On April 20, Mayor Todd Gloria presented the draft budget for the 2027 fiscal year to the City Council, and the budget contained a drastic change from the 2026 fiscal year: the slashing of the arts and culture budget from $13.8 million to $2 million.
According to organizations like Arts+Culture: San Diego and San Diego ART Matters, this proposal – if passed – would cause layoffs, program eliminations and potential closures, having an immediate and long-lasting effect on the city’s arts scene.
The proposal is part of an effort to address San Diego’s $118 million structural budget deficit, but has been met with heavy opposition from the arts community, who rallied outside City Hall on April 20 to protest the cuts.
The presence of arts and culture at the rally was everywhere. Dancers and musicians performed for the crowd, and protestors held signs displaying phrases like “Art Matters,” “Stay Cultured, San Diego,” “Art is Culture” and “Empathy Starts With Arts.”
With SDSU being a university driven by its arts programs, students and alumni were shocked by the new draft budget.
Robert Bednar, a fourth-year musical theatre major, attended the rally and said he was heavily disappointed with the proposed cuts.
“My main reaction was that I was so taken aback because I went to SDSU because I knew how big the arts were in San Diego,” Bednar said. “It’s one of the driving forces here in the economy and as a culture.”
Bednar has been a part of many SDSU theatre productions, including the current Spring 2026 show, “Tomorrow the Island Dies.” He is also involved with IATSE Local 122, the stage technician union in San Diego, and received an email about the cuts and the organized rally.
“I immediately posted it on my [Instagram] story to be like ‘Here’s what’s happening,’ and I made sure I posted info like ‘You can come to the Civic Center, you can do emailing online, email your representatives for whatever district you’re in,’” Bednar said.
Bednar said the event was “put together so fast,” but still had a large attendance, including the SDSU band, which performed at the rally.
According to Bednar, the cuts would hurt San Diego not only culturally, but also economically. Bednar said San Diego Pride stands to lose about $350,000, but that this event and ones like it bring beneficial tourism and economic stimulation to the city.
“We can’t take away from the biggest grossing economy in San Diego,” Bednar said.
Anya Lopez, a fourth-year environmental science major, has been dancing in San Diego since she was five, and now works as a dance teacher at Inspire School of Ballet in Chula Vista. Lopez said she is worried about how the cuts will impact dance spaces and communities.
“The arts and culture budget cuts are honestly scary for me,” Lopez said. “I am graduating this semester and want to audition for some dance companies in San Diego and in California. I hear the happenings of the dance community, and funding has already been a long-standing issue. So with these cuts, what now? Even fewer jobs and less performance opportunities?”
She also trains with the San Diego Ballet School and said she is concerned about City Ballet losing funding, which she read about in the San Diego Union-Tribune.
“Dance spaces may have to rely on other forms of income to make up for these cuts, such as additional outreach performances, renting out studio space or just allocating the money they do have to different avenues, like more layoffs for working artists and smaller performances,” Lopez said. “Most of what I think will happen is based on trends occurring already in some spaces.”
Emerson Clarke, a 2025 SDSU graduate who also attended the rally, works for San Diego Opera, La Jolla Playhouse and Cygnet Theatre in San Diego.
“We were incredibly hurt and incredibly appalled by their actions to eliminate arts and culture because it’s not just youth programs, theatres, museums, libraries and all of these things, but it’s also hospitality, hotels, small businesses and restaurants,” Clarke said. “We knew that by cutting the arts and culture budget, they would really be hurting the economy of San Diego and also the community of San Diego, and what makes San Diego so desirable for a lot of people.”
Clarke said the arts community in San Diego is important because it makes people feel like they “have a place to belong.” She said this sense of community and solidarity was evident at the rally, as people could be seen wearing t-shirts and name tags labeled with the arts organizations they were representing.
Despite the fact that they were there to protest, Clarke said everyone was in high spirits because “[they] were all supporting each other.”
Bednar shared the sentiment, expressing that the number of people who showed up was proof of their pride and the connection between the arts and the city.
“It was just really cool to see how strong the arts community is that showed up to this protest,” Bednar said. “It really showed that we stand together. We’re all in different things. There are museum curators – all these different people from every branch of art and culture in San Diego. You really don’t have San Diego if you don’t have us.”
City Council will adopt the final 2027 fiscal year budget on June 9, and these students hope circumstances will change for San Diego arts and culture before then.
