No Really, How Do We Fund the Art We Care About *Right Now*?
Talking with Chris La Tray about micro-funding
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Public art matters, because everyone — no matter their belief system or politics — deserves art. You deserve art you love and you deserve art that pisses you off and you deserve art that makes you think. We also deserve art that’s not subject to the whims of capitalism or individual taste; if we only fund art that’s “pleasing,” or “inoffensive,” we end up with a bleak art world composed of Justin Timberlake’s “Can’t Stop the Feeling” from the Trolls soundtrack on repeat forever.
But public funding for art has been dwindling for decades — in part because many people, but particularly conservatives, only think the government should fund things that match their politics precisely. Foundations and other non-profits have helped to fill that gap, but we’ve found ourselves at an impasse: the Trump administration’s massive, devastating cuts to the federal government not only effectively eliminated arts funding, but significantly slashing the budgets of many non-profits that depend on federal grants. At the same time, global economic instability means many people, of all income levels, just have less to give — or, to be more precise, a lot of rich people are giving less and holding on to more.
The public money has dried up, in other words, but so has a whole lot of the private money. You might not have noticed the ramifications quite yet, but you will. It’s in the increasingly ardent pleas from your local NPR station, of course, but it’s also just absence: the film festival or day camp or curated exhibition or concert series that just doesn’t happen. Maybe you didn’t go to that thing or care about that thing, but that thing was one of many that made where you live feel vibrant and alive. Communities without art — in all its various, ridiculous, beautiful forms — are communities that are dying.
In my ideal world, we rebuild our entire societal framework with an understanding that paying taxes is paying for civilization, and art is foundational to any flourishing civilization. We might return to that idea at some point in the future, but right now, we have to do some triage.
Writer, storyteller, teacher, heavy-metal musician, Montana poet laureate and beloved-man-about-town Chris La Tray has become very good at triage over the past few years. He’s figured out how to live a writing, teaching life in Montana through a combination of his newsletter, An Irritable Métis, teaching poetry to elementary school kids, traveling to speaking gigs across the state, selling a book or five, and leading writing workshops in beautiful places. He’s also raised money to get more and more Indigenous people places in those workshops, and has thrown himself into planning the first annual IndigiPaloozaMT, a totally free celebration of Indigenous arts and storytelling happening in Missoula on August 1st and 2nd.
Chris knows what it’s like to scramble when public funding sources fall apart. He knows how difficult it can be to depend on the whims of private foundations. And he also knows that a bunch of people without a lot of means can still make things happen. So read on — and make sure you make it to the bottom to see how we’ve been funding IndigiPaloozaMT for the last year (and how you can add to the total!)
I want to talk about our shifting understanding of how we fund art and culture in this moment. In my ideal world, we all contribute to art and culture — even art and culture that doesn’t speak directly to us — because art is a public good, full stop. I think there have been various points in our nation’s history when more people have been on board with that idea (and we should also underline that there are millions of people who are still on board with it) but our government, on so many levels, is not.
You just finished a two-year stint at the Montana Poet Laureate — a publicly-funded position. You’ve also been a part of a lot of different programs and initiatives with a mix of private and public funding. I’m wondering if we could just talk about your experience with ratios of all sorts and the ways it affects the process and the audience the art ultimately reaches.
My term as poet laureate hasn’t quite wrapped up; it will some time in August. It’s worth pointing out that the position technically isn’t funded at all, but we — the Montana Arts Council, who manages the position, and Humanities Montana, who provides all kinds of speaker opportunities for communities all over the state, and me — kind of rigged the system to get me compensated for most of the appearances I’ve made (50K-plus miles of driving worth over the last ten months or so). And as anyone who pays attention to such things knows, both of those organizations were absolutely gutted by our current bullshit administration; we’ll get to that in the next question.
But funding … ugh. I think one of my biggest revelations of the last decade or so, when I started engaging heavily with arts-based nonprofits and conservation organizations (and, in a supreme case of WTF?!, healthcare organizations!), is how much the world runs on fucking grants. Or, the “non-profit industrial complex” as described in the mighty book, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded. The whole system is just another way we kow-tow to rich people and it makes my teeth grind. Then if we consider the federal government and how they just up and canceled contracts they’d already agreed to (sounds a lot like treaties, eh, cuzzins?), a practice that you or I would likely be tossed in jail for doing — it just spotlights how ludicrous it is.
For all of the distasteful rhetoric in the Substackosphere, what this format has taught me is that we people are capable of funding stuff directly. How that translates to the wider Art world, I don’t know, but I think there is a seed here. It’s challenging; for every person willing to throw $50/year at a newsletter written by someone they like, there is a mountain of them who have never heard of newsletters like this who get indignant that they have to pay $7 more for a hardcover at an indie bookstore than they do at Amazon, completely ignorant of how that behemoth actually sells the book for less than bookstores can get them wholesale. Real change will require a societal-wide shift in understanding — or education, really — of how the world actually works when it comes to funding things that matter. It feels overwhelming sometimes.
This is clearly also me teeing you up to talk about what’s happened to Humanities Montana. One of your speaking gigs (sponsored by Humanities Montana) was canceled, and a bunch of different groups stepped up to sponsor it in their stead.
It made me think of an initiative you spearheaded last year to provide scholarships to get more Indigenous scholars participating in your Freeflow Writing Institute workshop on the Salmon River — which turned out to be an enormous success.
Can you talk a bit more about both efforts — how they differed, how they didn’t, why they mattered?
When the feds cancelled all the contracts for the National Endowment for the Humanities, it killed a multitude of programs nationally and cost several people in Montana their jobs. These weren’t contracts or grants Humanities was applying for and was subsequently turned down on, mind you — these were contracts already signed and agreed on to fund programs booked months in advance. Basically, the way these particular grants work is they get approved. Then the arts organization sends their presenters out and bills those expenses against the grant and then they get the money. It’s not like the grant gets approved and the feds sends them the $1M or whatever, there are still loopholes. In my case, I actually had pending expenses from previous gigs that Humanities couldn’t bill against their contract.
That the feds believe that reneging on an agreement of this nature is okay is a staggering indication of what we have allowed our society to become. As a result, Humanities Montana had to cancel all programs (excepting a couple that are privately funded) for the foreseeable future, including ones that had already been approved, and the program manager I’ve worked with for several years now lost his job. It sucks and it’s bullshit.
It’s also worth pointing out that I didn’t let that force the cancellation of any of my scheduled events; I think there were eight or ten approved and scheduled at the time of the cancellations. Communities rallied and I did a couple things for free and they all happened. Moving forward I think there will be challenges but I’m fortunate to have a newsletter audience who is very generous and seem committed to keeping me on the road doing what I do. That’s a huge deal. It’s a kind of mutual aid that makes it possible for artists like me to do what I do. I really can’t celebrate it, and my readers and supporters, enough. That’s what I mean about there seeming to be the seed of a solution in what we do here!
What ignorant people seem to think is that these kinds of Humanities programs are some kind of “liberal” undertaking and, from my experience, that is hogwash. I’ve been in front of audiences of all sizes in every nook and cranny of Montana — a seethingly “red” state by all such measures. For some places, whether places like schools and museums or even just a theater full of mostly old timers, the only way they can get visitors from people like me is through programs offered by folks like Humanities. And they deserve them as much as anyone else. It is also a way to mend all the dysfunction in our interactions because it gives us a chance to share experiences that remind us of all the things we have in common — far beyond the tiny, often petty differences that make someone vote for a Trump, or a Tim Sheehy, or anyone of that loathsome ilk.
One thing Montana has going for it is called Indian Education for All. The state constitution mandates schools K-University teach students Indigenous culture and lifeways in all subjects. It’s a long story, with many bumps along the way, and probably worthy of a discussion on it entirely, but I bring it up because schools and teachers receive funds for this kind of education but don’t really get much instruction for how to use it. So my friend Anna from Chickadee Community Services and I are working on a plan to help schools do that, and also connect them to speakers like me who can come and visit schools. I think a lot of my energy in the next year or two (at least) will be dedicated to this mission, at least so far as this aspect of my work is concerned.
As for the workshop question, a couple years ago I was scheduled to present one at the Lamar Buffalo Ranch under the auspices of Yellowstone Forever, the nonprofit educational arm of Yellowstone National Park. In my experience, they are great people and I love working with them (I just agreed to lead a couple cultural tours in the park for them in August, in fact, something I love to do). They asked me how I’d feel if they opened up five free scholarships to Indigenous students and I was all for it. When those were scooped up in just a couple days, YF asked how I would feel if they offered those scholarships until the class was full. I said hell yes, and ended up with a workshop of something like ten Native students and two non-Native people.
That never happens. It’s usually the opposite, maybe one or two Native folks surrounded by non-Native. The experience was transformative. So when I did that workshop you mention on the river the following summer, I put out a call via my newsletter for donations to fully fund at least two Native attendees along with me. My newsletter supporters — my “Irritable Readers” as I call them — donated enough for six, I think it was, which was a big deal. This is an example of people doing something simple for someone else even though there are no direct benefits to themselves, though the non-tangible benefits are many. This is what we are capable of even at a small level, and the ramifications are exponentially huge.
The difference between the workshops and a thing like Humanities is there isn’t layers and layers of bureaucracy and bullshit. Yes, our tax dollars fund things like the NEH and NEA, and should, but the results are almost invisible. I think the immediacy of direct communication like we have here make a big difference. When you can see a smiling face as a direct result of something you did … I don’t know. I think it matters. We can’t solve all of our ills by just handing over money but doing so is certainly a tool in the toolbox of getting to whatever the next thing is.
What do you think is the future of mutual aid and funding the arts, just generally? What should we celebrate — and what should make us wary?
I think a lot of these arts organizations taking it in the face from the current administration have been pretty bipartisan for a long time and we haven’t seen the end of them. Maybe what rises from the ashes — and I suspect something will — will be better. I had an opportunity recently in D.C. (where I’d been invited to help judge the glorious national finals of the Poetry Out Loud contest, a beautiful program happening in every single state likely to stagger to an end after this year because of these DOGE shenanigans) to speak with a high ranking person at the NEA (who has subsequently left her job and told me then that she was planning to do so) that these programs, while necessary, also need some substantial improvement. So I do my best to remain hopeful that we will be able to revive the corpse once the current regime is run out of town. That is a thin hope to cling to but I am not going to give up on it, even though the alternative political party hasn’t done a lot to protect these organizations either.
What really frustrates me is the amount of money still greedily clung to by rich people who consider themselves supporters of the arts and are maybe philanthropists … to a degree. There are folks in Missoula, for example, who could have revived Humanities with one check and wouldn’t have even felt it.
As a percentage of wealth, I suspect many of us are paid subscribers to newsletters at a percentage of our incomes far greater than these so-called “arts supporters” give and that sucks. And if, if, that statement is hyperbole then it is to a degree far short of what I usually trade in! The point I am making is that the wealth in our communities is staggering. We think of the capitalist monster as something that only billionaires unleash on us, or squeeze us with, but there are many, many layers to it and, generally speaking, rich people on both sides of the voting ballot are often very stingy when it comes to loosening the purse strings to serve local communities. This must change.
Now let’s talk about a very tangible application of these ideas: making IndigiPalooza MT happen. Tell us what you imagined for this event — and what will make it happen.
To quote our website, IndigiPalooza MT (IPFEST for short), which is happening this coming August 1st and 2nd in Missoula, is “a vibrant, two-day celebration of Indigenous creativity, culture, and community. Centered around the power of story in all its forms, the festival features an inspiring lineup of Indigenous artists, writers, musicians, and makers sharing their work across multiple mediums from poetry and literature to visual art, traditional foods, and music.”
The most exciting thing about it is to say we have Joy Harjo coming to headline the opening event the evening of August 1st, which I never get tired of talking about. As for what will make it happen … it’s happening no matter what! And that is very exciting.
The idea for the festival has its earliest origin in the James Welch Lit Fest that happened in Missoula in 2022. [AHP note: you can read the Culture Study interview with Sterling HolyWhiteMountain about the festival here]. That gathering was spectacular and the wider Missoula community embraced it big time, and for the subsequent two years after it, as arguably the most visible person local to the event (as in, from Missoula, and not Lois Welch [James Welch’s widow]) who was constantly being inundated with questions about when it was going to happen again, I wanted to see it continue.
And maybe it will and I hope it does. The same group of people planning IPFEST — besides me, my friends Anna from Chickadee Community Services and Selya from the Missoula Public Library, both of who should get more credit for its actual coming to fruition than I should — offered our services in 2023 to help organize a return of WelchFest in 2024 but it didn’t happen. Then Anna suggested we do a storytelling event tied to an Indian education conference in 2024, also in Missoula, but the time frame was too short. Then I wanted to do some kind of event related to the end of my tenure as Montana poet laureate so that entered the realm of possibilities. There are likely other seeds too, if I reflect harder. The result is what is going to happen this August is kind of a mashup of all these things, though anything related to my poet laureate thing has kind of been sublimated by this bigger, more beautiful idea, which I love.
When talk shifted to action, the very first thing we did was contact Joy Harjo’s agent in hopes we could secure her and have her involvement an indicator of our seriousness once we went looking for money. She agreed to our invitation and we set about raising funds. I was confident we’d get a big chunk of funding via my newsletter, based on the experiences with workshops and such that I’ve already described, but I was stunned by how much we did get. A large chunk of that money came as a result of a class Anna developed called “Native American Studies for Everyone” that I promoted to my readers where anyone who signed-up would see their price of admission donated to IPFEST. She offered the class on a sliding scale for payment and more than 500 people signed up, bolstered when some institutions (like the Montana Historical Society, for example) sponsored members of their community to attend. That enormous chunk, combined with the generous donations of a multitude of other people meant that in just a matter of a few weeks we knew we would have the money to make it happen.
I’m really stoked where the money has come from because it proves that the traditional ideas — stupid grant applications and kowtowing all over the place — aren’t always true. Those small private donations did the heavy lifting, along with some money from a couple foundations. A few organizations I’ve done work with also sent checks and I love that. I THINK think we received money from only two grants (you can see all these folks on our Sponsors page if you’re interested), one of which, weirdly, doesn’t even fund until after the event has happened, which leads me to think we either have to commit to doing it again or tell them, “Thanks, but no thanks.”
It’s worth noting that every single local financial institution that we approached turned us down. At least one is going to hear about it too.
Pulling something like this off is expensive. We are paying all of our presenters, and a decent amount too. We are covering travel and hotels. We have a couple venues to book (though the bulk of the events are at the library, which is free). There’s advertising and all manner of odds and ends and, most importantly, we aren’t charging anyone anything to attend. So we need the money up front.
Interested people fired up to help still can! The best thing anyone can do is come to the event! Barring that, spreading the word to people you know in the area who might be interested in attending is also very helpful! I’d love to pack the venues for these wonderful people we’ve invited.
If you want to throw money directly into the IndigiPalooza pot, you may do so HERE. As I said, one of the only grants we applied for doesn’t fund until months after the thing is over. We think we’re covered, but a cushion would be helpful for emergencies, or to have on hand as starter for whatever we do next year. Shit happens and we want to be in front of it.
Finally, Chickadee is offering another “Native American Studies for Everyone” course beginning in late September. There is more information on that program HERE. [AHP note: My mom took this class and loved it and will tell anyone who will listen; listen to AHP’s mom!] I think it’s excellent and has previously reached a ton of people. Any money raised there will fund more programs in the future, and possibly future iterations of IPFEST. Everything Chickadee does is devoted to Indigenous education, so any money sent their way will be money well spent. It’s important work and they’ve done many great projects already and I’m thrilled to be part of every opportunity I get to pitch in.
Phew, this is a lot so I’ll wrap it up. I want to say in closing that if IPFEST plays out anywhere close to how the wonderful WelchFest did, I think people will love it. And I believe it will. Our three-person organizing crew is small but we’ve been mighty, and we (mostly) still get along. I hope folks can get excited about the festival; that it exists, and that it has really been a community-based, crowd-sourced process every step of the way. That is a good indicator of bigger things on the horizon for all of us. ●
If you haven’t already, I can’t recommend Chris’s newsletter strongly enough. It’s my must-open of every week.
Culture Study will be donating the entirety of our Bookshop affiliate dollars for the past year — $2418.8, but I’m going to add whatever comes in for the next few weeks — to Chickadee Community Services to fund IndigiPaloozaMT and Indigenous education programs in Montana schools.
That’s amazing. But will you help us donate even more?
You can donate directly here — it’s a 501c3 — or, if it’s easier, you can Venmo me at annehelen or send money through PayPal. As always, I’ll post all cashout and donation receipts in the weeks to come.
Further Reading:
Talking Chris about his phenomenal book, Becoming Little Shell, in the newsletter last year.
One of my favorite conversations with Chris, all the way back in 2020, about why his newsletter is my favorite.
Chris talking about what happened when he turned on paid subscriptions for his newsletter in 2021 — and was able to say no to shitty writing assignments.
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This AHP and LaTray mash up is giving me life. Thanks to both of you for all you do and all you are.
I was consuming too much news today, and this was exactly what I needed to end the downward spiraling ❤️ I stopped reading and signed up to volunteer for IndigiPalooza as soon as I saw the link!
I have several nonprofits that are near & dear to my heart (including Freeflow Institute- Chris, your support has been invaluable ❤️), so I’m always interested in funding conversations. Last year I read Amy Schiller’s The Price of Humanity after AHP’s newsletter interview, and it’s stuck with me. Putting The Revolution Will Not Be Funded on my list!