The mayor of Lubbock—a metropolis of greater than 260,000 in northwest Texas—has responded to calls to reinstate funding for a neighborhood month-to-month artwork stroll after town council voted to slash tens of hundreds of {dollars} over a drag queen efficiency and different LGBTQ+ programming, because the campy artwork kind continues to seek out itself within the crosshairs of the US tradition wars.
Final week, the Lubbock Metropolis Council voted 5-2 to slash $30,000 in funding from the Louise Hopkins Underwood Heart for the Arts (LHUCA). The determine represents about 25% of funding needed for the LHUCA to run the First Friday Artwork Path. The free, self-guided stroll via downtown Lubbock started in 2004 and highlights native museums, galleries, artwork centres and small companies. Guests can even take a free trolley alongside the downtown route. Every month, the occasion attracts as many as 20,000 folks.
This yr’s grant for the path was initially authorized by Civil Lubbock Inc (CLI), a non-profit that works in tandem with town to distribute grants for artwork programming utilizing taxes collected from native resort stays. Nonetheless, town council voted towards CLI’s advice to as soon as once more award a grant to the LHUCA throughout a 23 July council assembly.
Lubbock mayor Mark McBrayer, who indicated through the assembly he supported slashing the funding, took to social media this week after the vote resulted in outrage domestically.
“A typical concern that a lot of you shared in your cellphone calls and e mail was that CLI and LHUCA weren’t made conscious prematurely that the vote to defund would happen and weren’t offered a possibility to reply,” McBrayer wrote in an announcement. “Metropolis employees and I’ve since reached out to representatives of CLI and LHUCA to permit them to reply, and so they have accomplished so by offering further info and specificity, which I consider could have impacted the council’s evaluation.”
McBrayer wrote in his assertion that not each grant utility is awarded funding, nor might the programme present substantial funds for all of the occasions that occur throughout the metropolis.
“Though I can’t communicate for anybody else on town council, with the extra data obtained, I’m hopeful we are going to come to an association relating to funding the grant with LHUCA and [First Friday Art Trail] for the approaching yr,” McBrayer stated. “With that, I merely ask that you just give town council a possibility to work via this in a approach that gives assist for the humanities in Lubbock that’s helpful for our total neighborhood.”
When it got here time for the Lubbock Metropolis Council to approve CLI’s suggestions final week, councilmember David Glasheen raised considerations that the artwork stroll was “selling [the] LGBT agenda” and liable for youngsters’s elevated publicity to “sexually express content material”.
Glasheen, who took workplace in Could and has described himself as a “pro-liberty Republican”, stated the artwork stroll consisted of programming like “Queering West Texas”, an LGBTQ+ workshop and drag performances that had been “subsidised and promoted by tax {dollars}”. Glasheen claimed the artwork stroll deliberate to supply full drag performances in 2025.
“It isn’t applicable to focus on youngsters with these child-friendly LGBT workshops,” Glasheen stated, in response to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. “And it is definitely not applicable for tax {dollars} for use to advertise.”
The workshop Glasheen talked about was truly a Pleasure month exhibition organised by college students on the Texas Tech Faculty of Artwork satellite tv for pc gallery, which runs independently from LHUCA, in response to Glasstire. The positioning hosted family-friendly artwork actions through the Lubbock Pleasure Fest, which has no direct ties to artwork path programming. Glasstire reported that the drag performances Glasheen referred to could have been a showcase held earlier this month for an exhibition at Charles Adams Studio Tasks. After confusion amongst leaders on the non-profit over Texas legal guidelines relating to drag, performers stripped right down to their shapewear and placed on a present “out of drag”. Neither of those examples had been official LHUCA programming.
Through the council assembly, not all members agreed with Glasheen’s characterisation of the artwork stroll.
“We do not get to choose who we’re representing. We’ve to be inclusive of our neighborhood,” stated councilmember Christy Martinez-Garcia. “We’ve to place the unity in neighborhood. I simply can’t perceive the place that is coming from.”
Martinez-Garcia, who represents the district the artwork stroll is held in, informed the Texas Tribune that “extra folks attend First Friday than vote” in Lubbock elections.
“As this metropolis grows and within the curiosity of town to construct up downtown, we have to make it open to anyone and all people,” Martinez-Garcia stated through the assembly. “[The art walk] permits us to decide on, identical to after I select what TV station I wish to watch. I don’t suppose all of the programming relies simply on [LGBTQ+].”
After the vote, a spokesperson for the LHUCA stated in an announcement that its leaders had been “terribly disenchanted and disheartened” by the council’s choice, and disputed Glasheen’s claims about LGBTQ+ programming on the occasion. The occasions Glasheen talked about had been held at one other location, not on the artwork centre’s property, the assertion defined. Every of the artwork stroll’s roughly 15 stops are liable for their very own programming.
The slashed $30,000 would have largely gone towards occasion safety, the trolley service, signage and paying native musicians and artists. The centre’s assertion additionally claimed town council had not reached out with questions or factors of clarification about their programming or funding earlier than the vote.
Martinez-Garcia informed the Texas Tribune she requested an merchandise to rethink the vote on the agenda for town council’s subsequent assembly. The following First Friday Artwork Path shall be held on 2 August.
The vote in Lubbock is an element of a bigger push by conservatives throughout the US to ban drag performances, claiming they’re doing so to guard younger youngsters from sexually express materials. Final yr, a federal decide in Texas blocked the state from implementing laws that might have criminalised some drag performances if youngsters had been within the viewers.
“Drag exhibits categorical a litany of feelings and functions, from humour and pure leisure to social commentary on gender roles,” US District Choose David Hittner wrote within the ruling. “There isn’t any doubt that on the naked minimal these performances are supposed to be a type of artwork that’s meant to entertain, alone this could warrant some degree of First Modification safety.”
