$20K Festival Grant from NEA Withdrawn on Presidential Order at the Moment Artists Fly to San Francisco

May 3, 2025: San Francisco, CA. Just as Australian Theatre Company, Fairly Lucid Productions prepared to board Fiji Airways Flight 870 to travel to and perform at the San Francisco International Arts Festival this week, word came through from the National Endowment for the Arts that a $20,000 grant the agency had made to fund their performance as part of the Festival program was cancelled with immediate effect.

The cancellation was the direct result of a rash of Executive Orders signed by President Donald Trump that, among a plethora of other fascistic-leaning diktats generated through Project 2025, seeks to destroy the non-profit arts and culture industry in the United States. The grant award was originally made in November 2024. Notice of its termination came through an automated email message simultaneously sent to hundreds of artists and arts organizations throughout the country on Friday May 2, 2025.

The message came at a particularly untimely moment for SFIAF, because it was received in the middle of the two-week Festival that the grant was awarded to support.

Ben Noble is a queer disabled Australian actor, writer, and creative producer. He is the founder of Fairly Lucid Productions.

The email read in part, "The NEA is updating its grantmaking policy priorities to focus funding on projects that reflect the nation's rich artistic heritage and creativity as prioritized by the President. Consequently, we are terminating awards that fall outside these new priorities."

This is despite the fact that the award was made under a different set of guidelines that the Festival did qualify for and that was approved by the National Arts Council at its bi-annual meeting in November of last year.

Festival Director Andrew Wood said of the grant's revocation, "Trump will not stop us. The festival is happening and we are moving forward regardless. Everyone has their visas and their plane tickets and, in the same manner as Fairly Lucid Productions, they are coming here to join us and the show will go on."

He added, "Obviously, our grant is just a very small part of a much bigger overall picture. What Project 2025 imagines is a gutting of this country's democratic institutions and the First Amendment rights that go with them. They have chosen to attack the arts community as one way to achieve this. But they have made a big mistake. We will coordinate with other sectors and fight back -- and we will win."

"The ironic thing is that Fairly Lucid Productions' artistic director, Ben Noble's work was inspired by the courage and determination of an American family. The play they will present at SFIAF, titled MEMBER focuses on a plague of murders of gay men in Sydney in the 1970s and 1980s. One of the victims was Scott Johnson, an American student from UC Berkeley. The police classified the killing as a suicide and refused to investigate it (as they did with over 100 other such incidents).

But Scott's family refused to accept this verdict and fought for 30 years to have the case reclassified as a murder. They finally prevailed in 2019 and the perpetrator was sent to prison. However, the most important thing about Scott's case is that the conviction caused the Australian authorities to re-classify dozens of other killings and open murder investigations into them. This is what inspired Ben Noble to write the play.

What can speak more to America's heritage than the determination of an American family to fight for justice and the systemic change that their struggle finally brought about? It is this spirit of resilience that inspired us and is the reason Fairly Lucid Productions is performing at the San Francisco International Arts Festival."

Fairly Lucid Productions is just one of 50 companies and artist ensembles from the Bay Area and seven other countries presenting their work at the Festival.

The Festival theme IN DIASPORA: I.D. for the New Majority speaks to the shifting demographics of the country. Our vision for this country is the antithesis of Project 2025 and we will prevail.

Visit the San Francisco International Arts Festival website (here) for information about the 2025 schedule. Tickets are still available. If you're not in San Francisco, visit an art festival near you.

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