Huge changes to the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts will impact the Philly cultural scene

But the creators of our stories have to eat, and that’s where things get sticky. Getting paid is now one of the hardest things artists have to do, and Pennsylvania just made that harder with major changes to arts funding in the Commonwealth.

An industrial model for the arts?

Since its founding in 1965, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts (PCA) has filtered tax dollars down through the regions to communities to neighborhoods, in amounts sometimes as small as $2,000. Through local partnerships, this funding trickled into every part of Philadelphia. But now, perhaps in line with the current agenda in DC that would claw back artists’ grants and tear our history off the walls, Pennsylvania seems to have rebranded the arts as factory work.

PCA’s arts funding arm has become Pennsylvania Creative Industries (PCI). Its stated mission is to “empower, connect, and amplify creatives and creative industries and their contributions to Pennsylvania's communities, economy, and workforce.” But this new industrial model shifts the money upward, away from autonomy for local communities and toward large economic development projects with regional and statewide impact.

PCI eliminates many key programs that diverse, smaller-scale cultural organizations rely on. Gone are the partnerships funneling money into communities. Gone are PCA’s hubs for Folk and Traditional Arts and Art Education, as well as the Preserving Diverse Cultures Division. The PA Partners for the Arts is gone, as well as the $1.5 million Creative Sector Flex Fund housed within it, ending crucial operating grants to 300 small organizations statewide (BSR has been a Creative Sector Flex Fund applicant).

PCI’s new Creative Asset Fund replaces PCA’s Strategies for Success program and the Creative Sector Flex Fund, but this fund now requires applicants to have an annual budget of at least $100,000, and offers no pathway for those with a fiscal sponsor.

Devastating changes for Philly artists

To find out what the consequences are for our area, I checked in with The Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, an organization representing more than 400 local arts organizations and individuals in Philadelphia and the surrounding counties. GPCA advocates for the arts and distributes grant funds from various sources, including, until these changes, the state’s Creative Entrepreneur and Creative Sector Flex Fund programs. I asked President and CEO Patricia Wilson Aden what the PCI changes mean for local artists, and the answer is devastating.

GPCA received $400,000 per year for the Creative Sector Flex Fund program alone. According to Aden, that money went to 80 annual grants of $5,000 each, reviewed by a panel of “practicing artists, arts administrators, those people who know the [local] arts landscape” and approved by the GPCA’s grants committee at the board level.

In the past, Pennsylvania organizations too small to afford administrative functions like bookkeepers and audits could work through a fiscal sponsor to meet PCA eligibility requirements. Philadelphia Dance Project, itself a Flex Fund recipient, has acted as a fiscal sponsor for companies like Tangle Movement Arts, a women’s aerialist group. Recent Flex Fund recipients have included organizations like Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra, Anne-Marie Mulgrew and Dancers, and the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education - Environmental Art.

But now, Aden says, 60 percent of the grantees under the GPCA umbrella will be shut out of the new PCI Creative Asset Fund, some because they do not meet the new financial requirements (an annual budget of $100,000 at least two years in a row), and some because the new rules will only fund arts organizations, not organizations like the Schuylkill Center, which supports an arts program as part of a broader mission. Orgs relying on a fiscal sponsor will be shut out too. And most importantly, the previous Flex Funds could be used for operating expenses, helping to keep the organization running, but the new Creative Asset Fund is project-based, and funding for general operating expenses has been lost.

The cost of lost apprenticeships

The Philadelphia Folklore Project (PFP) acted as the regional hub for the PCA Folk and Traditional Arts grant program. As a hub, PFP used its small annual Arts Organizations and Arts Program grant to promote and support applicants. (PFP did not administer the grants themselves, but facilitated the application process in the under-resourced communities that they serve.)

According to PFP director Mia Kang, the state program primarily funded apprenticeships, in which a master artist would work with a younger artist to pass along their skills.

“Folk Artists are community-based by nature,” Kang explained. “They are often stewarding cultural practices and knowledge that are very much about how people know who they are, how they exist in their day-to-day lives, how they make relationships with other people in their community.” The apprenticeship program paid a teaching fee and also paid for supplies and transportation, which generally came to about $4,000. Apprenticeships ranged from passing down cultural foodways to Hmong needlework to dance traditions.

In 2023, master dancer and drummer Anssumane Silla mentored OreOluwa Badaki in the West African Dance of Guinea Bissau. (In Philly, our stories come together: in 2025, Silla participated in Badaki’s Seeds and Sounds for the Dance Up Close series; I reviewed the performance and you can watch it here on YouTube).

Now the apprenticeship program has been canceled, and Kang wants people to understand that the shift in funding to an economic and workforce-development model moves us away from the “intrinsic value of artistic and cultural practices” that give people the ability to thrive and shape lives that are meaningful to them: the ability to tell their own story.

Telling the whole story

Looking back on how we got here, Aden said it’s about the story. “We used to talk only about arts for art’s sake, and that wasn’t resonating. So what would resonate with these key decision makers? The economic impact. So we started building that story.” She said they tried to talk about education and social impact, but funders did not respond to that.

“What we need is to tell the entire story,” she said. “The social impact, the economic impact, the educational attainment, the pure joy that comes from arts experiences. We have to tell that story in a compelling and convincing way, so that arts and culture become core to our civic decision making: not just something that they are willing to invest in if there is return on that investment.

Who gets to tell our stories? We should have the right and the resources to tell our own. This new model feels like a factory approach, but it’s the handprint on the wall, the music, the words, the making—our past, our future—that hold us together as a complex, yearning people.

Editor’s note: Philly’s Movimiento Administradores de Arte en Pensilvania (Movement of Arts Administrators in PA; MAAP), in partnership with Casa de Duende, launched the Restoring Opportunities for Artists and Residents (ROAR) campaign in March to fight the current cuts. To stay up to date on the ROAR campaign, including legislative efforts, join the MAAP mailing list and follow on Instagram @ROAR.PA. To learn more about the GPCA campaign for arts funding in our state budget, visit here.

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