Floridian Theatremakers Fight Back Against State and Local Governments in Arts Funding Battle

Many arts organizations statewide felt this shock. A constantly shifting financial landscape for the arts became status quo. He continued,

During legislative session, it was determined that applications receiving a 95 or higher would be eligible for 2025-26 funding, with small proviso allocations for organizations scoring between an 80–94.9 after several rounds of negotiation. Proviso funding would be allocated to organizations recommended to and selected by the Florida Secretary of State.

Players by the Sea scored a 94.5 on its 2025-26 grant application and was not considered in the list of proviso funding.

Worrisome, too, is the stipulation that the content grantees make must be “family-friendly.” For the arts especially, this is quite a subjective criterion. “A colleague of mine challenged the semantics of this directive in a scenario that has stuck with me,” Akers said.

She posed a scenario [of] a museum presenting an educational and transparent Holocaust exhibit to young students and using grant funds to aid in the transportation and field trip logistics. Students seeing what happened during the Holocaust isn’t necessarily “age appropriate” by standard definitions, but is a critical part of their education… Would this be considered eligible for grant funding or a violation of grant funding?

Reader, you may be thinking that this is an extreme example. Please remember that we live in Florida, a state where the education department has literally made it harder to teach about the Holocaust.

Akers left me with a thought that tapped into the exact reason this is happening:

Our work as theatremakers and storytellers has once again reached an uncomfortable urgency. The theatre has always been an impactful, safe, and sacred space to challenge ideals, spark conversation, and facilitate healthy discourse and debate. Our medium and mode of delivery is unique: it’s visceral, it’s intimate, it’s designed for stories to share the same air as those witnessing it.

Theatre is powerful and change-making. Those who would avoid change would rather cut it off at the source.

When the deck seems stacked against Floridian theatremakers, and we are constantly thrown curveballs, what do we do? 

Remember when I said the state of Florida likes to be the one to lay the blueprint? Yes, this is true nationally, but also for its smaller city councils and other elected boards. Unfortunately, my old stomping grounds of Volusia County felt inspired by this statewide action.

In October 2025, the Volusia County Council vetoed over $600,000 in arts funding for local organizations because of events at two theatres (one of which was a third-party event) that were inclusive of the LGBTQ+ community. It’s the exact same playbook the state used, and the ideals used to defend such an erroneous choice were the same.

When this news broke, Shoestring Theatre and the Athens Theatre—the two organizations at the center of it all—immediately rescinded their grant applications in solidarity with the thirty-one remaining applicants. They hoped the county would fund those other applicants, but a vote to award funds failed 4–3, stripping funding from the African American Museum of the Arts and the DeLand Naval Air Station Museum, among others. Council members on the winning side of that vote cited infrastructure and local businesses that needed the money more.

I connected with a dear friend of mine, Shoestring Theatre president Lori Lemoine. She and Shoestring Theatre found themselves in a whirlwind of politicization and weaponization of arts funding instead of being able to focus on the great work they do for the Lake Helen community. If you know Lori, you know she’s going to have something to say:

I was not surprised. The council had been looking to defund these grants for the past two years, and every time we had all showed up to fight… While I think Shoestring and the Athens will both be fine, there are about nine organizations that really count on this funding to be able to provide services for our local citizens that may not be here next year. The argument was that they [the county government] were providing a charitable donation, but, in fact, the partnership between the county and the local arts groups has always benefited both of us. Every dollar received by the arts generated a $2.40 return to other local businesses, tax revenue, and improved the quality of life in Volusia County.

I’m always intrigued by the economic output the arts generate in their respective communities and did some digging. According to Americans for the Arts’s most recent Arts and Economic Prosperity report, in 2022, the local tax revenue impact of arts organizations alone on Volusia County ($1,269,477) was more than double the arts and culture grant funding, which has remained at $611,758 since 2012. This doesn’t account for the partnerships and patronage of other businesses that the organizations and audiences engage in.