Lubbock Council pulls arts funding over drag show
The Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts The Lubbock City Council voted July 23 to strip funding from a popular and free monthly arts walk because one council member claimed the event promoted a drag show, the Texas Tribune reports. The 5-2 vote strips the Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts of $30,000 in funding for the First Friday Art Trail — about a fourth of the event’s total funding — event though officials with the center pointed out that the drag show in question was not held on LHUCA property “but rather at a separate entity in control of their own creative programming.” According to the Tribune, “Civic Lubbock, which administers the grant, said in a statement that the funding requested covers marketing for the art trail, a trolley service, musician and artists fees for those performing on the art center campus, and security.
There are more than 15 venues that participate on the trail, and each venue is in charge of its own programming.” Council member David Glasheen, who proposed the cut, said it isn’t appropriate to “target” children with LGBTQ workshops and that it is “certainly not appropriate for tax dollars to be used to promote it.” Glasheen was just recently elected to the city council, as was Mayor Mark McBrayer, who said he “love[s] the first Friday” and has “enjoyed it many times,” but that he thinks “it’s unfortunate they chose to go in this direction.
I can’t support spending money; it’s a slippery slope.” City Council member Christy Martinez-Garcia, who represents Lubbock’s north side where the art walk is held, said that she was blind-sided by the vote and that she opposes it. “We need to make it open for anybody and everybody, I’m straight but I don’t hate. … It’s so important that we don’t pick who we are representing.” Supporters of LHUCA and arts in the city have criticized the council’s vote and, as the website Everything Lubbock reports, at least one business has stepped up to help make up the lost funding for the
