More than a dozen Bay Area arts nonprofit organizations just had their National Endowment for the Arts grants canceled.

It is impacting various art organizations, including the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, SF Jazz, and The Lab.

The Lab is a small art space in the Mission District. Executive Director Andrew Smith said the nonprofit gives opportunities to underrepresented artists, that includes space, time and funding. some of which came from their National Endowment for the Arts grant.

"It does leave us with an enormous structural gap," said Smith. "It's about 50 percent of the funding for our commissioning program."

On Friday they had a show, called "FACEBREAK," people smashed plates with photos of tech moguls, like mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, on them.

That same day a proposal released by President Donald Trump call for eliminating the NEA entirely, shortly after Smith received notice that the NEA was updating its grantmaking policies.

"I received this email saying your grant has been terminated," said Smith. "I was trying to parse out the logic behind it. It doesn't really say anything. It says they want to make America healthy again and foster AI competency as well as the usual NEA priorities and it just seemed like we were next on the chopping block."

One of their NEA funded project works on creating a carbon neutral de-centralized internet.

"It's a solar paneled web server from a solar panel that's on the roof of the building here," said Smith while pointing out he project, which includes a light bulb on top of a clear box. "It's called Our Shiver it's by the artist Carrie Hott."

Smith said he follows the news, and he had a suspicion something like this could happen.

"As soon as DOGE started rolling, I pushed up all our NEA funded programming to January, February and March of this year," said Smith. "Basically, I said how can we spend $40,000 as quickly as possible. We got all of that into the hands of artists."

But some other organizations didn't think to plan that way, including the Oakland Theater Project.

"Kind of shock, I don't know why we didn't see this coming," said Oakland Theater Project managing director and co-founder Colin Mandlin.

He said this is the fourth grant that has been canceled or reduced by the government.

"When you have grants and funding canceled on you and reneged after the contract is already in play it can just create a lot of uncertainty that is very hard for business leaders to count on and plan on," said Mandlin. "So, we're going to have to roll up our sleeves and go back to our community and try to find the funding."

The Frameline Film Festival also received notice that their grant would be terminated.

"The concerted effort to defund identity-centered arts institutions, including LGBTQ+ organizations like Frameline, is nothing short of an attempt to censor our art, control our history, and erase our lived experiences," said Allegra Madsen, Frameline's Executive Director. "We remain committed to uplifting queer and trans artists and their stories. More than ever, our whole community needs to show up and support each other."

TheatreWorks Silicon Valley has existed for more than five decades, they confirmed that they also had their NEA grant canceled.

"It is disheartening and infuriating to lose vital funds promised to us by Congress," said Artistic Director with Theatre Works Silicon Valley Giovanna Sardelli. "This NEA grant was to support TheatreWorks' Susan Fairbrook Core Writer's Group, which provides support to new and established Bay Area artists enabling them to create new theatre. It is shocking to have an administration put arts on a political chopping block."

SCRAP, the San Francisco creative reuse center, just announced its first NEA grant in January. Now, that one will be gone too.

"The grant SCRAP received from the NEA was to expand our sustainable fashion design program which teaches students in some of San Francisco's under-resourced communities how to look at fashion design through the lens of sustainability," said SCRAP Executive Director, Terry Kochanski. "This highly impactful program connects underserved San Francisco youth with the creative aspects of art and design and the practical knowledge of how to make smarter decisions about the clothes they wear.  Apparently, arts education for underserved youth is no longer considered part of the NEA's purview.

Smith said, like some of the other organizations, they will be trying to find funding elsewhere.

"We really rely on that money for our commissioning programs so have a commission that is starting out in June that I relied on this NEA support for and I don't know what will happen. We'll throw a fundraiser; we'll make it happen one way or another."