Four Tucson arts groups awarded $2 million in grants

The grants were drawn from Arizona’s $4.8 billion in American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 funds provided to help states and their communities recover from the financial devastation of the pandemic.

Tucson-born/Phoenix-based Arizona Opera and Arizona Theatre Company, which serve Phoenix and Tucson, each received $500,000, while Ballet Tucson was awarded $250,000. Tucson Symphony Orchestra got the biggest grant at $750,000.

Arizona Opera President and General Director Joseph Specter, who spearheaded the grant request, said he anticipates the groups will receive the money in the 2023 fiscal year that started in June. 

“This grant gives us the opportunity to invest in initiatives to build more diverse audiences for classical music in Southern Arizona, and as we recover from a time of reduced activity because of the pandemic, it also enables the symphony to support employment of more than 250 artists and staff,” TSO President and CEO Paul Meecham said in a written release. “This grant is not just about sustaining the arts, but also about sustaining jobs.”

The money comes at an opportune time as arts organizations in Tucson and nationwide struggle to bring audiences back to their stages. Tucson culture arts, which include theater, classical music and dance, has seen a dramatic decline in audience attendance, with some organizations reporting less than 50% capacity for many performances. Some attribute the drop to older audience members who are not ready to return because of rising COVID rates while others speculate that people got out of the habit of going to performances during the nearly two-year pandemic pause in live events. 

“I don’t think that it’s a secret that arts organizations especially in Tucson have been impacted,” Specter said.

Specter started working on the grant proposal back in spring 2020, in the early days of the pandemic. The proposal was eventually expanded to include other Tucson arts organizations with generational history in Tucson. All four recipient organizations have been serving Tucson for decades; the TSO, the oldest continuously operating performing arts organization in the Southwest, is in its 93rd year while Arizona Opera has been around since forming in 1971 as the Tucson Opera Company. It began mounting operas in Tucson and Phoenix in 1976.

Arizona Theatre Company started in Tucson in 1967 as the Arizona Civic Theatre. In 1978, it started presenting in Phoenix. The following year, it changed its name to Arizona Theatre Company.

Ballet Tucson started in 1986 and became a fully professional company in 2004, making Tucson one of only a handful of cities nationwide with professional theater, opera, symphony and ballet. 

“Undoubtedly there were many, many organizations, but these particular organizations are among the pillars of the arts organizations in Tucson,” said Specter, who has led Arizona Opera since 2016.

Specter said he hopes the grant award will inspire other arts organizations to apply for similar funding. 

“Our greatest hope is that this moment for these organizations helps provide inspiration for other organizations,” he said. “Tucson has been hit hard and Tucson is deserving of an arts and culture sector that’s worthy of the city and its people. The organizations like the four that were included in these grants are part of what we need.”

The American Rescue Plan Act grant is in addition to the funding the organizations receive annually from the state-funded Arizona Commission on the Arts. Specter said Arizona Opera, which has an $8.4 million budget, received $30,000 this year in state funds.

But the state grants could see a big boost next year. In June, Ducey set aside $5 million for the Arizona Commission on the Arts in the state’s $18 billion 2023 fiscal budget. The amount is the largest single-year investment in the arts in the state’s history and puts Arizona on par with neighbors Nevada and New Mexico for per-capita arts funding, according to the commission.