City budget cuts force Mural Arts and Philadelphia Cultural Fund to slash programs

In past years, the city’s budget process has followed a certain pattern for Mural Arts Philadelphia and other groups.

The mayor’s proposed budget lists city funding at one level; City Council and others advocate for modifications at a higher level; and the budget goes back to the mayor and is finalized with the higher allocation in place.

This year was different.

Philadelphia’s nationally acclaimed program that puts colorful murals in neighborhoods and provides jobs was hoping for a boost in city funding.

Instead, the budget ultimately agreed to by Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration and City Council cut funding to Mural Arts — from $5.1 million in fiscal year 2026 to $3.7 million in 2027.

Likewise the Philadelphia Cultural Fund. The group — which awards hundreds of grants to arts groups throughout the neighborhoods — was looking for increased funding in the city’s newly approved $7.1 billion budget for the fiscal year starting July 1.

But the arts nonprofit, established by the city recently, learned that it will get substantially less — $3.5 million instead of the $5 million it received from the city for the fiscal year now ending.

As a result, both groups say they will have to make deep cuts to programs.

Philadelphia’s arts and culture sector had greeted the start of Parker’s term 2½ years ago with optimism for increased funding. Today, it is “alarmed” by the cuts to Mural Arts and the Cultural Fund, said Patricia Wilson Aden, president and CEO of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance.

“We always say that your budget tells a story, and I have to say that the cultural community is disappointed and frustrated with the story being told by this FY27 budget,” she said. “Cutting the budget of signature programs like Mural Arts by 26% or decreasing funding to the Philadelphia Cultural Fund, that’s going to have ramifications throughout the city.”

Parker was not available for comment, a spokesperson said.

Valerie V. Gay, the city’s chief cultural officer, said it was the city’s view that funding for the two groups had remained flat from 2026 to 2027, since the base allocation stayed the same and it was only the added amount that did not come through — though she allowed that “absolutely I can see how it can be perceived.”

The resulting cuts at both groups promise to be substantial. The Cultural Fund will be forced to reduce the number of grants it had been expecting to distribute in the coming year, from 332 to 232. It has changed its eligibility requirements, which will eliminate grants to a pool of midsize organizations currently eligible.

“It’s going to be a ripple effect. People are going to feel it and communities are going to feel it,” said Philadelphia Cultural Fund executive director Gabriela Sanchez.

“An investment in the Philadelphia Cultural Fund is more than a budget line item,” Sanchez wrote in a statement distributed by the group. “Funding to PCF represents how the city values neighborhood theaters, cultural centers, museums, arts education programs, festivals, dance companies, community storytelling initiatives, music programs, and cultural traditions that bring Philadelphians together. These spaces are where young people discover their creativity, where seniors find connection, where communities celebrate their heritage, and where residents gather across lines of difference.”

Mural Arts director Jane Golden declined to comment, but an initial assessment from the group obtained by The Inquirer says that “hundreds of residents in at least 15 Philadelphia communities will lose the opportunity to develop public art projects,” and that opportunities for paid work, job training, and mentorship through the Mural Arts Restorative Justice program will be reduced by 25%.

Mural Arts will also have to cut by 75% its program of restoring and preserving the city’s murals, “putting at risk community landmarks that took years and significant public investment to create,” the impact statement reads.

Of the program reductions at both groups, Gay said: “I am always sad that any cuts are made or that any organizations are unable to do the work they thought they were going to be able to do. That’s always a sad time for us, and I’m looking forward to when we are a fully funded sector.”

A city spokesperson was unable to provide a full list of groups that in past years had received higher allocations after advocacy from City Council and others, but this year did not.

Aden says arts and culture has seen some significant recent “wins” from city government. Among them is the advancement of a referendum that, if approved by the mayor and then by voters this fall, would enshrine the city’s office of arts and culture, called Creative Philadelphia, in the City Charter.

The city has approved $500,000 a year to develop and implement a cultural plan for Philadelphia that would document financial needs and could identify potential pathways to establishing funding.

Sometimes the city’s support is for regular operations, and other times it is for specific capital projects. In an unusually large commitment, the city has pledged $50 million to the African American Museum in Philadelphia for its relocation to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

The city is providing nearly $32.5 million to arts and culture in FY27, according to a list provided by Parker’s office. While that total includes small items that might seem mundane — paying utility bills at various facilities, for instance — it also shows multimillion-dollar allocations to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Dell Music Center, and Philadelphia Zoo.

But the arts and culture sector often finds itself fighting for adequate funding in the annual budget process. Arts leaders and others say it has been standard practice in recent memory that funding is listed at one level in the mayor’s proposed budget and after City Council testimony in budget hearings ends up being higher.

This year, the mayor “could have funded [the arts] at a higher amount,” as she did last year, but did not do so, Councilmember Rue Landau said.

The cuts came after a budget that passed without a series of tax increases proposed by Parker, including a $1 tax on rideshare services, after failing to win support from City Council. After Council signaled it would reject Parker’s tax proposals, the administration would not agree to any last-minute line items for new funding requests from lawmakers.

Councilmember Isaiah Thomas, a consistent arts supporter who, like Landau, is an ex-officio Mural Arts board member, said that with the lack of new tax revenue and the city’s extra allocation of $48 million to cover the Philadelphia School District’s budget shortfall, the funding pie for other allocations got smaller.

“This budget year, a lot of attention and advocacy went toward schools,” Thomas said. The funding cuts to Mural Arts and the Cultural Fund were “extremely unfortunate,” he said, “and I wish we could have done something different.”

While the city’s budget is now final, there is another potential window of opportunity for funding through a midyear budget transfer process in which the city might see expenditures in certain areas coming in lower than expected, and then transfer money from those categories to other areas.

Asked whether funds might be restored through a budget transfer to Mural Arts or the Cultural Fund, Gay said:

“I think anything is on the table, but I also think nothing is guaranteed.”

Any restoration of funds would happen after arts groups have already put cuts in place, and this kind of unpredictability “makes planning by these organizations very, very difficult,” Aden said.

“The practice of underfunding the arts and having Council and other entities have to go on an advocacy campaign to increase funding is illogical,” Landau said. “It is clear as day that we should be supporting the arts with additional funding every single year, so we don’t have to go through this and it won’t ever be a question mark for them.”

What is really needed, Aden said, is a dedicated arts fund in Philadelphia and the region.

“We’ve seen other regions benefit from this predictable, stable, reliable funding. And instead, here in Philadelphia, each year we have this conversation about increases and decreases and their impact. We are sometimes left to the will and whim of elected officials, and we would like to take the creative economy out of the political realm and put it solidly within our larger civic interest, so that it is stable and has the investment that is required to reach its full potential.”

Staff writer Anna Orso contributed to this article.