Pittsburgh City Council on Tuesday authorized Mayor Ed Gainey's administration to release $785,000 more in federal pandemic relief money for local artists.
The majority of those funds — $625,000 — will be divided among six arts organizations to support public art programming in music, visual and literary arts, film, dance and more.
More than half of that, or $325,000, will be allocated to the nonprofit Shiftworks Community and Public Arts. The August Wilson African American Cultural Center will receive $185,000. The Civic Light Opera and Film Pittsburgh will get $50,000 each, with $10,000 going to the Organization of Chinese Americans Pittsburgh and $5,000 to the Hill Dance Academy Theatre.
A separate resolution approved by council authorized the city to enter into a $160,000 contract with arts consultant and programmer Casey Droege Cultural Productions to distribute funds to individual artists hurt by the pandemic.
The $785,000 is the latest money the city has authorized spending out of $2 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds the administration of Mayor Bill Peduto set aside for artists in 2021.
The funds have been the subject of some controversy. In 2023, the Gainey administration was criticized for a proposal to reallocate about one-third of the $2 million for capital projects. Critics also questioned the administration’s expenditures from the funds for things like Fourth of July fireworks.
It seems the newly authorized funds will go to projects more traditionally considered artistic. They will also be used to provide cash grants to individual artists.
Shiftworks, which promotes and funds community-engaged public art, will work with arts group BOOM Concepts to create the ARPA-backed programming, said Shiftworks executive director Sallyann Kluz.
She said the groups will mobilize artists from the Pittsburgh Creative Corps, an initiative Shiftworks undertook during the pandemic shutdown with the nonprofit Riverlife to create a roster of pre-approved artists interested in working in the public space. (Application to the Corps is free and open to all artists.)
“We’re thinking mostly about temporary and event-based work, in large part because those are the types of projects that put the majority of the funds into the artist's hands,” she said.
Kluz said the public might begin to see the results of the initiative in the 2025 season.
Casey Droege said her consultancy proposes to create a selection committee of arts professionals to review the applications of artists who were impacted by the pandemic. She said the money would be allocated through a tiered grant system in which artists could apply for different levels of aid.
“Our goal would be to just sort of make it as simple as possible for artists to apply and then hopefully distribute as much of the funding as possible to sort of like the widest range of folks and who felt like the tiered system would allow us to do that better,” said Droege.
All the recipients of funds were chosen by the city through an open application process. The contracts with the city remain to be signed.
Awardees are permitted to use no more than 10% of total funds received for administrative costs.
Federal rules require the city to allocate the ARPA funds by the end of 2024. Recipients must spend the funds by the end of 2026.
WESA’s Julia Maruca contributed to this report.
