Seattle-based Artists Call For Amendment to Proposed 2027 Budget
Artists and community members line up to address the Seattle City Council at City Hall on Tuesday, Oct. 6. (Photo: REK)
By Nyla Moxley
After the Seattle Police Department (SPD) reported a historic “murder-free” June, organizers in the Seattle arts linked this moment to the city’s Office of Arts and Culture’s (ARTS) $3.6 million investment during the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
In an open letter with over 800 signatures, organizers suggest amending the city’s 2027 budget by redirecting $8 million from the proposed SPD $68 million budget to the ARTS. The letter draws a specific correlation between the decline in crime and the proliferation of the arts and community engagement, stating that the summer proved “art and cultural placemaking is public safety infrastructure.”
The letter contains research to support its proposed budget changes, including a study of 264 U.S. cities that contends homicide rates drop when cities support community and arts-based solutions, and a meta-analysis that found per capita (police) staffing does not reduce crime rates.
“By resourcing existing creative networks, we are funding culturally relevant interventions that actively break cycles of violence,” the letter reads in part. “Artists and cultural workers are trusted messengers in their communities; when we fund their work, we are funding the social cohesion and collective care that true public safety requires.”
For Julie Chang Schulman (Julie-C), On the Block Seattle founder and community organizer, giving increased policing and surveillance in Seattle’s Stadium District all of the credit for a homicide-free June did not make sense.
“We're talking about a citywide impact, and the biggest difference was this huge investment that is almost triple what is available annually,” Schulman said.
Julie Chang Schulman addressed the Seattle City Council on Tuesday, Oct. 6. (Photo: REK)
The ARTS funding was distributed through 120 grants, generating 80 public art and cultural activations across the city from May 2026 through September 2026. Schulman explained that the language of "activations" is intentionally expansive.
“It could be an event series, it could be mural projects that involve young artists, it could be creating a regular weekly drop-in at a neighborhood space, it could take a number of different forms,” Schulman said. “But the reason why we use the language of activation is to make it accessible to the small community groups that this work looks at… oftentimes conversations in art and culture in the city on a policy level are dominated by big institutions.”
The “scaling up” of the World Cup model could augment the 80 summer activations into “year-round, comprehensive safety infrastructure across all Seattle neighborhoods,” according to the letter.
“It wasn't just downtown,” Schulman said. “It was all the cultural districts [that] got an additional infusion of support, so that there were more of the art walks, the communities were more resourced to do what they already do, and it had a significant impact on the crime stats and no one was talking about that part.”
A part of Schulman’s ethos is that everyone is an artist. This goes hand in hand with her critique of what she calls the “creative economy” and how it only values certain creative output, namely those that “big corporations can capitalize on.” She identified peer support, mediation, de-escalation work, and community building as uncompensated value that artists and cultural workers provide for the community.
“Part of asking the city to begin to value art and culture as public safety infrastructure is also equalizing a very disparate field of creative economy,” she said.
Seattle City Councilmember Dan Strauss (left) stands at the podium during public comment at City Hall on Tuesday, Oct. 6. (Photo: REK)
In Schulman’s research on cities that invest in the arts and community, she found that there is a 30% to 50% decrease in both violence and property crime across strategies. Some of those involve installations, events, and murals.
“The data is really beyond correlative,” Schulman said. “It really is like ‘when you do this, it works,’ and in a year where we have a significant budget deficit, it [is] just an inarguably more efficient use of spending, especially when we have a police department that we are finding story after story that is really creating their own issues.”
Public comment was held Oct. 6 at City Hall. Over 100 people signed up to speak, according to Schulman, including those advocating for tenant protections, arts and culture investments, and expanding shelter access.
“The one commonality that everybody said was, ‘why are we increasing SPD budget,’” Schulman said.
Schulman explained that beyond public safety, this reallocation could be the beginning of sustainable recovery strategies and economic development strategies in the creative economy “that are actually equitable and accessible to some of the young folks that we know are impacted by violence.”
“A lot of the intervention programs do employ art and culture strategies, but the reality is, we're graduating these youth into an economy that doesn't have space for them,” Schulman said. “This investment can really create long-term opportunities for these youth, for community members, for creatives and cultural workers, that provides hope, a sense of purpose, a sense of accountability, and a sense of agency.”
For Schulman, regardless of the outcome at City Hall, an important conversation has been started and a list of “kindred” organizations and communities have come together through collective hope in this strategy.
“There's a lot we could do together, with or without the support of City Hall,” she said.
A public hearing will be held Thursday, Nov. 5, 2026 and a final vote on the 2027-2028 budget is set for Nov. 20, 2026.
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