Wichita leading on the arts; state losing funding

The city of Wichita deserves high praise for keeping up its long-term commitment to cultural funding, despite the Great Recession and other pressures. Its support is in impressive contrast to that of the state, which just cost Kansas arts groups a year of regional grants and still risks losing its federal funding as well.

At Tuesday’s meeting, the City Council is scheduled to consider the cultural funding committee’s 2017 grant recommendations for $406,793 – which is $6,000 more than in 2016. The 20 cultural funding operational grants and two “artist access” grants would be part of a total $4.3 million a year in City Manager Robert Layton’s proposed 2017 budget for arts funding.

Most of the money directly supports the institutions that have operating partnership agreements with the city, such as the Wichita Art Museum, the Kansas Aviation Museum and the Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum.

The decade-old competitive grant review system has proved a transparent, merit-based way to invest public dollars in the city’s cultural life. As they have trusted that process, the current City Council and city manager have shown an unflagging understanding of how arts and culture can serve Wichita’s identity and economic reinvention.

Meanwhile, the Mid-America Arts Alliance just suspended its partnership with the Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission through next June, because the state funding of $191,200 for the fiscal year fell short of financial matching requirements set by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Alliance CEO Mary Kennedy said: “Last year more than 41,000 Kansans benefited from more than $370,000 in programs and services provided by M-AAA to Kansas communities. We hope this decision will be short-lived and Kansas will be back in full membership to M-AAA next year.”

It’s a return to unfunded status at the alliance for Kansas, which lost $1.2 million in annual federal and regional arts funding after Gov. Sam Brownback abolished the state arts agency in 2011. The state requalified for NEA funding after it created the KCAIC, but now will forfeit $617,600 from the NEA if it can’t demonstrate the availability of additional state dollars to match NEA funding by the extended deadline of Jan. 16.

And coming up with a dime more seems unlikely, given the state’s fiscal crisis.

“It’s a blow to an already underfunded arts community,” said Diana Gordon, president and chief development officer of the Orpheum Performing Arts Centre, of the M-AAA decision.

And another reason, we’d add, to be grateful for the city of Wichita’s support for the arts.

This story was originally published July 19, 2016 at 12:07 AM with the headline "Wichita leading on the arts; state losing funding."