Your Urgent Action is Needed! SD Governor Announces Plans to Kill All Arts Funding For the State

Dear Friend of the Arts,

The arts in South Dakota need your help.

The revised budget Governor Rounds presented to the South Dakota Legislature cuts all funding to the South Dakota Arts Council.

The South Dakota Arts Council provides a primary source of grant funding to many local arts organizations and artists throughout the state. Shutting down this agency means that South Dakota would be the only state in the nation without a state arts council or state-run arts program.

If the doors to the South Dakota Arts Council are closed, I can not imagine the barriers that will need to be broken down for their reopening in the future.

The arts affect every one of our lives, every single day. Funding from the South Dakota Arts Council provides local artists and arts organizations with the financial resources needed to create art that makes our communities beautiful, programs that inspire and educate us, enhancing our lives.

Please take two minutes to help.

Write a letter or email your Legislators. You can find your Legislator contact information here: http://legis.state.sd.us/who/index.aspx

Below is a sample letter to use by simply copying and pasting into a new document.

I greatly appreciate your advocacy on this important issue.

Sincerely,
Robert Joyce
Executive Director

Dear [Legislator],

I am writing in support of state funding for the South Dakota Arts Council. I do not favor the proposed elimination of this important state agency.

If you have attended a symphony concert, community theater production, jazz concert, visited a local art gallery, or your children attend a public school, you have surely witnessed the positive impact that South Dakota Arts Council funding provides for us all.

-Last fiscal year, the state of South Dakota’s investment in the arts was 86 cents for each state resident. The return on that investment included $48 million in economic impact from programs by arts organizations across the state.

-In addition, that 86 cents for each citizen sent 26 artists to 162 schools for 231 weeks, bringing arts opportunities to 35,000 South Dakota young people.

-And that same 86 cents per person investment made $1.1 million available on a matching basis to 530 local arts organizations and other non-profit arts programs, schools, artists and units of government in every county of South Dakota.

-The arts attract a creative and educated workforce for our state, furthering economic growth. Cutting funding to the Arts Council would put hundreds of jobs in jeopardy and threaten the retention of our most precious resource, our young people.

-A typical attendee of a nonprofit arts event spends $27.79 per person, per event (excluding admission) on transportation, lodging, and other event-related costs. Non-local attendees spend twice as much.

-Tourists who visit South Dakota because of an arts related event are more likely to spend more in our state, using hotels and spending more than the average traveler.

Shutting down the Arts Council means that South Dakota would be the only state in the nation without a state arts council or state-run arts program.

At a time when our newly-elected President sees the arts as a vehicle for national change and has stimulus plans to increase support for the National Endowment for the Arts by $50 million dollars, South Dakotans may completely miss out. Without funding from the state legislature, the South Dakota Arts Council won’t be eligible for any matching funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

I trust that you will work to reinstate funding for the South Dakota Arts Council.

Sincerely,

[YOUR NAME]