When it comes to the arts, Sal Prizio has a message for the people of New Hampshire.

“I’m trying to take a wrecking ball to the perception that we are not an important part of the economy in the state,” said Prizio, director of the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord.

“It’s not without precedent that arts organizations help revive an economy in a town, but we never get credit for it. Then when it comes time for budget cuts, we’re always the first one. It’s like, ‘We cut the arts because we don’t need those.’ Okay, but we’re driving millions of dollars to the city. We’re just as important as other sectors of the economy,” Prizio said.

On Thursday, the New Hampshire House will vote on whether to defund and eliminate the State Council on the Arts, cuts that would make New Hampshire the only state in the union without an arts council. Prizio, who also chairs the advocacy organization Arts4NH, hopes legislators will respect the integral role of the arts in creating thriving communities.

Rep. Dan McGuire, an Epsom Republican who serves as vice-chair of the House Finance Committee, views matters differently.

“This just didn’t reach the level of necessary funding. It’s a want-to-have, a nice-to-have kind of thing but not a must-have, in my opinion,” McGuire said at a March 31 committee meeting. He did not respond to the Monitor’srequest for comment.

According to Arts4NH, the State Council on the Arts is the biggest funding source for arts organizations and individual artists in New Hampshire. In the 2024 fiscal year, the council awarded $1.5 million to 180 grantees in over 60 communities. Data collected in 2022 by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis and National Assembly of State Arts Agencies found that New Hampshire’s arts and culture economic sectors have a $3.4 billion impact and represent 21,000 jobs.

“Please don’t sit here and tell me this is a want and not a need. We are actually an economic driver,” Prizio said.

The funding the Capitol Center for the Arts receives from the State Council on the Arts allows the performing arts center to offset the costs of free community events, offer educational programming, conduct outreach and provide performance space to other nonprofits and underserved organizations. Between its two venues, the Capitol Center hosts around 100,000 patrons a year.

Over the last year, the arts center worked with a wide variety of organizations, including Overcomers, Project Story, Concord Area Student Leadership, Concord Public Schools, Concord Pride, Queer Elective, and Vet-Tix.

Gov. Kelly Ayotte spoke to reporters at the State House about potential cuts to the arts on Wednesday, March 26.

“We knew we were dealing with a more challenging fiscal environment, but my budget had my priorities in it, and so I funded the arts in my budget. I did not make those reductions in my budget, so I don’t agree with them,” Ayotte said.

The proposed cuts at the state level mirror cuts at the federal level. Last week, the Department of Government Efficiency terminated millions of dollars in grant money to the National Endowment for the Humanities, including funding for state humanities councils.

New Hampshire Humanities receives half its budget from the National Endowment for the Humanities with the other half matched by individual donors, foundations, in-kind donations and corporate support.

The end of federal funding has halted the grant application process that the organization relies on to fund local humanities programming, which encompasses history, culture, places and ideas with the overarching goal of promoting conversation, education and connection.

Last year, New Hampshire Humanities funded 641 free public humanities programs that reached over 26,000 residents in 172 communities, with partnerships across 251 organizations. The spring grants process was already underway when the National Endowment for the Humanities cuts were announced last week. No more grants will be considered for the rest of the year.

Among the programs affected by slashed funding are a Holocaust education narrative project and a library-based initiative to foster dialogue around the experiences and impacts of the pandemic.

“We’ve had to basically deny funding. We did not even fully review the grant proposals this round because we knew we didn’t have that money,” said New Hampshire Humanities director Michael Haley Goldman.

Also in jeopardy is the organization’s Humanities to Go program, which brings guest speakers to different communities across the state. Goldman predicted that, without federal funding, New Hampshire Humanities will lose its ability to reach as many people and support as many smaller organizations, including libraries, schools, museums and nonprofits.

While the national conversation had been indicating potential cuts to humanities funding, Goldman said he did not foresee the large-scale changes the organization now faces.

“If we continue to be disconnected from federal funding, we’ll have to have much larger changes to our organization in terms of staffing, in terms of programming, in terms of just the way we operate,” said Goldman. “We’ll still be here for the state of New Hampshire, even without the federal government, but we will get incredibly reduced.”

Across the country, humanities organizations find themselves in the same boat. In New Hampshire, where the arts council is also in limbo and the legislature has made attempts to defund the state library, funding cuts mean big changes could be on the horizon.

“It’s this horrible perfect storm in the reduction of places at the heart of communities around the state,” said Goldman.

Although the National Endowment for the Humanities cuts have already gone into effect, New Hampshire Humanities has issued a call to action for people to urge their congressional representatives to advocate for humanities funding.

As for the State Council on the Arts, New Hampshire’s House of Representatives will vote on the budget on Thursday before it goes to the Senate and, later, to Gov. Ayotte.

Last week, Prizio urged people to contact their elected representatives ahead of the House vote. He emphasized that, if the state successfully gets rid of the arts council, getting it back in the future will be much more difficult.

“Arts are still a part of our humanity. It is not a want. It is a need,” Prizio said.

For more information on the State Council on the Arts,  visit www.nharts.dncr.nh.gov. To learn more about New Hampshire  Humanities, visit www.nhhumanities.org.

Rachel Wachman can be reached at rwachman@cmonitor.com