The SVOG allowed for organizations to keep their doors open, and their staff employed; however, expenses not built into the budgets added up. Production teams had to work around COVID-19 guidelines in order to continue operating in alignment with their mission.
Arts organizations such as Portland Playhouse, a non profit theatre company based in NE Portland, had COVID-specific expenses that were covered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) through the original Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act. Aiyana Cunningham, the Development Director at Portland Playhouse, said, “I really have to praise the federal government and our state and local governments for making a huge amount of funding available.” She explained that without FEMA, COVID expenses would have piled up. “We have to do a bunch of testing…plus the extra cleaning and masking, all that kind of stuff to keep people safe in the building.”
Cunningham also mentioned that before COVID, Portland Playhouse had not previously introduced having understudies as a practice, as “we didn’t really have it in our budget.” But with live performances, and an uprising of virus cases, an expensive safety net is needed.
White Bird had to implement its own new procedures in reaction to the pandemic, as
Cole explained, “the logistics of not just dance touring, but any sort of performance, were always difficult. And it was always costly.” With the needed intentionality on the account of COVID, Cole said, “it just makes it exponentially more difficult to arrange these tours.”
White Bird has been awarded the NEA grant 20 times over multiple categories including Access to Artistic Excellence, Creativity/Presentation, and Art Works. The funding received this year will go towards the second annual ‘WE ARE ONE’ festival. According to their website, through this festival, White Bird will present “companies of diverse cultural makeups, led by artists of color, and deepen the connection more than ever with our region’s many unique communities.”
Portland Playhouse has been awarded the NEA grant seven times. Cunningham explained that there has been “a shift in giving more funds for general operating,” meaning grants given to Portland Playhouse “gives the company a lot of freedom to fund the work that’s important to us.” She went on to say that Portland Playhouse is focusing on “centering Black experiences as artists and audience members.” To the Playhouse, this means making sure to have at least fifty percent of the plays be “Black stories [written by] Black playwrights with Black artists.” Alongside a Creative Heights Grant gifted by the Oregon Community Foundation, NEA funds are currently being used at Portland Playhouse to aid in the production of a project called “The Sounds of Afrolitical Movement.” According to the Portland Playhouse website, it “explores the past, present and future of BIPOC-led protest movements.”
NW Dance Project has received the NEA grant six times. Lewis emphasized the founding principles of NW Dance Project, saying, “we are dedicated to original works, and we’re dedicated to giving our choreographers complete artistic freedom.” He explained that oftentimes, grant proposals can be “incredibly esoteric, but we often are saying we’re going to do a new work, and it’s going to be significant.” The funding from the NEA in 2023 will support a contemporary version of Igor Stravinsky’s ballet, “The Rite of Spring,” from resident choreographer Ihsan Rustem.
