original article published on MINNPOST
By Pamela Espeland |
If you’re an artist in Minnesota, or someone who works for an arts organization, you’re familiar with the Minnesota State Arts Board (MSAB). You may be, have been, or hope to be a grantee. If you attend arts events in Minnesota, you have almost certainly experienced one or more that were supported by grants from the MSAB.
Each year, the MSAB awards millions of dollars in grants to hundreds of arts organizations, artists, and arts projects or activities across Minnesota. As a state agency and part of state government, its job is to provide financial support to keep the arts community strong and connect Minnesotans to the arts. It also serves as the fiscal agent for 11 regional arts councils (RACs) throughout the state.
Its funds are 100 percent public dollars. A small amount comes from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Most come from the Minnesota Legislature as state appropriations. These include money from the state’s general fund and money from the arts and cultural heritage fund, one of the four funds created when the Clean Water, Land, and Legacy Amendment (aka the Legacy Amendment, for short) was passed by Minnesota voters in 2008.
Each year, the MSAB reviews about 1,400 grant applications and makes about 600 grants. For FY 20 (the state’s fiscal year runs July 1-June 30), the MSAB was appropriated around $40 million.
Sue Gens has been executive director of the MSAB since 2008. We spoke with her by phone on Monday evening. This interview has been edited and condensed.
MinnPost: Where is the MSAB now in its grantmaking for FY 2020?
Sue Gens: The Arts Board every year frontloads its grantmaking. We start awarding dollars right away in July. The goal is to get them into the hands of individuals and organizations who can use them for programing and activities rather than having them sit in an account at the state of Minnesota.
By January, we had awarded all of the dollars we have available for this fiscal year. Which in any other year is fabulous, because it allows us to get the money out into the field as quickly as we possibly can. This year it’s challenging, because right now we don’t have any grant dollars left for the year. We have no new way to create a grant program for the last three months of this fiscal.
Some of the regional arts councils spread out their grant awards throughout the year, and some of them do have dollars left that they are repurposing now. If someone is reading this, they should check with their RAC and see if they still have FY 20 dollars available to grant. Not all, but some do. [Note: Find your RAC here.]
MP: How is COVID-19 affecting the work of the MSAB?
SG: What’s different for us now, at this moment, is that in April we would start having our panel reviews. Citizen reviewers look at all of the [grant] applications and award them. Those are always in-person meetings. A task force of staff members is developing a process to have that worked on virtually somehow. We’re having to redesign that process.
This is the time of year when we would normally be putting our FY 21 budget together. We are doing that, but we are having very different conversations about what that budget might look like. None of us knows how long activities will need to be on hold. None of us knows how deep the economic impact will be on the arts and culture sector. We know it will be profound. And we don’t know at what point organizations will start being able to produce activities again and generate income.
Everyone was operating at full speed, and on March 13, the brakes were put on. I’m so grateful to the arts community that when the directive came out from Governor Walz and Commissioner Malcolm, the arts community stepped up immediately and put everything on hold or postponed or canceled or made changes. They made very quick, very difficult decisions to help save people’s lives and keep people healthy.
MP: Some organizations and foundations are delaying application deadlines. Is this something the Arts Board might do?
SG: We haven’t done it yet. When the board comes together to talk about options, that certainly will be one of the things we talk about.
MP: The Arts Board has 10 different grant programs. They cover a broad spectrum, from operating support to touring and folk art. Do you have the flexibility to shift funds between different programs, depending on need?
SG: Each time we have an appropriation from the Legislature, they give us some broad guidance. We generally mirror what’s in the state Constitution. We request funds for arts and arts access, arts education and preserving cultural heritage. They earmark dollars in those categories, but the categories are pretty broad. So long as we are true to the Constitution, we have some latitude. That’s what we’ll be talking about in upcoming board meetings, when we’re thinking about how best to use the resources we’ll have available in FY 21.
People are talking about having as much flexibility as possible. Many organizations and individuals are talking about how to do things virtually – how to deliver the work they do online. As more and more people rely on technology, how can the arts take advantage of those new mediums? When it’s possible for people to start being out in public again and at events again, what kind of funding will organizations need to start the engines and get those projects going?
We’re also worried about people who work in the arts sector. Many are losing their jobs. Many are being furloughed. Many self-employed artists don’t qualify for unemployment. So how do we take care of the people?
I’m told there are some things in the new federal stimulus bill that might be helpful. I’m trying to find out what are the opportunities there for Minnesota’s creative individuals and organizations. One thing I do know that’s in that bill is an additional $75 million from the NEA. It will be up to them to communicate with us whether we will receive some of those funds, how much we will receive and the purposes for which we can use them. We’ll get guidance from the NEA.
MP: Where do you think we’ll be in a year from now?
SG: I don’t know. We don’t know where we are on the COVID-19 curve. A year from now, will there be a vaccine? Will it come back every season, like the regular flu? And the economic side. Is this a short-term economic impact? Will things come roaring back quickly, or will it take longer? That’s way above my pay grade.
I can say that in the arts community, there will be many individuals and organizations that will be struggling even a year from now. The longer we are doing social distancing to keep others healthy and alive, which is what we need to do, the longer people are going to be losing revenue, and the less stability they will have to plan and create a season.
MP: At this moment, what is your greatest area of concern?
SG: That none of us knows how long the virus will continue to spread, how many people might become ill, how many more deaths there might be. That’s first and foremost. When will the virus be controlled, whatever control means? That’s what dictates everything else that happens. When people can start going out again. When they feel confident of their own resources so they have money to spend or contribute.
Every time we face a challenge like this, we don’t go back to exactly the way things were. We go back to something new that’s different. We don’t know what the next normal will be. Life will go on for people who are lucky enough to still have their health, but we don’t know what that will look like.
MP: What can you say to reassure artists at this point in time?
SG: One is that Minnesota has a number of arts funders who are very aware that this is a difficult time for artists and the people who work in arts organizations. All of these entities are working as quickly as they can, and trying to be as creative and flexible as they can, to provide support so those individuals can continue to get the kind of support they might need. We have an infrastructure in place in Minnesota. We all represent different parts of that infrastructure and we do different things, but we all understand this is a really difficult time for the arts.
The other thing to keep in mind is that people in Minnesota care deeply about the arts. In any given year, about 25 million people participate in some kind of arts or creative activity. People are going to be eager to get back to those activities when it’s safe for them to do that.
We have funds coming from the federal government. There will be state funds as soon as we can get to our next fiscal year. The private foundations are thinking about this. Here in Minnesota, we have, I think, a stronger infrastructure for the creative community than in many other parts of the country. That doesn’t go away at this moment. I think those resources are going to be stretched pretty thin. But we know that the arts and cultural traditions, and the people who make those possible, are vital to the quality of life that we care deeply about in MN.
I would just say again what we talked about earlier: that I’m really grateful to the arts community for putting things on hold to save people’s lives.
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