How Sacramento Is Investing in Creativity

This story is part of our September 2025 issue. To subscribe, click here.

A hair salon owner, a business consultant, a massage therapist
and a loan-refinancing service provider. These were some of the
entrepreneurs pitching to attract potential investors one evening
this past June in Sacramento. Many hoped to raise $25,000 for
their businesses, while others shot for $250,000. This wasn’t an
episode of “Shark Tank.” It was the end of a 12-week business
training program funded by the city, not through the Office of
Innovation and Economic Development, which bankrolls several
incubators and accelerators; rather, the Office of Arts and
Culture footed the bill.

The EveryDay Creative program, operated by the community
development cooperation CLTRE, is one of a handful of initiatives
the OAC has funded in recent years aimed at growing the creative
economy, which is typically thought of as all businesses making
or selling cultural goods or services. More than 100 people
applied, and 20 were selected. Among the chosen entrepreneurs
were a bookstore owner, a podcast producer, a dance instructor
and a fashion designer. Also in the group were two marketing
agencies and a retailer who sells mushroom-growing kits. Each
received a grant up to $5,000. It’s a deviation from who OAC has
historically funded.

“Is it traditional? No,” says Megan Van Voorhis, head of the
city’s Department of Convention and Cultural Services, which
oversees the OAC. “Traditionally, we funded arts and culture.
Traditionally, we funded nonprofit arts and cultural
organizations, and predominantly, if you look at the city’s
history of funding, major institutions. That’s sort of the legacy
in terms of the way we funded it.”

Van Voorhis said EveryDay Creative is just one initiative and
shouldn’t be viewed in isolation. Her goal is for the city to
grow “a complete portfolio of the creative industries.” This
program aids in that by supporting all kinds of businesses. When
pressed about the participants, on what is or isn’t a creative
business, her list of caveats grew longer and longer. One way Van
Voorhis put it during an interview was to say, “The community
defines it.” In other words, who’s to say?

“It’s really hard to get the full gamut of it,” Van Voorhis says,
“because that’s why it’s creative.”

The money

The OAC originated in 1977 as the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts
Commission, an advisory committee jointly operated by the city
and Sacramento County. Its job was to manage both municipalities’
arts programs, according to the Sacramento Bee via
Newspapers.com. From inception, SMAC coordinated a team of 20
visual artists, organized exhibitions and awarded grants for
mural paintings and educational programs. Its budget was heavily
slashed during the Great Recession and by 2017 hadn’t been
restored. It was at that time that the head of SMAC’s role was
expanded to support the creative economy.

This was when the city adopted Creative Edge, a seven-year plan
with goals and strategies for developing the arts scene. SMAC
became OAC after the county ended the joint agreement and the
city raised the department’s budget to around two million. That’s
minuscule compared to the total city budget of $1.67 billion, but
a lot of OAC’s spending money comes from state and federal
agencies.

It wasn’t until after the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) was
enacted in 2021 that the department got the money to take these
recent big experimental swings. Previously, OAC used $20 million
allocated from the CARES Act for grants to over 500 local
artists, nonprofits and businesses. With the $10 million the city
allocated for it from the ARPA federal stimulus package, the OAC
could spend the money on programs and services to combat the
economic impacts of the pandemic.

“The ARPA money has become, just overall, the foundation for us
to be able to advance Creative Edge in ways that I’m not sure we
would have been able to do without it,” Van Voorhis says.

So what did they buy? The OAC spent much of its ARPA money on
grants to prop up local institutions: $2 million for nonprofits,
at least $1.5 million for events like music and food festivals,
and $410,000 for businesses. It also funded novel initiatives.
Solving Sacramento was given $250,000 to cover arts and
culture. (Disclosure: last year, I wrote a profile funded by this
grant on a body paint artist.)

“I want best-in-class education for creative entrepreneurs
accessible in this town. And that’s what we get.”

Megan Van Voorhis, director, Sacramento Department of
Convention and Cultural Services

OAC announced over a million dollars from its ARPA fund had been
allocated for workforce readiness programs for teens and young
adults, although Van Voorhis said the funding source for the
program was changed. ARPA funds also went to support educational
programming on online permitting at the newly created
Entertainment Services Division.

The arts department also put out a request for proposals, Van
Voorhis said. After Creative Edge was adopted in 2017, the city
awarded $500,000 in grants to pitched projects aimed at growing
the creative economy, which largely paid for festivals, workshops
and public art installations. This time the OAC was looking for
professional education programs for entrepreneurs.

In 2023, the pilot for EveryDay Creative was launched in this
vein. OAC spent $750,000 in ARPA money to fund the expanded
program for two years. It includes a six-week incubator for
entrepreneurs just starting out, each getting a $1,500 grant, and
a 12-week accelerator for more established businesses, who
receive $3,000 to $5,000 upon completion. There’s talk of
providing participants additional financing, but the details
haven’t been finalized. Creative Startups developed the
curriculum and CLTRE recruited and coordinated the applicants.
The program is a means to help small businesses grow, network and
get funding, which was a goal for Van Voorhis.

“I want best-in-class education for creative entrepreneurs
accessible in this town,” Van Voorhis says. “And that’s what we
get.”

‘A new era’

Some community leaders believe supporting the arts is more than
just helping people make money. Liv Moe is the founding director
of the Verge Center for the Arts, a studio and exhibition space
in Sacramento, and is board president of the Sacramento Alliance
for Regional Arts. She said OAC also needs to invest, not just in
new programs, but also in growing established institutions
because they offer the city’s creatives employment and the space
to showcase their work, meet and connect. The capital lacks
exhibition opportunities. “I hate to say it, but Oakland is
running circles around us,” Moe says.

The danger of OAC having too much of a focus on economic
development, according to Moe, is “it strips the soul out of
everything.” A city loses its cool if all art is solely made for
retail. It needs engaging events that draw in creatives to
convince them to stay. She worries the city will devalue art that
isn’t commodifiable.

“There are some experiences that are just great experiences, and
you’re not going to sell them, but they’re part of what makes a
community interesting,” Moe says. “That’s the vision we’ve lost
in the last six years, and I don’t know if we’re going to get it
back.”

Megan Wygant also has thoughts on how the city should allocate
its funding for the arts at a time of increasing need. She is the
executive director of the E. Claire Raley Studios for the
Performing Arts, which houses several dance and theater groups in
Sacramento. Wygant said many arts and culture organizations have
not fully recovered from the pandemic, and there’s less money
coming from the state after the California Arts Council had its
budget cut by $5 million. “You’re seeing a lot of companies start
to wobble,” Wygant says.

“There are some experiences that are just great experiences,
and you’re not going to sell them, but they’re part of what
makes a community interesting.”

Liv Moe, founding director, of the Verge Center for the
Arts

While EveryDay Creative targets the underserved BIPOC (Black,
Indigenous, and People of Color) community, Wygant worries about
“duplicating efforts.” The city already had similar initiatives
by local organizations such as the Calling All Dreamers program
and SVP Fast Pitch. At the time of writing, the city faces a
$62.2 million budget deficit. In a world of finite resources, and
if push comes to shove, she said OAC should prioritize funding
for “institutional stalwarts” over new programming.

“They’re having to make tough choices, and it would be great if
everything were fundable,” Wygant says. “I understand the
strategic direction that they’re taking. I wish that conversation
had been more transparent.”

Others in the arts think OAC should
prioritize its new efforts that directly support creatives. Shira
Lane is the founder of Atrium 916, a Sacramento nonprofit that
provides programs, resources and a marketplace and business
incubator for artists, with emphasis on sustainability. A decade
ago, Lane said local artists in Sacramento had a “bitter
relationship” with the city because they felt it mainly supported
the region’s nonprofits to their exclusion. The focus on economic
development changed those perceptions. “We are in a new era now,”
Lane says.

“I’m looking at it from the lens of my creatives. They now feel
love from the city of Sacramento. They feel seen, which was
very different years ago when they just felt insignificant.”

Shira Lane, founder, Atrium 916

From an administrator’s perspective, Lane said, it’s always been
easier to award a grant to a nonprofit over an individual because
they have the resources to manage the bureaucracy. Giving large
sums of cash to a single artist is risky because they could lack
the time or financial literacy to handle paperwork properly.
Working with them comes with an increased administrative burden,
and she commends the OAC for taking it on.

“I’m looking at it from the lens of my creatives,” Lane says.
“They now feel love from the city of Sacramento. They feel seen,
which was very different years ago when they just felt
insignificant.”

As for the most recent EveryDay Creative cohort, Lane sees how
entrepreneurs like the two marketing firms in the program could
be considered creative businesses. That said, she wishes the
group had more folks explicitly involved in arts and culture.
“There was a little bit that was out of the scope. I really was
hoping to see a little bit more in the scope,” Lane says.

The future

While EveryDay Creative focuses on small businesses, OAC funded
another education program with ARPA money, this time centered
around musicians. In May, OAC awarded $150,000 to the Department
of Sound for its Sound Business Summit program, which features a
series of workshops in partnership with the Center for Creative
Entrepreneurship to teach professional musicians the ins and outs
of licensing, royalties, booking, merchandise and other revenue
streams. The nonprofit’s CEO, J. Hamilton Hodgson, told me they
raised additional funds to double the cohort size to more than
100 due to demand.

A few decades ago, Hodgson said musicians had to travel to
cultural centers like New York City, Los Angeles or London for
opportunities. “Now that so much of this is online, Sacramento
can have more of a creative industry here,” he says. The Making
Money with Music workshops launches in October and aims to make
it easier for musicians to afford living in Sacramento and pursue
their stardom here.

“We see people who don’t do this anymore because they’re
essentially priced out. So if people can gain some revenue from
their music, that’s our goal,” Hodgson says. “Time and time
again, the community brings artists up, and then they leave right
when they’re about to pop. They leave Sacramento because there
are no opportunities here.”

Making Money with Music, like all of OAC’s ARPA funded projects,
was launched without long-term funding in place. Two million
dollars from the remaining funds will go toward paying up to 200
artists $850 a month for a year as part of the Creative Growth
Fellowship Program, which was originally pitched as a universal
basic income program before adjustments. What’s leftover will be
used to support the existing programs. The next task for Van
Voorhis  after all the ARPA money has been spent is to help
secure long term funding so these new programs can continue.

“We’re trying to identify other resources to be able to do that,”
Van Voorhis says. “This was always going to be a challenge for
us, was making sure that the resources are available post (ARPA
funding), but we can’t let that get in the way of making good
investments and building strong partnerships.”

Correction Sept. 8, 2025: A previous version of this article
stated that Solving Sacramento received $250,000 to pay
freelancers to write about 120 articles relating to arts and
culture. It has been amended to reflect that the grant does not
only cover paying freelancers.

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