Staff Editorial
The arts and culture industry brings $4.7 billion to Florida annually, but the state reduced art funding from $25 million in the 2017-18 fiscal year to $2.65 million in 2018-19.
The Trump Administration has been chipping away at education funding with each budget passed and intends on cutting another $27 million from arts programs in the 2020 budget. Emphasis on studying the arts in school is undermined in every passing budget cut, as professors and teachers are fired or given jobs as school counselors instead of art teachers.
Art courses have been stripped from most common core curriculums, sacrificing an important part of development due to spending in other sectors. Numerous studies have shown a correlation between students enrolling in various types of art and music classes or after school programs and better performance in and outside of school. A study by James Catterall, an author and esteemed researcher who was a Fellow at Stanford University, found in a four-year study of over 25,000 students that those with access to the arts had better grades, higher employment after school, were less likely to fall into substance abuse and more went on to higher education.
These cuts are not equally distributed, though. Schools in low income and rural areas tend to feel the effects hardest. Art education allows students to express themselves and develop creative thinking skills that will help them in any profession. Without an outlet and opportunity, the already disadvantaged students are done a further disservice by budgets that leave them out of the equation. The community that art creates saves many from their real-life struggles and opens up career pathways they didn’t know were possible.
Colleges also feel the effects of cuts to art programs. Students who were not exposed to arts in lower education are unlikely to pursue it when they get to college. Degree programs that have higher-paying base salaries and are in more demand overshadow arts and humanities degrees. As art programs shrink, how will the creative gap be filled?
Daytona State College has been affected by Florida’s arts and culture budget cuts, unable to have as many exhibitions as usual at the Southeast Museum of Photography. According to reporting in the Daytona Beach News-Journal, DSC received $44,000 in funding for the museum in the 2014-15 year. For this fiscal year, it received only $3,500. This limits the real-world experiences students can have on campus and getting involved in their community. Other campus arts programs have also been cut, such as the once-renowned Dancescapes modern dance company on campus. Recently, a beloved DSC art professor, just shy of earning a continuing contract, was laid off due to budget constraints, along with fulltime faculty in other departments.
The News-Journal also reported that the Daytona Beach Museum of Arts and Science had an even more extreme cut to its funding, receiving a state grant of $10,000 for this fiscal year after receiving almost $400,000 in total funding in the 2014-15 fiscal year.
Some argue that it is not the government’s job to fund arts programs, especially ones that may turn a profit.
If arts programs in schools, colleges and communities are not taken seriously soon, they will become fewer and far between. We need to place value on art, not only for profit, but because it is important for ourselves, our communication, our culture and our souls.