Jackson Free Press

By cutting funding to the Greater Jackson Arts Council, the City of Jackson administration ends a 35-year-long legacy of providing access to funding and support for those with the least amount of exposure to the traditionally white-only art network. Barring a major shift by the administration, Jackson has to develop ways to buttress the arts community or prepare to do without.

The organization certainly doesn't lack support from the community. After the announcement about the cut in funding, social-media users began to pass around a logo made by the Arts Council to display their opposition to the decision.

Council members have reiterated their commitment to finding "creative solutions" (page 7) to the funding issue, and the mayor said that he also wanted to reallocate funds to the Greater Jackson Arts Council—if the council took the money from the city clerk's department. But support, without some money behind it, leaves GJAC right where it is now: almost $125,000 short. Perhaps creative social-media fundraising campaigns or even an angel corporate donor could bridge the gap, but at the moment, that does not seem likely.

With the grant programs and financial assistance to local festivals, Jackson stands to lose some of its hard-earned economic-development territory.

The GJAC distributed 187 grants totaling more than $136,000 this last year to support the arts in Jackson, and the recipients ranged from festivals such as the West Jackson CDC/Lynch Street Festival and the Georgetown Festival, to cultural programs such as the Jackson Music Awards, Mississippi Jazz Foundation, the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra and the USA International Ballet Competition, to even grants to individual artists.

All of those programs and people mean jobs and opportunity to the individuals involved, and to the city, it means the added allure and prestige of a vibrant, living arts community—which is good for tourism.

As the council and mayor shuttle the blame back and forth, discussing the merits of funding one project over another, the community must step and demand that support for the Arts Council remain if municipal government fails to make it a priority. Otherwise, the decision may well stand, and we all lost.

So, speak up for the arts.