We are on the front lines of a war on poverty. Not necessarily a shortage of material wealth, although its distribution in America is both a consequence and contributor to the current distress. The poverty our field confronts every day is that which Robert Kennedy confronted while running for President in 1968. He contrasted the wealth represented in the nation’s gross national product with the wealth necessary to sustain a democracy and make life worth living.
The Mass Cultural Council released a spending plan for the new fiscal year that will invest more than $14 million in a range of grant programs, services, and initiatives to support the arts, humanities, and sciences in communities across Massachusetts.
An overwhelming, bipartisan majority of state legislators voted to override a veto of a budget increase to the Mass Cultural Council for the new fiscal year. The overrides set the agency’s FY19 state appropriation at $16 million, ensuring increased investment in nonprofit cultural organizations, communities, artists, school and youth programs statewide.
Today the state Legislature approved a final budget for the new fiscal year that boosts funding for the arts, humanities, and sciences through Mass Cultural Council by $2 million.
