Seattle Artists Want the Arts Funded as Public Safety. What Would Make That Investment Stick?

This summer, the city also invested $3.6 million in arts and cultural programming tied to the World Cup. More than 120 grantees produced over 80 public art projects and cultural events in neighborhoods from north of downtown to the South End.

In an open letter to Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson and the City Council, 365 artists and cultural workers and 61 arts organizations credit those cultural events as part of what made that homicide-free June possible. So they are asking the city to fund arts events year-round as part of public safety. Their proposal is to redirect $8 million of a proposed $68 million police budget increase into the Office of Arts and Culture, for creative placemaking and public art.

What matters most is how they made the case. They didn’t ask Seattle to support the arts because culture enriches a city. They asked the city to treat arts and culture as public safety infrastructure.

Making the case for the category is the first step. The harder question comes next: what would turn that proposed investment into a responsibility the city keeps funding after this budget cycle?

The letter cites a 2017 study of 264 American cities that linked growth in community-focused nonprofits to reductions in violent crime. It’s strong research about community organizations as a whole. It wasn’t designed to isolate what Seattle’s arts programming did. And June brought a World Cup, extra federal security and more than 80 arts events all at once. One month of data can’t separate what each one did.

The letter establishes why arts and culture belong in the public safety conversation. Sustaining that investment requires another kind of evidence: what changed, how it was measured, and whether those changes justify an ongoing public responsibility.

Look at what Seattle’s artists describe: social connection, belonging, emotional well-being, trust between neighbors. Health and social science already have validated ways to measure several of those. Instruments for loneliness, well-being, empathy and self-efficacy exist, and arts organizations can use them.

Through the Collaborative Arts Impact Initiative, I led a cohort of 20 arts organizations in measuring outcomes from their programs using standardized instruments. That evidence doesn’t prove a drop in crime or healthcare costs. Those claims need further evaluation. But it gives organizations something they rarely have: a consistent way to document changes in outcomes that other public systems already recognize.

Imagine Seattle’s next appropriation arriving with shared outcome definitions and a plan to measure them. Imagine it also came with a way to feed the findings back into the next budget. The city would learn which programs build connection and for whom. The artists would have evidence that outlasts one budget fight. That’s the difference between funding an activity and building a system that can recognize its value.

On Tuesday at NOAHCON, the National Organization for Arts in Health conference in Rochester, I’ll walk through how arts organizations measure mental health and well-being outcomes with the same frameworks healthcare and public health use.

Seattle is making its case through public safety. Arts-in-health programs are making theirs through healthcare. Both are asking public systems to count the arts toward outcomes those systems already fund.