This budget cut is personal to me and I think you should know about it

The City of San Diego's proposed 2027 budget would cut arts and culture funding by more than 85 percent. The grants program that has kept nearly 200 organizations alive would be effectively gone.

Last year I was part of the San Diego Artist Incubator program, which was made possible by Cultural Affairs funding and the California Arts Council. That program changed the way I run this business. It deepened my connection to San Diego's creative community in ways I did not expect and could not have built on my own. That connection is not abstract. It is the reason I am still here, still making, still growing.

When public funding for the arts disappears, it is not the institutions that absorb the loss. It is the independent artists, the small studios, the programs that support people just starting out.

Photo credit to @channinfulton

If you live in San Diego, or care about what it means for a city to invest in its own creative life, here are two specific things you can do right now.

Read the immediate action items put together by San Diego Art Matters and Arts + Culture San Diego here.

Fill out the budget survey and let the Budget Committee know that arts and culture belong in the 2027 budget.

If you are in San Diego, come in person. There is an Arts and Culture rally on Wednesday May 27 from 4:30 to 6:30pm at Civic Center Plaza downtown. This is the kind of thing that is worth showing up for.

I do not say this lightly. This one matters.