With a series of government funding cuts over the past two years, Miami arts and culture organizations are struggling to stay afloat.
Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed more than $32 million in art and culture grants last year from the state budget. President Donald Trump called for the elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts, an independent federal agency that provides hundreds of millions of dollars to fund arts and culture nationwide.
Miami-Dade mayor Daniella Levine Cava’s anticipated budget proposal is facing a roughly $400 million deficit. She has suggested merging the Department of Cultural Affairs into the Library Department, as well as further cuts for the arts.
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Gladys Ramirez, executive director of City Theatre, said her organization expected at least $60,000 from the state grant they applied for. So when their application returned with zero dollars in funding, City Theatre had to improvise.
“We had an employee who was part-time and was going to become full-time in the next fiscal year,” said Ramirez. “Unfortunately, we lost her to a full-time position at another organization.”
Money that City Theatre has historically gotten through grants provides things as simple as paying for parking for artists in downtown Miami. When up-and-coming artists are relying on support from arts organizations, every detail of financial support can make or break an artist’s ability to grow and be seen, she said.
City Theatre finished out its 29th Annual Summer Shorts this past June, embodying its self-proclaimed theme of “defunded, not defeated.” Instead of having a full-blown production like past performances, Ramirez and her team decided to scale down to a reading series.
“We moved to the Sandrell Rivers Theater, which has free on-site parking. The labor costs are much lower and we turned it into a reading series,” she said. “We teamed up with Villain [Theatre]. So it still felt like a big, robust show.”
“We had musicians, we had performances, but the core of it was still short plays. It was just a reading rather than being fully rehearsed.”
It didn’t pull any punches, creating a character to host Summer Shorts that poked fun at DeSantis. Rhonda Sanchez (say it out loud and you’ll get the joke) was played by Villian Theater’s Jannelys Santos. She was bawdy, cutting and brought real drag show energy to the performance that brought the house down. Santos even took a jab at Levine Cava at a show the mayor attended.
City Theatre applied for the next cycle of grants but doesn’t anticipate receiving funding again, given that the grant process itself has been altered to make the criteria for funding higher than usual.
“They’re making funding very difficult because of the language that they’re trying to incorporate,” explained Ramirez. “Everything needs to be ‘family friendly.’ It truly becomes unrealistic to expect funding from the state anymore. So what I’m afraid of is, ultimately, it’s going to lead to a lot of organizations shutting down.”
The short plays, as usual, were funny, poignant and moving.
Some organizations, like Pioneer Winter Collective, focus on storytelling from marginalized groups like the LGBTQ community — especially those who live with HIV. “My company is a queer dance company, so we are at the front lines of this,” Pioneer Winter said. “After the Florida funding cuts, we did lose our NEA ( grant) as well.”
“It would have been our first NEA grant that we received. For our programming, it was specifically for a piece that we premiered back in April called Apollo, which looked at mentorship and aging and legacy.”
His organization was eligible for a $40,000 grant that fell through.
Winter pointed out that the grant review process, which normally has several people on the panel, included only two reviewers this cycle.
“Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but last time I checked, in order to have a fair review of something, you should have more than two opinions. You should have at least three people to break a tie, right?”
Larry Fields, executive artistic director of Fantasy Theatre, observed the same change as Winter: “Usually a panel consists of eight to 12 people. Our panel was two people.”
Fields has applied for grants for more than 20 years as the director of Fantasy Theatre and explained how the grant process usually went. He noted that a score of 80 and above was sufficient to receive a degree of funding, even if not total funding.
“In all the time that I’ve been here, I have never seen them set a cutoff of 95 points. So only organizations scoring a 95 and above were funded.”
Beth Boone, Artistic and Executive Director of Miami Light Project, described a downward trajectory from the last three years. In 2022, their funding from the State of Florida was $90,000. In 2023 it went to $60,000. and in 2024, Miami Light Project saw $45,000.
Boone explained that a large number of resources come from a variety of grants through Miami-Dade County’s Department of Cultural Affairs. Last year, the Miami Light Project had an 11% cut from the county department. If Levine Cava’s budget proposal succeeds, the department will cease to exist.
“We’ve lost funding from the state of Florida. We have lost funding for the National Endowment for the Arts,” Boone said. “We have lost funding from the county in terms of their budget being shrunk, and major national foundations that have historically supported our work and the work of other organizations are rolling up the carpets. We are in a time of retraction with funding for the arts.”
All four organizations detailed various strategies to circumvent financial obstacles, from scaling down performance projects and drawing from cash reservoirs to hiring fewer people and leaning on individual sponsorships.
“I think everybody needs to consider this their fight because art is self-expression. Art is belonging and art is dignity,” Pioneer Winter said.
“If we just take art and boil it down to those three things, [when] you take away our dignity, our sense of belonging or ability to express ourselves, what kind of society are we living in?”
KBI Correspondent John Pacenti contributed to this report.
This story was originally published in the Key Biscayne Independent, a WLRN News partner.
