NEW SMYRNA BEACH — On most days, painter Frank Ferrante can be found at the easel in his cozy studio at The Hub on Canal, a communal space that has welcomed artists, musicians, dancers and other creative types for 15 years in the city’s bustling Arts District.
“This is great,” said Ferrante, a plein air artist who moved to New Smyrna Beach from New Jersey about 14 years ago. “I come here every day to paint and sometimes someone buys, and sometimes they don’t, but that doesn’t make any difference. All I want to do is paint.”
That daily access to a thriving studio environment could change, however, as the nonprofit gallery grapples with a potential new reality without an infusion of $30,662 in county cultural grant funding that has been cut by the Volusia County Council.
That funding is part of $611,758 in “community cultural grants” to assist 33 arts and cultural organizations that was cut from the county’s $1.41 billion budget on Oct. 7, a move that focused in part on LGBTQ+ programming such as drag shows.
At the Hub, it means that some programs, including the gallery’s “Hub On the Run,” offering mobile interactive arts experiences to school students in southeast Volusia, will need to be eliminated, said Jennifer Marano, executive director.
“We also will have to close the gallery two days a week,” she said, limiting access to resident artists such as Ferrante. “We have always tried to stay open seven days a week, especially in the winter, when it’s better for the artists, better for the community.”
Across Volusia County, other nonprofit arts and cultural establishments also are facing similar hard, unwelcome choices.
Reactions to the Council’s decision range from shock to resentment about elimination of funding previously approved following an arduous series of workshops and meetings to adapt to new rules requiring the money to be used solely for programming costs.
“We followed all the rules, adapted to the changes and then had the rug pulled out from under us,” Marano said. “For us, that’s a big chunk of money. We depend on that.”
At Ormond Memorial Art Museum, ‘programs will definitely be impacted’
At the Ormond Memorial Art Museum, the funding cut happened so late in the budgetary process that programs had already been created based on the grant, said Stephanie Mason-Teague, the museum’s executive director.
“Those programs will definitely be impacted,” she said. “It may mean a reduction in a number of programs, it may limit the types of projects we can do because of the cost of art supplies. It will definitely affect our free programs.”
Those include community-oriented offerings such as monthly free family art nights, a popular intergenerational event, as well as similar free creative workshops and lunch ‘n’ learn sessions for veterans, many living on fixed incomes, she said. Scholarships to cover the cost of youth summer art camps and adult classes also will be affected, she said.
“That’s just some of it,” Mason-Teague said. “I’m not ready to say we’ll have to cancel them all, because we are resilient and resourceful. We believe in our responsibility to our community, our members and constituents. We promised to provide these programs, and the community has told us they love these programs.”
Mason-Teague was reluctant to talk about potential ways that the museum could recoup the $30,311 in grant funding that it had been allocated.
“As a nonprofit we’re adept at fund-raising, but here’s an important message that I would like to hear come out of all of this:
“Our Volusia County taxpayers have overwhelmingly shown support for arts, culture and history. We know this because of the recent ECHO surveys.
“It’s important to acknowledge that sentiment when we talk about the County Council not supporting cultural arts and saying they believe it’s in service to the taxpayers. I don’t think there should be a scenario where the county does not support arts and culture.”
Volusia Civic Ballet faces ‘huge challenge’ presenting ‘The Nutcracker’
Volusia Civic Ballet, another nonprofit affected by the council’s decision, will face challenges presenting its two annual signature events: a spring “Festival of the Dance” offering master classes for students at every dance studio countywide, and its holiday production of “The Nutcracker,” a tradition for three decades at Daytona’s Peabody Auditorium.
The latter offers professional performance experience for some 90-plus student dancers.
“The Festival of the Dance is in jeopardy, period,” said Nelly Droznin, Volusia Civic Ballet president. “Tickets are already on sale for ‘The Nutcracker,’ so we’ll need to cut back on what we pay choreographers, on rehearsals on the costumes to be purchased. It’s a huge challenge and a disappointment, to say the least.”
Officials at the Museum of Arts & Sciences in Daytona Beach, meanwhile, declined to comment on the loss of its allocated $30,904 in county cultural grant funding and its impact, said Jonna Royer, the museum’s chief advancement officer.
Despite backlash, County Council again fails to approve arts funding
At the County Council’s Oct. 21 meeting, dozens of residents and arts leaders spoke in favor of funding the arts before council members debated the issue again during their closing comments.
District 3 Councilman Danny Robins said that the county has to base its decisions on priorities involving issues that include serious flooding, storm water and road concerns.
“You have to paint your house, or you have to fix a hole in your roof, what do you do first?” Robins said. “Probably fix the roof, right?”
Council Chair Jeff Brower likened the cultural grants to a taxpayer-funded charity donation.
“I love the arts, I’m not against the arts,” he said. “For me, this whole thing is more of a philosophical, a principled argument.
“A nonprofit is, by definition, a charitable organization that you can give money to and then take a tax deduction for. We are making charitable contribution decisions out of public taxpayer money, and I don’t feel comfortable doing that when we have people that are flooded out, roads, sidewalks that have problems, people who can’t afford rent, mortgage.”
Ultimately, a motion to approve cultural grant funding, with the exception of the Athens Theatre and Shoestring Theatre, failed by a 4-3 vote. Council members Brower, Danny Robins, Don Dempsey and Troy Kent voted against it.
Athens Theatre withdraws request, won’t censor programming
Robins had initially voiced concerns about the Shoestring Theatre and the Athens Theatre allowing drag shows at their venues, prompting him to urge that the grants be cut.
“It’s really sad that some council members placed us in the spotlight as a scapegoat for the reason they had voted to cut funding that already had been allocated,” said Alexa Baldwin, Athens executive director, adding that the events in question were productions that rented the theater space.
In response, the theater launched a Volusia Arts Lifeline GoFundMe drive to support organizations affected by the funding cuts countywide that has raised more than $20,000 toward its $700,000 goal.
The Athens also pulled its grant application in an unsuccessful attempt to ensure funding for other organizations.
“It becomes very obvious that there was an agenda to get rid of it (the cultural grants) and that’s very disheartening,” Baldwin said.
At the Athens, the loss of an anticipated $31,066 in grant funding could mean higher ticket prices for performances, she said. It also could result in potential cuts to American Sign Language service for deaf patrons and live audio description programs for the blind.
“We’re doing everything we possibly can to avoid cutting those services,” she said.
At the same time, Baldwin said that a “wonderful” realization also has emerged:
“We will not allow them (the County Council) to censor who, or what, we welcome into our theater,” she said, pointing out that a screening of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” including a pre-show drag performance, is slated to return on Oct. 30 and 31.
“We will welcome DeLand Pride and ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ for years to come. It’s already on the calendar for next year at Halloween.”
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: ‘A huge challenge’ as Volusia arts groups face future without county cultural grants
Reporting by Jim Abbott, Daytona Beach News-Journal / The Daytona Beach News-Journal
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