Analyzing the NEA "Our Town" Grants
So yesterday, the NEA announced the recipients of the "Our Town" grants. As you may or may not know, the "Our Town" grants were created to support "creative placemaking projects that contribute toward the livability of communities and help transform them into lively, beautiful, and sustainable places with the arts at their core....A key to the success of creative placemaking involves the arts in partnership with a committed governmental leadership and the philanthropic sector. All Our Town applications must reflect a partnership that will provide leadership for the project. These partnerships must involve at least two organizations: one a nonprofit design or cultural organization, and one a government entity."
Given the name chosen by Rocco Landesman and the NEA staff, which references Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize winning play about fictional small town Grovers Corner, let's analyze the grants that were distributed in terms of geography and population. (Full disclosure: I was part of the applicant pool for the "Our Town" grant for a project in Bakersville, NC [pop 357], and was not funded.)
WHICH STATES WERE IGNORED?
Let's start with which states received no funding at all -- the number in parenthesis next to the state's name is the number of the 156 "Access to Excellence" grants for theatre in the most recent round (for details, see my post here):
In summary, these 17 states which received no "Our Town" funding received only 11.5% of the "Access to Excellence" grants for theatre. Seven of them received no funding in either round.
Of the three states that received the most funding in the "Access to Excellence" theatre funding -- New York, California, and Illinois -- both New York and California exceeded the average and median grants for those states who received them, with California far outdistancing every other state, having received $900,000 (the next highest was Texas with $525,000 and Florida with $400,000); Illinois was near the bottom with $50,000.
WHAT ABOUT POPULATION?
According to Wikipedia, "16.7% of U.S. counties had more than 100,000 inhabitants."
So when funding for the NEA comes around once again, remember this distribution when you are condemning those Southern and Western representatives and senators who vote against.
Now let the rationalizing begin.
Given the name chosen by Rocco Landesman and the NEA staff, which references Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize winning play about fictional small town Grovers Corner, let's analyze the grants that were distributed in terms of geography and population. (Full disclosure: I was part of the applicant pool for the "Our Town" grant for a project in Bakersville, NC [pop 357], and was not funded.)
WHICH STATES WERE IGNORED?
Let's start with which states received no funding at all -- the number in parenthesis next to the state's name is the number of the 156 "Access to Excellence" grants for theatre in the most recent round (for details, see my post here):
- Alabama (0)
- Delaware (0)
- Georgia (4)
- Indiana (1)
- Kansas (1)
- Kentucky (3)
- Montana (2)
- Nevada (0)
- New Hampshire (0)
- New Jersey (0)
- New Mexico (2)
- Oklahoma (1)
- Oregon (2)
- South Dakota (0)
- Utah (0)
- Virginia (2)
In summary, these 17 states which received no "Our Town" funding received only 11.5% of the "Access to Excellence" grants for theatre. Seven of them received no funding in either round.
Of the three states that received the most funding in the "Access to Excellence" theatre funding -- New York, California, and Illinois -- both New York and California exceeded the average and median grants for those states who received them, with California far outdistancing every other state, having received $900,000 (the next highest was Texas with $525,000 and Florida with $400,000); Illinois was near the bottom with $50,000.
WHAT ABOUT POPULATION?
According to Wikipedia, "16.7% of U.S. counties had more than 100,000 inhabitants."
- Of the 50 grants funded by the NEA, 45 of them, or 90%, were in counties over 100,000.
- In fact, the average population of the counties funded was a bit more than 2.163 million people, and the median population was over 966,000.
- Of the 50 grants funded by the NEA, only two (Marfa, TX and Sitka, AK) went to a county that could be classified as rural.
So when funding for the NEA comes around once again, remember this distribution when you are condemning those Southern and Western representatives and senators who vote against.
Now let the rationalizing begin.
Comments
Stephen Spotswood did raise an interesting point on Twitter, though: why are we surprised by this, given that the NEA doesn't explicitly have in its charter a mandate to address these imbalances? (I think it should, but I believe in affirmative action.) Then again, I know that we aren't surprised, actually -- just disappointed.
Assuming you're correct that the only Our Town grants to counties with less than 50k people are the Sitka and Marfa grants, those grants combine for an investment of $350,000, or 0.8 cents per capita on the "rural" side of the ledger. By contrast, the other 49 grants total $6,225,000, or 2.3 cents per capita for the rest of the country.
It's a pretty big difference. On the other hand, the list looks better than I would have expected. It seems a bit strange not to characterize places like Ajo, AZ, Reedsburg, WI, and North Adams, MA as "rural," and a number of other cities on the list -- Fargo, San Angelo, and Charleston, WV among them -- are far from the usual suspects. So I do see this as incremental progress, even though I agree with you that the distribution has a ways to go before being equitable w/r/t rural areas.