In response to the City of Savannah’s recent draft budget for FY17, which includes deep cuts to our city’s arts and social services sectors, Deep Center’s Executive Director Dare Dukes has penned a passionate op-ed in today’s Savannah Morning News advocating for the importance of funding the arts and social services:

This sector is the culture and care of Savannah — the space that cradles most of what is right and lovely and exuberant about our complicated city. And it is our culture and care that toils — late nights and weekends for low or no pay — to address what most urgently needs fixing.

I am a proud member of this sector, and, like most of my sector’s laborers, I seem to have been called to it. My colleagues dedicate their lives to enlivening hearts, breaking down boundaries, creating safe spaces for vulnerable people, fostering joy, celebrating the idiosyncrasies of our local beauty, and correcting, one story at a time, a history’s worth of injustices and bad decisions baked into the bricks of our civic, social and fiscal structures.

Read the full op-ed here: “Budget Should Include Strong Investment in Arts, Social Services.”