FY21 Arts and Culture

The Office of Arts and Culture will see a 9.1% budget increase in FY21.

Since its creation in 2014, the Office has championed Boston's cultural sector. The FY21 operating budget reflects the City's long-term commitment to programs that cultivate, promote, and sustain the work of artists, including:

• The Boston Artist-in-Residence program, where selected artists explore the ways they can use art and media to improve and bolster City initiatives.
• Grants to individual artists, which help to keep local artists in Boston and attract new ones, with the overall intent to make arts accessible to everyone.
• The Artist Resource Desk, which helps people find out more about services for artists in Boston.

The Boston Public Library (BPL) budget will grow by 2.1% in FY21 to support Boston's thriving network of libraries. As a result of the City's ambitious schedule of capital improvement projects for BPL, neighborhoods have greeted their new and renovated library spaces with excitement. In FY21, a $93,000 combined investment in new librarian positions will enable BPL to better serve two such communities. The addition of a Generalist Librarian at the East Boston branch will boost capacity at one of the most popular branches, and the addition of a Program Librarian at the branch in Roxbury's Nubian Square will help staff new program spaces and respond to an anticipated increase in users after the branch reopens.

In FY21, an investment of about $170,000 will mean that at least one Senior Building Custodian will be assigned to each library in the BPL system, enhancing the patron experience and making community spaces more inviting.