Motus Theater continues to perform despite NEA funding cuts

Listen:

On May 2, hundreds of arts organizations across the country received the news that the Trump administration would begin cutting National Endowment for the Arts grants. The NEA provides evenly dispersed public funding, and is the only arts funder that provides access to the arts in all 50 states.

It is also the largest arts funder in the country. Since its foundation in 1965, it has awarded $5.5 billion in grants, yet only represents 0.003 percent of the total federal budget, making it one of the smallest federal agencies. 

Under the current administration’s decision, grants that had already been approved would be cancelled. Organizations local to Boulder, and all over the state, have been dealing with the impacts of these cuts. 

The Motus Theater in Boulder was one of the organizations whose goals for the year were required to be changed due to the NEA cuts. 

Cristian Solano-Cordova, director of communications, outreach and development for Motus, explained that the theater expected the cuts to be made after witnessing funding cuts to healthcare and the humanities.

“We were expecting cuts to the NEA and they seemed to be taking longer than the rest of the other cuts,” he said. “So we were a little bit hopeful that maybe this was something that they were gonna just keep in place. Especially since the grant had been approved.”

The theater was initially approved for a $35,000 grant, which they would match per grant requirements. On May 2, like so many others, they were informed that the grant was cancelled.

Motus focuses their productions on current critical issues. Solano-Cordova said that the theater would have used the money from the grant to help fund their project “Youth Behind and Beyond Bars” and their tour around the state. 

Most of the people who participate in the theater’s justice project around criminal legal reform are people who have been incarcerated. Today, they are advocates for that reform. 

“So, I think a lot of us are used to having to deal with injustices brought forth by, you know, administrations of different parties over the last 20, 30 years,” he said. “We were disappointed but not surprised.” 

Losing the $70,000 equated to a budget cut of around eight percent, which Solano-Cordova described as significant, but “not by any means life or death for Motus.” 

For other organizations, that might not be the same story. Solano-Cordova said that the loss of funding might be what prevents smaller organizations from taking off. 

Motus, in the face of the NEA budget cuts, turned to their network and community for support. This is a current trend – organizations turning to philanthropy to attempt to fill funding gaps. As of June 23, they had raised over $56,000. One of the organizations that helped fund them was the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation, a Denver based private arts funder.

In response to the NEA funding cuts, the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation created a rapid-response grant to help the arts organizations who were most impacted. Bonfils-Stanton generally provides a total of $5 million in grants per year, focusing on Denver based organizations and groups that serve communities of color and historically marginalized communities.

Out of the many applicants who looked to Bonfils-Stanton for help filling the hole in their budgets, the organization decided on those who were most impacted. Their first step to addressing the growing negative impact on the culture sector was to schedule a series of “community conversations” at the Bonfils-Stanton offices.

“It was just to hear from the community of what they were experiencing, but also to give them an opportunity to talk to each other and to share, to commiserate, to be in space together,” Gary Steuer, the CEO and president of Bonfils-Stanton, said. 

The board decided that there was a need for them to respond immediately, and they quickly allocated $400,000 from their yearly budget to help support programs who are not a part of the official grant program. 

The first project they put on their docket was to respond to Juneteenth, but they then realized that Juneteenth wasn’t the only organization that was suffering.

“So that’s what led to the creation of this larger program. Then we also operate a grant program called ‘Inclusive Communities’ that serves, that funds organizations that are rooted in communities of color and other historically marginalized communities,” Steuer said.

In some ways, this funding crisis parallels the financial stress that came up during the first years of the COVID-19 pandemic. The silver lining of these parallels is arts funders and organizations are returning to the strategies they formed during that crisis, to help address this one. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many art organizations were able to stay afloat due to an increase in both federal and philanthropic support. The NEA increased their funding, and many arts funders also stepped up to help negate any impacts of the pandemic. 

This crisis, however, is different in the way that there is no federal government funding for organizations to lean on. From past experience, art organizations like Motus can turn to the network that the pandemic helped build to help with funding. 

Bonfils-Stanton may return to strategies they used during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as inviting in other funders and creating a pool fund to help support art organizations. 

While philanthropy can help support organizations in the absence of NEA grants, there are some aspects of funding that they cannot replace. Public funding tends to be more evenly dispersed among organizations of all sizes and statuses. A study done recently found that public funding reached almost 800 more counties than private funding. 

Public funding can also provide the fund necessary for new organizations to start up, like Motus Theater. Now, new art organizations might struggle. Parker Yamasaki, an arts and culture reporter for The Colorado Sun, looked into the differences between public and private funding.

Yamasaki raised the question of whether philanthropy can replace public funding entirely. Her answer is dim.

“The long-term effects of that, it’s not just financial. It’s gonna be, it’s cultural, it’s societal. Those are things that the NEA and the NEH provide that no amount of funding can kind of fill in,” she said. 

Despite the cuts to their budget, Motus has continued to find work arounds and ways to share their productions. Solano-Cordova calls for other art organizations to continue to fight “attempts at censorship”, calling the cuts an attempt to control the narrative. 

Solano-Cordova commended Motus’ donor base, saying that they have stepped up to support their tour. 

“They’ve heard these stories, they’ve been impacted by these stories and they want to see other people hear these stories,” he said. “With the hope that we change enough hearts and minds and our culture changes, our culture shifts- instead of from a culture of punishment to a culture of redemption or a culture of belonging instead of exclusion.”