San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria has proposed eliminating arts funding that goes directly to local arts organizations, leading to a $11.8 million cut from the city budget for fiscal year 2027. This proposal would harm children, families, artists, and the cultural fabric of the city.
San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria has proposed eliminating all arts funding that go directly to local arts organizations . That would cut $11.8 million from the city budget for fiscal year 2027.
Arts leaders and arts supporters have emailed dozens of letters to the Union-Tribune. We are publishing some of them today. For many young people, participating in the arts is the one place where they feel safe, seen and uplifted. San Diego’s proposed budget would take that away.
The proposed cuts would eliminate $11.8 million in arts and culture funding, effectively zeroing out support for the organizations that bring creative opportunity to tens of thousands of young people across every corner of this county. Together, San Diego Junior Theatre, San Diego Youth Symphony and San Diego Civic Youth Ballet employ over 75 staff members and nearly 100 teaching artists, conductors and directors. We serve more than 6,500 students annually and welcome nearly 50,000 audience members each year.
Our programs reach youth in every district, many of whom have no other access to arts education. Art-making offers something irreplaceable: joy, belonging, emotional restoration, deep learning and a sense of identity that no other experience can replicate. Cutting this funding doesn’t just harm organizations. It harms children, families, artists and the cultural fabric of this city.
Kate Battenfeld, Executive DirectorWhat does $300,000 mean to the city of San Diego? Compared to a $6.4 billion budget, it’s a rounding error. For the San Diego Natural History Museum, it could mean the difference between survival and crisis. This is what’s at stake if the mayor’s proposed FY27 budget is approved.
We’re already reeling. If it continues unchanged, the city’s paid parking policy will cost us more than $800,000 a year in lost admissions revenue as families, students and seniors who used to come freely now don’t. Cutting competitive grants for arts funding would result in The Nat’s budget losing another $300,000, bringing our total loss due to city actions to $1.1 million — nearly 10% of our annual budget.
The city is, in effect, shifting its financial burden onto the nonprofits it claims to value. The line item for arts and culture is minuscule in the face of the total city budget. Eliminating it won’t balance the budget. It will only silence the institutions that give San Diego its soul.
Children will lose hands-on nature education. Community programs that serve our most vulnerable residents will vanish. Our region’s environmental literacy — so critical considering today’s climate issues — will suffer. Judy Gradwohl, President and CEOI am concerned and saddened with the proposed cuts to arts in general, and dance specifically in San Diego.
I am a patron of The Rosin Box and Golden State Ballet. There is no question that the arts feed the soul. Many studies have concluded this to be the case. As a senior, this is very important to me.
As a grandmother, I know it is very important to my grandchildren. Please continue to support the arts. San Diego is proposing to eliminate $11.8 million in arts and culture funding from its FY27 budget. For some residents, that may read as a fiscal abstraction.
For San Diego’s queer community, it is a direct threat to our survival as a people with a documented past. Lambda Archives of San Diego exists because queer history has always been vulnerable to erasure. We preserve the photographs, periodicals, organizational records and oral histories that prove our community was here, that we built things, fought for things, and loved each other through extraordinary difficulty.
That work depends on a broader ecosystem of arts and culture funding that supports institutions, artists and programming across the region. In 1991, arts advocate Larry T. Baza warned that budget cuts to the arts would push us into a cultural war. He was right. At a moment when queer history is being erased at the federal level, cutting local arts funding is not a neutral fiscal decision.
It is a compounding harm. Arts and culture institutions are not the frosting on the cake. They are the record of who we are. San Diego should fund them accordingly.
‘Connective tissue of our cultural life’ San Diego is home to a thriving arts ecosystem — one that doesn’t sustain itself on passion alone. As an arts administrator, curator and consultant who has worked in this region for 15 years, I see daily how city arts funding functions as the connective tissue of our cultural life. It keeps organizations open, artists working and communities engaged.
Mayor Gloria’s proposed 85% cut — eliminating $11.8 million in grantmaking entirely — isn’t a trim. It’s a dismantling. The organizations that lose this funding don’t quietly scale back; they close programs, lay off staff, and in many cases, shut their doors. The artists who depend on those organizations lose exhibition opportunities, residencies, workshop access and the professional infrastructure that makes a sustainable creative career possible in San Diego.
We are the eighth largest city in the United States. Our cultural institutions serve hundreds of thousands of residents every year. Defunding them entirely while calling San Diego a world-class city is not just shortsighted — it’s a contradiction we can’t afford. Déjà vu all over again As an arts professional in this town for nearly 30 years, I’ve witnessed our arts and culture community blossom and shine in a way that was unexpected from this native New Yorker.
Coming from a major cultural capital, I was astonished to experience first-hand the vibrancy, resilience and authenticity of our arts institutions and artists. I watched our Symphony and Opera regroup and rise from near demise, the rebirth, renovation and creation of notable venues like The New Children’s Museum, Mingei International Museum, Arts District Liberty Station, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, The Conrad and The Shell, to name of few.
I’ve worked with so many organizations in this town to help them survive the pandemic, retain audiences and continue to inspire and entertain. I’ve seen artists, performers, designers and creatives lend energy, talent and joy to this community as never before. And still, we have to keep fighting for our fair share. I have been working with colleagues across the community to fight for arts funding for over three decades!
Why do we have to spend valuable time, energy and talent advocating for what has been promised time and time again? City leaders know that the arts enhance our community, elevate our lives, increases tourism, help recruit first-class talent … do I need to go on? Why do we need to keep reminding them?
I can’t even calculate the time spent on this current fight that could and should have been spent making art, enhancing our culture and entertaining and education the next generation. Frustrating? Yes. But, also inspiring.
To witness the grit and determination of our arts community gives me hope for the future. We keep fighting because the arts truly matter. San Diego’s proposed cuts to arts and culture aren’t just about budgets. They reflect something deeper — a gradual loss of identity.
The city doesn’t lack talent. Its artists help shape the culture we recognize, but those paths often begin with local opportunities and spaces. A city needs both — investment in its artists and the spaces that give them a place to be seen. For years, the city has been defined by the spaces and experiences that bring people together.
Events like Street Scene, community gatherings and public celebrations weren’t just entertainment. They were part of how the city felt: shared, local and connected. Those experiences have already begun to fade. With reductions to grants and public programming, we risk accelerating that loss.
We risk losing what makes this city feel like San Diego. My art story was told in a documentary by my own name, “Inocente”. This documentary explores my love for art and my journey to my first art show in San Diego.
Since my documentary won the 2013 Academy Award for best documentary short, I have continued to work with many art programs in San Diego, including the San Diego Opera’s Educational Department, La Maestra Health Centers, Alliance for HOPE International and many many more. Art brings more than just people together, it brings millions into the economy. Erasing funding for the arts is destined to be a costly mistake.
As a local resident, I was stunned to hear about the severe cuts to arts funding. The arts express a culture, offer joy, solace, hope and enable the widest number of people to imagine a better future and to share ideas with other artists. I am reminded of the Holocaust victims, many of whom produced art, wrote and performed musical compositions while the most unthinkable horror was going on around them.
It enabled them to survive another day, to commune with each other and to find common ground. The arts are central to who we are as humans, as members of a community.
The earliest humans made art because of a deep-seated need to communicate their feelings For over 30 years, I designed hospitals based on solid research showing that looking at specific types of images of nature improved patients’ outcomes, often reducing the need for pain medication and, in some cases, enabling the patient to be discharged earlier. The connection can be traced to early humans and how they responded to environmental threats.
Children derive so much pleasure at learning to play an instrument; at the sound of music young children immediately respond by dancing. To remove funding for music education would be devastating. In a time when the state of our society has never looked bleaker, art is one of the only things holding us together. I joined the La Jolla Symphony & Chorus almost three years ago after a breakup that had me feeling lost.
I auditioned on a whim after spending years away from choral music, which had once occupied so much of my life as a teen and young adult. I felt like it was a sign that that season, the group was slated to perform Rachmaninoff’s “All-Night vigil,” a piece I had dreamed to sing for decades.
I immediately felt at home in the ensemble, not just because of the singing, artistry of the conductor, or literally my heart beating and lungs breathing in time with the other singers — but because I was welcomed by new and longstanding members with open arms, and because I gather my community together every few months at the concerts where every single person walks away at peace and inspired. Markayla StroubakisAs a longtime resident and artist in the San Diego area, I am shocked and appalled at the funding cuts for the arts in this city.
While I know balancing budgets often means having to make cuts, this seems very disproportionate. Arts and culture are the heartbeat of any city and a huge resource for economic growth. It seems cutting funding for programs that provide both economic and creative growth as well as education for both adult and youth is a rather “cutting off your nose to spite your face” approach.
Creative stimulation is essential in every area of life and to the well-being of any culture. It affects not only directly arts-oriented activities, but it’s the absolute source of innovation at every level in every occupation. These cuts are pure insanity. Please reconsider this in your budget plans, both now and in the future.
I am writing as a longtime San Diego resident who is strongly opposed to the severe arts and culture budget cuts proposed by Mayor Todd Gloria for FY27. The proposed elimination of arts and culture funding threatens the stability of the region’s creative sector, which plays a critical role in San Diego’s economy, workforce and quality of life.
Arts and culture organizations support thousands of jobs, generate $1.8 billion in tourism, activate neighborhoods, and foster a strong sense of community across all council districts. Cutting funding to arts and culture at this level will have devastating, long-term consequences for San Diego’s economy and identity. Arts and culture organizations are small businesses, employers, educators and community anchors. Many of our community’s arts organizations simply will not survive without this funding.
The proposed cuts come at a time when many arts organizations are already navigating rising operational costs and recovering from years of financial strain. San Diego’s arts organizations are also facing reductions at the state and federal levels, most notably cuts to National Endowment for the Arts grants. It is critical to maintain funding at current levels to prevent further erosion of services and access.
The arts are not a luxury; rather, they are a vital public good that reflects and strengthens our communities. Stable funding ensures equitable access to arts experiences across San Diego and sustains the cultural fabric that makes our city vibrant and inclusive. I am writing not about the facts and figures of possible funding cuts to arts in San Diego but rather to the greater implications of such an action.
Such cuts will have deep felt ramifications that will affect all residents no matter their socio-economic standing. These effects will have long-reaching and ever-expansive consequences to everyone no matter one’s age, culture or beliefs. The much-needed access to and participation in music, dance, theater, museums, school enrichment programs, elderly and patient enrichment programs will disappear. Revenue from tourism, both from visitors from nearby cities and travelers from afar, will disappear.
Jobs will disappear. My higher level concern is that without the arts, society becomes soulless, animalistic and hopeless. And as caring intelligent people, that is something worth fighting for. Our goal in creating a new PB Arts Center has always been to create a much-needed space for our community, by the community.
We envision a safe, neighborhood arts space that would open minds, encourage creativity and inspire wonder for the children of our community. It will be a creative space for all ages to gather and connect with our neighbors for the betterment of our entire community. That is why we are so disappointed to see the proposed arts funding cuts for necessary services for all of our communities in San Diego.
We all know that the arts are an essential aspect of all of our lives for health and wellness and a balanced and beautiful community. The arts help us to make sense of our world, expand our perspectives, and connect with each other through shared experiences of empathy, beauty, and creativity. We are all working to ensure that our community has access to all aspects of the arts equitably.
We encourage the Mayor and all of City Council to continue to support the arts and help our community grow from within. A united community is a strong one and we will forge on. I am a San Diegan writing to express my concern regarding the reported cuts coming to our arts community. As a theater mom, I have seen firsthand the immeasurable benefits that participating in theater offers young people.
I have been a season-ticket subscriber of Broadway San Diego for 10 years. I’ve been lucky enough to see a few Old Globe preview shows that later moved to Broadway. I volunteer at a handful of local theater companies and have volunteered at San Diego Pride, seeing an even further expansion of the multitude of advantages the arts provide our community. San Diego is an arts city.
Taking away funding would be detrimental to our community, and I believe, detrimental to the revenue of the city as a whole. Many people visit San Diego specifically to experience various art forms — theater, musical concerts, art exhibitions,Comic-Con and performances of all kinds. If we stop offering them, people will stop visiting. The arts are arguably the foundation and cornerstone of why we can so proudly call San Diego “America’s Finest City.
” Defunding our arts programs and organizations would surely kill the validity of our beloved slogan. I’m raising my voice about the proposed cuts to the arts in San Diego. The arts are the life blood of a city. It brings people together creating a vibrant community, enriching its citizens and the various activities surrounding them.
It is essential to a world-class city, providing employment for thousands, and enjoyment and cultural exchange to many more.
‘Not the way forward’ The $11.8 million cut to arts and culture funding in the proposed FY 2027 San Diego budget is shocking and unacceptable, not just because organizations like ours rely on city funding to sustain critical programming and infrastructure, but also because children and families from San Diego’s most marginalized communities rely on the safe, accepting spaces San Diego arts programs provide. Removing this safety net would be devastating. transcenDANCE has already faced recent federal and state funding cuts and has had to find ways to meet more need with less resources.
Without City funding, transcenDANCE will be forced to contract and cut vital programs. This will have a profoundly negative impact on the youth and families we serve, and on the greater community that benefits when young people thrive. Arts are essential, and arts funding is essential. Cutting programs that lift up residents of San Diego is not the way forward.
Proposed cuts ‘an existential threat’ I am a San Diego resident since 2012. The proposed city of San Diego budget for fiscal year 2026-27 includes an alarming 85% cut to arts and culture funding, reducing support for nonprofit organizations from $13.8 million to under $2 million. For institutions like the San Diego Italian Film Festival and many others, this is not a minor adjustment, it is an existential threat.
These organizations bring culture, education and community connection to thousands of residents each year. Public funding helps ensure that arts and cultural programs remain accessible and that diverse voices continue to be heard. If enacted, these cuts will lead to fewer programs, reduced access to cultural events, and the loss of vital community spaces. Ultimately, they risk diminishing the cultural vibrancy that defines San Diego.
This is not just a budget issue, it is a question of what kind of city we want to be. A thriving city invests in arts and culture as essential components of civic life. The budget is not yet final. I urge city leaders to reconsider these reductions and protect funding for the arts.
As an artist and professor of art at SDSU’s School of Art and Design since 2011, I can say personally how important having funding for the arts in San Diego is to my students, our alumni and the community that surrounds us in San Diego. Our graduates get internships and jobs from local arts organizations and museums that will be devastated by the Mayor’s shortsighted, shameful proposal to cut arts funding in San Diego next year.
Why should our grads choose to stay in San Diego in this environment that devalues their work and skills? Many of my colleagues and artists in San Diego have wondered the same — why should we stay? — while we could be in cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco or New York that have substantial funding for the arts and creative public initiatives?
Or we could be in rural areas or smaller towns, where the cost of living is not increasingly intolerable as it is here. I truly do not understand how we can live in such a rich city and have such an embarrassingly low bar for arts public funding.
Other cities and mayors have tax initiatives, like local arts funding from cigarette tax in Ohio, or New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s tax on unoccupied multimillion dollar real estate in New York, that could be implemented here to raise money for this budget, if funds are currently unavailable. The arts make cities desirable, profitable and, most importantly, rich with culture and community.
San Diego has always struggled to keep up in the arts sector compared to other cities our size, but many people work hard to maintain the arts here and see the results. Mr. Gloria, please don’t waste the efforts so many of us have made to improve creative life in San Diego over decades. Reconsider your funding proposal for 2027.
On behalf of Culture Shock San Diego, a hip-hop dance organization that has served San Diego County for over 30 years, we are writing in strong opposition to the proposed elimination of the city of San Diego’s arts and culture funding in 2027. The proposed budget would cut arts and culture funding by 85%. This doesn’t just impact working artists at a critical time, it takes away access to the wellness, health and community that art spaces provide.
At a moment when isolation is epidemic and connection is scarce, defunding the arts is a public health decision disguised as a budget one. Organizations like Culture Shock are a vital component in the rich tapestry of our city. They give people a sense of belonging, community and an opportunity to express their humanity.
As Ana Hernández said: “There is evidence nationwide that ballooning police and carceral systems budgets are making us less and less safe … that investing in arts and culture is a public safety strategy. ” Pouring more into policing while gutting the arts is a grave and harmful mistake.
Culture Shock San Diego TeamI am outraged that Mayor Gloria continues to fund underused, dangerous and expensive bike lanes, and yet chooses to drastically cut investment in the arts, parks and libraries in San Diego. His new policies of parking costs in Balboa Park and throughout San Diego was also without consultation, or agreement, with the citizens. The policies are unsuccessful and have negatively affected businesses and museums, and effectively closed off access to nature for thousands of citizens.
I love the Old Globe and many other museum and arts centers, and I believe that a thriving San Diego includes investment in the arts. I wrote Mayor Gloria and city representatives to insist that they restore full funding for the arts in the 2027 city budget, to include libraries and parks. They can help fund these items by cutting all additional bike lane projects and remove all unsuccessful parking policies.
San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria Arts Funding Local Arts Organizations Proposed Budget Arts And Culture Funding San Diego Junior Theatre San Diego Youth Symphony San Diego Civic Youth Ballet Joy Belonging Emotional Restoration Deep Learning Cultural Fabric Children Families Artists Arts Funding Cuts
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