On May 10, the San Diego interdisciplinary arts nonprofit Project BLANK produced the biggest and most successful event in its seven-year history: “Park Opera,” a free immersive music experience, was presented for hundreds of spectators at 12 locations throughout Balboa Park.
But “Park Opera” almost didn’t happen. In late February, Project BLANK officials were on the verge of canceling the event amid growing rumbles that the new Trump istration was planning cutbacks at the National Endowment for the Arts. Although the NEA had recommended a $20,000 grant to Project BLANK for “Park Opera” last November, the paperwork stalled and the grant never arrived.
Then on the evening of May 2, Project BLANK became one of hundreds of arts organizations nationwide that received letters via email from the NEA that their grants had been terminated or withdrawn because they no longer met the Trump istration’s new funding criteria. Most recipients were given one week to file an appeal.
Joanthan Nussman, associate director and grant writer for the interdisciplinary arts organization, said he and his colleagues were able to salvage “Park Opera” by securing some last-minute emergency donations from local donors in early March. They also downsized the number of paid performers from 24 to 11.
But Nussman said losing Project BLANK’s first-ever NEA grant, which would have represented 17 percent of the company’s annual income, was devastating in more ways than one.
“It’s a significant blow,” he said. “For an organization like ours that’s really still building our footing, being awarded our first NEA grant was a mark of distinction and a marker of our growth. Even if we didn’t receive it, we’re never going to stop saying we did receive the award.”
The NEA has not issued a master list of all the grants that were terminated or withdrawn, but national arts advocacy groups and the organizations themselves have been sharing the news in reports and on social media. Through emails and phone calls this past week, the Union-Tribune has spoken with the leaders of eight arts organizations that lost their 2024-25 NEA grants, ranging in size from $10,000 to $40,000. Besides Project BLANK, they are San Diego Opera, La Jolla Playhouse, San Diego Ballet, the Center for World Music, Sacra/Profana, Playwrights Project and Bodhi Tree Concerts.
The local grantees have filed appeals, but many say they’re pessimistic of success, because their missions don’t line up with the new federal funding guidelines. The NEA’s new grantmaking policy priorities will focus on projects that “elevate the Nation’s HBCUs and Hispanic Serving Institutions, celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence, foster AI competency, empower houses of worship to serve communities, assist with disaster recovery, foster skilled trade jobs, make America healthy again, the military and veterans, Tribal communities, make the District of Columbia safe and beautiful, and the economic development of Asian American communities.”
David Bennett is the general director of San Diego Opera, which had a $25,000 grant for its Words & Music education program terminated. The 12-week program employs six teaching artists who offer arts education to 400 students at schools in Lincoln Heights, Lincoln Park and City Height.
Fortunately, $16,000 of the Words & Music grant was disbursed early, so San Diego Opera lost only $9,000 of the approved funds. But Bennett said the reduction in NEA grants may be just the first domino to fall in the multitiered arts funding network.
If the NEA is shut down, then the more than $1 million it sends to the California Arts Council each year for in-state grants will disappear. Meanwhile, the state of California is eyeing cuts to fill a $12 billion budget deficit, and the cash-strapped city of San Diego has proposed a 10 percent cut in its funding for the arts — from $15.3 million to $13.8 million each year — for the preliminary fiscal 2026 budget that would begin July 1.
“This would be a compounding effect, with reductions in government funding at all levels of ,” Bennett said.
La Jolla Playhouse lost its $20,000 grant for it 2025 Without Walls Festival, which took place April 23-26 on the UC San Diego campus, just one week before the grant cancellation notice arrived. Presented mostly free of charge to the community, the popular WOW fest attracts tens of thousands of visitors each year.
Playhouse Managing Director Debby Buchholz said in a statement that she and her staff are devastated for all of the organizations that lost NEA grants this month because the arts are vitally important for society.
“Since its inception, the NEA has stood as a testament to the principle that the arts are an invaluable public good worthy of federal and should be accessible to all Americans, in every state and in every congressional district,” Buchholz wrote. “The mass defunding of arts and cultural institutions doesn’t just take a budgetary toll; it is an attempt to undermine the very existence of the NEA and to invalidate the incredible cultural expression, economic opportunity, and community-building that the arts provide.”
Monica Emery is the executive director of San Diego’s Center for World Music, which provides in-school world music and dance education to more than 10,000 San Diego school children.
Emery said the NEA has provided grants to the Center every single year, except one, since 1999, including a $40,000 grant awarded last year for the period of 7/1/24 to 6/30/25. So Emery said it was a shock to receive the grant termination notice on May 2.
Because the Center received and spent all of its grant money by April 30, three days before the cancellation, there was no budget shortfall for the organization, which has an annual budget of about $400,000.
But Emery said she’s quite worried about funding in the future. A grant application she submitted last June for the 2026 fiscal year has not been answered, and if the U.S. Department of Education is disbanded, federal funding for arts education programs like the Center for World Music could evaporate.
“It’s very clear to us that because of this (cancellation), we’re not a program that’s within the priorities of the current funding focus,” Emery said. “NEA funds are an essential part to what we do reaching schools that were underserved. Fortunately, knowing this might be a possibility, we started talking to private foundations that have stepped up. But their capacity is limited.
“Federal allocations were really something we came to rely on. I don’t think we’ll be able to recoup that 100 percent or fill that gap that’s occurring, but we’re certainly going to try,” Emery said.
Sacra/Profana is a San Diego-based professional chamber choir founded in 2009. It lost a $10,000 NEA grant earmarked for its summer choral intensive, a weeklong program where local middle and high school choir students work with teaching artists on music theory and voice work and perform in concert. It’s slated to begin July 7 at San Diego State University.
Sacra/Profana Artistic Director Juan Carlos Acosta said he and the organization’s board president, Karl Bunker, are still “scratching their heads” about how to realign the work they do with the government’s new funding criteria, while still staying true to their organization’s core social values.
Bunker said that despite losing the funding, Sacra/Profana intends to move forward with the summer program by filing an appeal and launching a fundraising campaign to cover expenses. He said that events of late have left him deeply frustrated, which he said is a sentiment shared by many of his colleagues whose organizations also lost their grants this month.
“Grants are not easy to apply for,” Bunker said. “I know if you look at the guidelines the NEA put down about the new priorities, it’s like there’s nothing that talks to arts-related things … It’s frustrating to all small arts organizations that depend on grants like that to survive.”
Since 1985, Playwrights Project, has provided playwriting programs for San Diego schoolchildren as well as adults, seniors, foster youth, immigrants, military and individuals who are, or who have been, incarcerated. Its $25,000 grant for a playwriting residency program in 10 classrooms was canceled May 2. There’s no word back on the organization’s 2026 grant application for $29,000.
In a statement to the Union-Tribune, Playwrights Project Executive Director Cecelia Kouma said that when her organization applied for a grant last year, it was carefully written to adhere with the NEA’s funding priorities at the time. So to have funds withdrawn so late in the 2025 fiscal year seems “arbitrary and capricious.”
“We don’t know if we would have been funded for the 2026 fiscal year, but we do realize that we won’t be given the NEA’s priority shift,” Kouma wrote, adding that despite tke dim chance of success, she will file an appeal. ” At least this will get our foot in the door to forces in advocating for the importance of the arts in a free democratic society.”
San Diego’s Bodhi Tree Concerts kicked off its 14th season in February with a five-show lineup of Mexican and Latin America-themed music and dance events that will lead up to the January 2026 world premiere of “Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote,” a bilingual children’s opera co-written by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis and librettist Allan Havis.
Bodhi Tree commissioned the opera back in 2017 and has received three NEA grants over the years for the opera’s development. This third , and now-canceled, $15,000 grant was earmarked to fund education and outreach activities for “Pancho Rabbit” at a Chula Vista school.
Founded in 2011 by Diana and Walter DuMelle, Bodhi Tree is dedicated to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and it donates all of its concert profits to anti-poverty and social justice charities.
Diana DuMelle said she did file an appeal with the NEA to rescind the cancellation, because the federal criteria does mention elevating “Hispanic Serving Institutions,” and 90 percent of the artists association with “Pancho Rabbit” are Latin Americans.
But she’s not optimistic that her appeal will succeed.
“I don’t have a lot of hope,” DuMelle said. “But I’m more determined than ever to do the program. The premiere will happen. I’ll find the money. I believe in the project with my whole heart and we’re going to make it happen.”
