Betsy Dollar’s office at the Springfield Art Association, which she heads, is a hodgepodge of computers used for digital art classes, important files, various books and pieces of art. Her dog, Jake, who tends to accompany her to work, is napping under the desk. Dollar is in the middle of a messy project, using clay to restore a historic ceiling medallion that was damaged at Edwards Place, a home that is part of the Springfield Art Association campus and was the original center of artistic activity for the group some 100 years ago. This is the office of a person who does far more than push papers and handle bureaucratic duties; it’s headquarters for a woman who does a little bit of everything to keep the organization she loves running.
There are dozens of community art groups similar to this one around the state, and most of them have something in common — funding is a struggle. State funding has been diminishing over the past decade, and grants can be hard to apply for or so specific that many groups and artists don’t qualify. Still, through a mixture of fundraising, corporate sponsorships, memberships and other sources — many community art groups and the artists who comprise them are finding ways to keep the arts alive and thriving.
From Fiscal Year 2007 to FY 2012, state appropriations to the Illinois Arts Council Agency, the state entity that oversees arts funding and grants, were cut in half — from nearly $20 million to less than $9 million. Over that same period, federal dollars coming to the state from the National Endowment for the Arts peaked at $1 million in 2010 and then stayed relatively close to that number. Organizations like the Springfield Art Association benefit from this money, but the grants aren’t always very impactful. In 2014, the organization saw $6,000 from the Illinois Arts Council to help with operating expenses. It’s a decent chunk of change, but not huge compared to the yearly budget of about $600,000.
Like many small community-driven and focused centers, the Springfield Art Association has only a handful of staff members and makes ends meet through membership dues, fundraisers and grants. But there’s also a surprising funding source helping this place tick — oil. “We’re lucky enough that someone left us an oil well in the 1950s, and it’s doing well right now,” Dollar explains. The rights to that well brought in about $80,000 in the last year. Dollar says that when the oil money runs out, “We will have to tighten our belts and do some other creative fundraising and programming.” The association’s biggest mission is to provide art classes. Because the school is supporting itself through the money people pay for classes, Dollar says the overall budget is in decent shape. Another large source of money is fundraising events. One particular gala event, which is in part supported by sponsorships from local businesses, brings in about $60,000 or more a year.
Dollar says grants are also an important source of money, though it’s hard to find those that are simply for operating funds. “The tough thing about grants is generally there is money out there to create new programs to supposedly fill a need. We have plenty of programs and don’t necessarily want to be starting new ones. … For the most part, we’re pretty happy with our programming and don’t need to be generating programs to write grants to. That’s kind of the frustrating part,” says Dollar.
The largest source of grants for the group on a yearly basis is the Illinois Arts Council, with funds that account for about 1 percent of the overall budget. Dollar says the process could be easier and more streamlined. “It sort of requires a bookkeeping degree. I mean I really have to go back through our [ledgers] and recalculate every number to fit their categories, and it’s not my happiest week of the year … It brings out the little bit of bookkeeping knowledge I have to try and make that all work. And in some cases they just ask for things that we don’t even keep records about, so it’s always a little tricky,” she says. She also can’t tell how the size of the grants are arrived at. In 2015, she’s slated to get a lump sum $11,000 grant from the state agency. “I don’t know why the jump. I mean there’s no real justification from one year to another.”
Tom Irwin is a folk singer and songwriter from Illinois. He’s currently making an album with John Stirratt, a member of Chicago’s Grammy award-winning alternative rock band Wilco. As an individual artist who recently received his first grant, Irwin agrees the application process can be a turn-off. He once quit midway through applying for a grant from the Illinois Arts Council after finding it too confusing. Irwin, a full-time musician, recently gave it another go and applied for a grant distributed by the Springfield Area Arts Council, a group with close ties to the state arts agency. The Springfield council awarded $14,500 to artists and community groups for Fiscal Year 2015. Money for grants came from fundraising, the Illinois Arts Council and the city.
Irwin was awarded $300, which he’ll use to help promote the album he’s making with Stirratt, an endeavor costing about $20,000. He says in comparison to that figure, $300 doesn’t sound like much, but it’s still a help. “The way I approached it was, often times when you get to the end of the project, that’s where you don’t have any money left to help promote it.” He gives credit to the Springfield Area Arts Council for helping as many artists as it can. He assumes they are making do with a lack of funding from the government. “I’d like to see the political climate turned around to where art was valued … as important as a building or financing some new factory somewhere,” says Irwin. He says he’ll consider applying for a grant again if he has a specific project he needs help with.
Sen. Dan Kotowski, a Democrat from Park Ridge, sits on a legislative committee that oversees funding for the Illinois Arts Council. He also sponsored the Grant Accountability and Transparency Act, which went into effect in the spring of 2014. He says while he hasn’t personally heard any complaints about the grant process for the Illinois Arts Council, the act should help streamline the process. “The goal is to try and get it into a more uniform application, so it’s less cumbersome and burdensome in applying for grants, and that [applicants] also get the training that they need,” he says.
Kotowski says arts funding has dropped 50 percent since 2007 for a number of reasons: “Because of cost of pensions, because of increased Medicaid costs … because of bills that were owed that accrued.” Kotowski states the obvious about Illinois’ dire budget: Other areas are suffering, too, from education to human services. But in his mind, the arts are still important. Kotowski has a master of arts degree in writing, and says focusing on literature helped him become a better thinker, communicator and speechwriter. He says the Illinois Arts Council does a good job of pleading the case for the arts. “They’ve been able to make an excellent case for the impact of arts on the performance of students and the quality of life for people who benefit from art programs.” Kotowski also notes that the state’s appropriation for the Illinois Arts Council is on an upward trend, albeit slight. “From Fiscal Year 10 to Fiscal Year 15, it increased by about $1.5 million,” Kotowski says.
Philanthropic groups in the state are helping bridge some of the gaps. In Chicago, the Polk Bros. Foundation gives $2.5 million to $3 million annually in arts and culture funding. Beneficiaries include the Chicago Children’s Choir and the Chicago High School for the Arts. The foundation focuses largely on arts education. “There just aren’t a lot of funders anymore that are funding arts education. … I know that the groups that we fund depend on our funding very much,” says the foundation’s CEO, Gillian Darlow. “We try to make sure that the groups that we’re funding have diversified support. And if they don’t, we encourage them to develop it because that makes for a more sustainable organization, and it just makes them healthier financially,” she adds. Darlow says as government dollars for the arts shrink, The Polk Bros. Foundation is committed to help provide lower-income residents with access to the arts.
And then there are art groups and galleries that are making do with no help from government funding sources or philanthropic groups. In Bloomington, Kendra Paitz periodically turns her own home into a gallery space and invites the public through word-of-mouth. She curates art for Illinois State University but says by hosting an alternative art space in her house she’s created a more accessible and less-sterile environment for viewers. “There’s a real sense of freedom with it in a lot of ways. There are no sort of institutional barriers. There are no boards to answer to. There are no attendance numbers to fulfill. It’s all for the love of the artwork and working together,” Paitz says. To help fund her efforts, she could pursue nonprofit status, but she’s decided against that. “If I was answering to grant makers, or had a board or was incorporated, then I wouldn’t necessarily still have that flexibility. I think in general, it really is a labor of love for me and for the artists who are doing it. They’ve all been so generous and so passionate,” Paitz says.
In Chicago, alternative art spaces are somewhat commonplace. Katie Waddell founded a festival called “2nd Floor Rear” to highlight some of them. Participants ride the subway around the city to visit the art. She says spaces in Chicago vary: “From more established alternative art spaces that tend to have 501c3 status and kind of a devoted following and a set funding structure … all the way to spaces people literally just set up in their apartments.” Much of this art is somewhat underground — something that a lack of funding might play into.
On the campus of the Springfield Art Association is a small white house that was once used for storage. Now, it’s an alternative art space called the DEMO Project gallery. It’s a way that dollars are being stretched to supply as much art to the community as possible. And since it features installation work, it also provides art that’s hard to find elsewhere in the area. It’s an example of a fact that seems to hold true, even when funding hasn’t: Art will survive, and those who love it will find creative ways to keep it alive.
Illinois Issues, February 2015