Nebraska Crossroads Music Festival organizers are working to keep the 2025 festival going after a $40,000 federal grant from the National Endowment for the Arts was canceled.
The organization received the news 12 hours before the announcement of its 2025 schedule. The loss of the grant makes up 12% of the festival's funding.
The message from the NEA said it was terminating the funds because the priorities of the event fall outside of the new grantmaking policies.
Olga Smola, the festival’s executive director, said she hopes the cuts will not affect the hard work and efforts in connecting the community.
“We believe in free concerts for the public, in free events, which build connections, which bring people together and which help us to open the dialogue between all of us without exceptions. So for us, it means just more work to bring more people together.” Smola said in an interview for Nebraska Public Media’s “Friday Live."
The organization is still planning to host 12 events from July 20 to Aug. 2 in both Omaha and Lincoln. Artistic Director Erik Higgns said music is such an important way for people to connect to different types of culture and be able to express their deepest selves.
“I think that's really important for a lot of people right now, is to have something concrete, an identity that they can you can reflect yourself in, and that you can hang on to and I think that is our job is to show people that it's there we see you, but also you can see yourself in all these different kinds of cultural expression.” Higgns said in an interview for “Friday Live.”.
The organization is currently looking for new partners and is also accepting donations on its website.
Nebraska Crossroads Music Festival was not the only Nebraska organization to have a grant canceled by the NEA.
According to media reports, other organizations that have had grants canceled include the Lincoln Music Teachers Association, the Lincoln Symphony Orchestra, the Omaha Conservatory of Music, the Great Plains Theatre Commons and Crane River Theater in Kearney.