In 2011, Emanuelee Bean received his first real budget as an artist.
A $7,000 grant from Houston Arts Alliance (HAA) for a poetry festival called Speak Green forced him to do something he had never done before. To put a dollar value on his own work as a poet, not just the venue and the other performers he was paying.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that I got my National Endowment of the Arts grant because I got an HAA grant,” said Bean, who performs as “Outspoken Bean” and later became Houston’s poet laureate. “When you get one grant, that begets you getting other grants.”
Houston Arts Alliance has distributed $182 million in arts grants since its founding in 2006, and as the organization marks its 20th anniversary at the Gilded & Golden Gala on Sept. 26, Black artists and institutions who built their careers on that funding say the investment did more than pay bills; it validated their place in the field.
Twenty-year anniversary
HAA administers city arts grants, civic art commissions, and disaster recovery programs through a contract with the City of Houston, funded by the hotel occupancy tax, a revenue stream Texas authorized in 1959 and Houston adopted in 1969.
The city expanded the tax to theaters and museums in 1977, the same year the Cultural Arts Council of Houston, or CACH, was incorporated to steward those dollars. In 2006, the city consolidated CACH with the Municipal Arts Council, the Municipal Art Conservation Office, and the Civic Art Committee, bodies dating to 1965, to form Houston Arts Alliance.
CEO Taylor Jackson, HAA’s youngest leader and the first woman and person of color to hold the role, said the agency’s 2024 Creative Impact Boost was built with that history of inequity in mind. Artists and organizations serving marginalized communities, or those identified as led by people of color, can receive a 45% boost on top of their grant award.
“We really wanted to think about the historical prejudices and marginalization that’s existed within the funding context,” Jackson said. “ To figure out how we could boost resources to these communities so that they’re able to not only sustain themselves, but they can really see their work grow.”
A financial stepping stone
Bean went on to serve as Houston’s poet laureate from 2021 to 2023, a position also funded through HAA, and returned to the grant program in 2024 with two projects: “Let Creativity Happen,” a citywide public art campaign, and “Message By Air,” a storytelling event at the Deluxe Theater built around oral histories of Fifth Ward, where Bean now lives.
“Getting an HAA grant puts you in front of invisible eyes,” Bean said. “It’s not just the logo, eventually it’s on your CV, your resume, and that’s a stamp that says you’re trusted with money.”
The Ensemble Theatre, the oldest continuously operating Black professional theatre company in the Southwest, has worked with HAA and its predecessor organizations since the 1980s. Founded in 1976 by George Hawkins and celebrating its own 50th anniversary this year, the Midtown theater relies on HAA funding to support its six-show main stage season, which engages more than 150 contract artists annually.
“Without that support, we would not be able to engage the over 150 contract artists that get to come to us,” said Rachel Hemphill Dickson, the theater’s associate artistic director. “We would have to really figure that out, make some significant shifts in order to sustain without HAA funding.”
Early grant dollars also helped shape the theater’s leadership structure decades ago, funding its first managing director role alongside its artistic director. But Dickson said disparities persist. As a culturally specific organization, the Ensemble still receives funding disproportionate to the number of people it serves compared with organizations that are not culturally specific.
“It’s important that we have organizations like HAA that can fund organizations like ours,” Dickson said. “We know in America that the socio-economic framework in this country has disparity, and that still exists, which means minority organizations tend to receive less of the dollars. We are grateful for the dollars we receive.”
Closing the equity gap
Jackson said addressing that gap is an ongoing process. HAA convenes annual grant working groups made up of longtime applicants, first-time grantees, and artists who have never applied, drawn from across council districts and budget sizes, to help set funding priorities each year. Applications for the working group shaping 2027 priorities opened in July.
Beyond grantmaking, HAA manages the city’s Civic Art Collection, which includes works by Black Houston artists Robert Hodge, Earlie Hudnall Jr., and Jamal Cyrus, as well as its Resilience and Recovery Department, launched after Hurricane Harvey and since expanded to include grant writing and tax workshops.
“Getting an HAA grant puts you in front of invisible eyes. “It’s not just the logo, eventually it’s on your CV, your resume, and that’s a stamp that says you’re trusted with money.”
Emanuelee “Outspoken” Bean, former Houston poet laureate and HAA grantee
This year, HAA signed a new five-year contract with the city, with two one-year renewable extensions, securing up to seven years of guaranteed funding for Houston’s arts sector starting in 2027.
The Sept. 26 gala at the Thompson Hotel will honor Houston native Debbie Allen as its Golden Trailblazer and H-E-B as its Community Legacy honoree, with proceeds funding HAA’s resilience work and artist-centered initiatives.
For artists who have never applied for HAA funding, it isn’t too late to consider.
“These are public dollars,” Jackson said. “Why not leverage this opportunity to invest in yourself? Don’t let a ‘no’ completely defeat you.”
- September 1977: City ordinances expand HOT funding to support civic theaters and museums.
- October 1977: The Cultural Arts Council of Houston (CACH) is incorporated to support the arts, culture, and the humanities in the region.
- 2006: Four separate local entities handling arts funding, civic art, and cultural advising merge to officially form the Houston Arts Alliance.
- 2026: HAA marks its 20-year milestone, commemorating two decades of public investment, grantmaking, and resilience programs with the upcoming Gilded & Golden Gala on September 26, 2026, at the Thompson Houston.
