Arts Funding Framework Improved to Ensure Grants Have Greatest Community Impact

The City of San Diego is updating its framework for awarding arts and culture grant-funding with a focus on prioritizing projects that have the greatest community impact and ensuring emerging and growing organizations have access to critical funding.

The new framework was approved during Monday's City Council meeting. This puts into practice the Creative City Cultural Plan adopted by the City Council in January 2025, which offered recommendations on how to better support arts and culture organizations at every stage of their growth and development. The program modernization is meant to improve equity and access to support for arts and culture organizations citywide, enhance the clarity and transparency of scoring and funding allocations and improve processes to reduce unnecessary administrative burdens for both applicants and City staff.

This new framework will help ensure the City’s limited arts and culture funding is reaching projects with the greatest community impact,” said Mayor Todd Gloria. “San Diego’s arts community is one of the things that makes our city special, and I’m proud of the work our Economic Development team has done to make this process more accessible, equitable, transparent and responsive to the organizations that enhance creativity and culture in communities across our city.”