Since D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office released the city’s first-ever Cultural Plan last week, artists and arts leaders have been poring over the 224-page document to see how the city plans to support them and their work.

The Cultural Plan describes the city’s creative sector and attempts to quantify its effects on the local economy (for example, it notes that the cultural industry employs 112,000 people in the District). It also lays out recommendations on how to address major issues facing artists and cultural organizations—namely, affordability and access to capital. The Mayor’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2020 sets aside $8.4 million to implement the plan.

The plan’s executive summary repeatedly states that conversations between city officials and members of the arts community played a significant role in shaping the strategies outlined in the document. City officials involved in the plan also point to the fact that they consulted more than 1,500 artists, arts leaders, and “cultural consumers” during the process.

But some artists and cultural leaders hold that the plan shows a lack of understanding of artists’ needs. They crave clarity on who’s in charge of implementing certain strategies. They want a detailed timeline for long-awaited initiatives that address critical issues like affordable studio space and the city’s noise policies. And they wonder which city coffers will be targeted for funding the plan.

Loans Versus Grants

The plan lays out two loan programs aimed at helping individuals and organizations access capital without turning to credit cards or unfavorable bank loans. “This provides an opportunity for the city to be the backer for their efforts,” said Terri Rouse-Rosario, the acting director of the Commission on Arts and Humanities, on The Kojo Nnamdi Show on Wednesday. The commission distributed $26 million in arts-related grants in the last fiscal year.

But in the words of Mark Chalfant, the executive director of Washington Improv Theater, “ain’t nobody asking for a loans program.” He participated in a number of conversations with city officials during the plan’s development and said he never heard any requests for loans from his fellow creative leaders.

“People are looking for a transparent, competitive grants process,” he says. In particular, he’d rather the see the Commission empowered to distribute facilities grants larger than their current $200,000 ceiling.

“Most artists are so broke already,” says Peter Nesbett, the executive director of the Washington Project for the Arts.” Nesbett was also closely involved in the plan’s development through his work with the arts advocacy group ArtsActionDC. “They cannot handle repayment on future loans.”

A Ponderous Timeline

“It’s really important to me that there’s a clear timeline for the rollout of all these initiatives,” says Nicole Dowd, the program director of the Halcyon Arts Lab, a fellowship for emerging artists.

The Cultural Plan does assign timeline goals to each of its proposed initiatives, ranging from short-term (2 years) to medium-term (5 years) to long-term (10 years).

Rouse-Rosario, who was appointed by the mayor in December, said she’s in the process of “calming everybody down” and getting people’s expectations in line as to how quickly many of the new programs can be put in place.

“We have to gear up with staff, we have to do training,” she said on Kojo. “When you’re starting something new, it’s going to take more than a year to get it off the ground.”

But many arts leaders expressed anxiety about the proposed timelines, citing current needs for affordable space. (The Cultural Plan itself notes that more than 70 galleries have closed since 2005. And more artists are being lured to creative hubs outside the District with lower costs of living, like Hyattsville and Mount Rainier.)

Chalfont pointed to a tax incentive that the plan lists as a medium-term goal. If implemented, the incentive would compel real estate developers to rent to cultural organizations who can’t afford to pay market rate. Chalfont said he’s been searching for an affordable long-term home for WIT for more than three years and can’t expand their programming until he finds one.

“We need these things yesterday,” he says.

Where Will The Money Come From?

A number of cultural leaders worried that the $8.4 million set aside in the Mayor’s budget for implementing the Cultural Plan—a majority of which would go towards the two loan programs — is being redirected away from existing grants funding.

Rouse-Rosario insisted that the money for the loans program isn’t being redirected away from other grants and programming on which the arts community relies. “We are simply using what was in the budget in a different sort of way,” she said.

Compounding artists’ financial worries is the fact that the mayor’s budget eliminates the dedicated funding source for the Commission on the Arts and Humanities that was just enacted last year.

“These things have to equate. [Budgets] can’t just be aspirational,” says Julianne Brienza, the president and founding director of the Capital Fringe Festival, which showcases independent theater.

Victoria Reis, the executive director of Transformer, an arts nonprofit and exhibition space, says her organization relies heavily on city grants. “What’s really worrisome is that our general operating funds will disappear or be significantly lowered,” she says. “There is a lot of anxiety still in trying to understand where the funding is going.”

Increased Bureaucracy

The plan involves the cooperation of a number of different agencies. That lends it strength, says Andrew Trueblood, the director of the D.C. Office of Planning.

But some arts leaders worry about the fact that multiple government agencies will need to be trusted to set aside money in their budgets for the Cultural Plan’s interagency projects. “That requires putting a lot of faith in the leaders of those agencies and their abilities,” says Brienza.

The plan also identifies a need for streamlining the city’s permitting process for public spaces. Event organizers currently have to secure permits from up to a half dozen government agencies in order to hold festivals, parades, or outdoor concerts.

Chris Naoum of the music initiative Listen Local First says the plan doesn’t go far enough. “We support streamlining the permitting process and creating an easy-to-use online portal,” he says. But he expressed concern about the fact that certain government agencies would still be involved in permitting for cultural events, even though they are not focused on the arts.

“Without a change or shift in this mentality,” he says, “there is no way we will see any change in cultural space.”

Trueblood confirmed that freeing up more of the city’s public space for cultural events is one of the plan’s key priorities. “It’s a challenge we hear a lot,” he says. “The plan discusses how all infrastructure is a stage, and that’s something we discovered through this effort.”

Uncertainty Surrounding The Commission

Just last week the D.C. Council shifted oversight of the Commission on the Arts and Humanities from councilmember Jack Evans, who is in the midst of an official reprimand over an ethics scandal, to Chairman Phil Mendelson.

The release also comes amid reporting from the Washington City Paper that Bowser plans to reintroduce legislation to reorient the Commission as a new Department of Arts and Humanities and expand its purview to include cosmetology and the culinary arts.

“So who are the actual people who are going to be working on this plan?” asks Sanjit Sethi, a ceramics professor and director of George Washington University’s Corcoran School of the Arts and Design. “That could have a big impact on whether it’s successful. Transparency is key.”

Rouse-Rosario said the legislation “is not a change” for her office and would not affect the plan’s implementation. She would not confirm whether the bill would be reintroduced this year.

“Any legislation, if it’s proposed again, is just set to clear [up] ambiguities of who we are in the city government,” she said on Kojo.

Multiple leaders cited an incident in November as reason to worry about the Commission’s leadership.

Under the direction of then-director Angie Gates, the Commission introduced an amendment that required its grantees to sign a document promising not to use grant money for projects that were “lewd, lascivious, vulgar, overtly political, or excessively violent.” The amendment was removed within five days after a swift backlash from the arts community, which called it censorship.

“I don’t want to go back to that unreliable [period],” Brienza says.