In 1974, when Lawrence decided not to leave engagement in art up to the private sector or the marketplace, the Lawrence Arts Center and the City of Lawrence entered a collaboration to bring arts exhibitions, performance, and visual and performing arts education to the entire community. Our partnership eventually included the building at 940 New Hampshire, a gift to the city after private funds paid for half it. In 2000, we signed a lease agreement stating the minimum requirements of the partnership. We renewed the lease in 2012.

For both parties, the lease states minimum rather than maximum contribution to the collaboration, and its existence should not put the Lawrence Arts Center at a disadvantage when requesting city support. Yet, while honoring their legal, contractual commitments, city commissioners recently voted to diminish the 42-year partnership that benefits our entire community.

Of our $3 million operating budget, the City had provided $140,000 for maintenance and financial aid, less than 5 percent of our total. This funding beyond the lease’s minimum requirement allowed us to operate with the spirit under which the Arts Center was founded: that arts are for all of our families regardless of their ability to pay. The recent $55,000 cut and the recommendation to cut this funding entirely in 2018 de-prioritize public access to the arts, which was the motivation behind the 1974 community vision.

Since moving into 940 New Hampshire, the Lawrence Arts Center has grown tremendously — supporting artists and their work at high levels, adding teaching artists, classes, community outreach, exhibition space, a kindergarten, free events and more. Also included in our costs are support for the Busker Fest and Art Tougeau, financial aid for anyone who otherwise could not afford visual or performing arts education, as well as facility use by community groups and artists at little or no cost. We have over 250 employees and contract artists and over 200,000 visitors each year.

City support for the Lawrence Arts Center has been an excellent investment for the entire city, and we leverage it to win grants from federal and private organizations. This year alone, we have won grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Windgate Foundation, the Japan Foundation and the Hearst Foundation. Since 2014, we have won over $1 million in grants to support the Free State Festival, the National Ceramics Conference, the city cultural plan, a Lawrence-based documentary about Langston Hughes, the East Ninth project, among others. Our marketing reach sells Lawrence around the world. The greater the city support, the more likely we are to continue to bring in outside funds based on our long-standing public and private partnership, funds immediately reinvested in the Lawrence community.

We have a strong business plan; however, we are not entirely market-driven. In fact, though we work to increase revenue (art sales, tickets, tuitions), we strive to increase the percentage of our income that is not commerce-driven because we want to be a place of experimentation, challenge, joy, unexpected encounters and street parties, a place where people who cannot pay can take classes and use studios and theaters. As the CEO of the Lawrence Arts Center, my role is to seek funding to support artistic experience –sometimes regardless of what the marketplace might support on its own.

Public funding makes this possible. The state of Kansas has defunded art; Lawrence has not, but the move to cut funding to our not-for-profit community arts center is a step toward privatization and diminished access.

City funding for maintaining this city-owned asset makes economic sense, especially as the building is now 15 years old and more fully and exuberantly used than ever.

We do not believe that success on the part of the Arts Center should mean discontinuing city funding for maintenance or financial aid.

Given what the arts mean to the identity and economy of Lawrence, we hope city leaders return to the visionary spirit of generations of commissioners who supported the creation of the Lawrence Arts Center and built this building. We urge city leaders to maintain their support now, learn about returns on their investment in the Lawrence Arts Center and develop a plan for the City’s role in ensuring the future viability of the Lawrence Arts Center as part of the citywide cultural plan we helped fund.

— Susan Tate is the CEO of the Lawrence Arts Center.