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San Diego’s art scene is one of most vibrant in the country, but its luster is dimming, as public funding dries up and artists’ pay falls behind the curve amid soaring housing costs and inflation.
The San Diego region is among the top 10 percent nationwide, based on the number of artists and cultural organizations, total dollars spent on the arts, and government funding, according to an analysis of community arts vibrancy by Southern Methodist University in Texas.
The region boasts cultural campuses such as Balboa Park, the Jacobs Music Center, and California Center for the Arts, Escondido. Plus, scores of galleries, performance spaces and concert venues add up to a robust art scene.
But San Diego’s status has ticked down since 2022, from the 95th percentile to 90th percentile nationwide. Still good, but not a promising trend.
That downturn is happening as federal and local governments slash arts funding, and as wages for artists and cultural workers lag behind the region’s high cost of living.
“We see that big cities in general are really challenging places for arts and cultural organizations right now, with rising rents and inflation,” said Jen Benoit-Bryan, a professor of arts management and executive director of the SMU DataArts research center.
A separate report on local arts nonprofits by the University of San Diego found that a third of arts organizations reported weak financial health this year, and more than half dipped into their reserves to make ends meet.
That squeeze has led to high-profile fights over public art spending. In April, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria proposed zeroing out city arts funding in this year’s budget. Artists and activists erupted in protest. The city council eventually added back part of that, and the Prebys Foundation committed $3 million to make up the gap, but there was still a net loss.
“We know San Diego is an arts-rich community, and arts and culture is very much a part of our fabric and our economic vitality,” said Christine Martinez, manager of Arts + Culture San Diego, a coalition of 150 organizations. “But looking at the report and seeing a slight decline over the last few years in our vibrancy is not a surprise.”
Her organization is proposing to dedicate a portion of local hotel taxes to arts funding. The county has stepped up with $2 million in new arts funding. And independent artists are devising ways to help themselves, and each other.
Where San Diego ranks
Researchers at Southern Methodist University have been collecting and analyzing how communities support and invest in the arts for about a decade, Benoit-Bryan said.
To compare communities, they pull IRS data to count the number of independent artists and cultural employees, arts organizations, and entertainment firms.
That’s combined with “arts dollars,” meaning the revenue, contributions, expenditures and compensation for those organizations. And they look at the number of state and federal arts grants, and their total dollar figures.
This year San Diego ranks 91st for arts vibrancy out of 985 areas analyzed in the Southern Methodist University study, placing it in the top 100 areas studied, which range from smaller cities to metropolitan areas.
Other California cities placed even higher; Los Angeles placed 12th, while San Francisco came in second. The study ranked California as the eighth highest state for arts activities and support.
New York, a global leader in arts and media, ranked number one for the third year in a row, “reaffirming its position as the nation’s cultural powerhouse,” the DataArts report stated. Other northeastern states known for strong social support spending, including New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts, were the next highest. Minnesota, Illinois and Maryland ranked just above California.
“Not surprisingly, there’s strong correlations between the wealth of a community and the arts vibrancy rankings,” Benoit-Bryan said.
Researchers group areas into clusters of peer cities: areas of similar size, demographic characteristics and rankings. San Diego is grouped with Denver, Atlanta, Miami and Houston, all of which fall in the 87th to 94th percentiles for arts vibrancy, according to the study.
Of those cities, only Atlanta improved its status in recent years. The rest, including San Diego, declined.
Near the top, but slipping
San Diego’s for-profit arts sector remains strong, Benoit-Bryan said. But public investment in the arts is waning.
The number of arts and culture organizations per capita across San Diego and its peer cities is consistently declining, she said. In San Diego, the number of employees in the cultural workforce is also falling. That’s possibly because they can’t afford to keep their jobs.
“We see that the compensation levels for the kind of workers in non-profit cultural organizations are also lower than peers and have been declining over the last few years,” she said. “And federal dollars that are flowing into cultural organizations in San Diego are again lower than peers and in decline.”
The University of San Diego study found similar results. Nonprofits of all types are facing financial pressure, she said, with 80% of nonprofit leaders reporting a drop in funding from government foundations, individual donors and corporate sponsors, said Tess Tinkler, director of research for the university’s Nonprofit Institute.
For art nonprofits in particular, employee wages have flattened out. “When we looked at wage gaps for arts organizations they’re experiencing just no growth in wages over many years. And that is worse than other nonprofits.”
Adjusting for inflation, arts employees’ wages have not grown over the past 13 years, and have actually dropped in real dollars since 2012, Tinkler said. Meanwhile, they face rising costs for necessities such as gas and housing; San Diego consistently ranks as one of the most expensive home markets in the country.
Healthcare costs are another sticking point for arts employers, said Jessica Hanson York, executive director of the Mingei International Museum in Balboa Park
“We are still able to cover the cost of healthcare for our employees, but we are stretched to the maximum to keep up,” she said.
How to turn the tide?
Arts and culture programs might seem to fall into the nice-to-have spending category, but arts advocates say they’re bellwethers for community well-being.
The University of San Diego report cited research showing that involvement with the arts increases social connection, reduces anxiety and depression, and helps with youth development and academic accomplishment.
The university’s surveys found that nearly half of San Diegans said they benefited from arts and culture nonprofits, and three-quarters believe nonprofits play a key role in supporting the arts. Arts advocates also point out that cultural offerings help San Diego maintain its tourist trade, and spur local economic growth.
“When we have a loss of this kind of arts funding, it really does affect the community’s quality of life,” Tinkler said.
Some artists say the unpredictable nature of public and philanthropic funding has made them look elsewhere for nontraditional financial resources.
“You might have people who don’t trust nonprofits or that whole world,” said Ramel Wallace, founder and CEO of the organization the Holyfield, which supports storytelling, music and education. “So they’re looking for alternative ways to raise capital.”
Solutions lean toward what he called new economy or social justice financing mechanisms: mutual aid, co-ops or lending circles, in which members contribute to a shared pot of money and then distribute it on a rotating basis.
That system can be used to help fund the cost of art projects, but more importantly he said, it can support day-to-day needs for artists struggling with housing costs, medical bills or other expenses.
JerVae Anthony, a musician, performing artist and painter from South San Diego, said she is creating what she calls a solidarity fund to link artists together for technical, professional and financial support.
“I’m trying to build a program that seeks to use mutual aid and peer support to fill in those gaps, because some of us do require additional support, and it’s really important to make art-making accessible for all folks,” she said.
For instance, she has tapped that network to connect with hosts in other parts of the country, who open their homes to other artists who want to travel and make art in new places.
Sometimes an artist with a particular skill – say Adobe Photoshop – will offer a Zoom training to bring colleagues up to speed on that program. Other times the organization offers basic material support to fellow artists: a month’s rent, a load of groceries or a mobility device.
Paying for it involves a patchwork of grassroots and traditional fundraising, including grant-writing, crowdfunding, and a partnership with a North Carolina church, Anthony said.
“It’s an important skill, and I think networks are going to be how we get through these hard times.”
