How critical and cutting edge is the NEA? The most innovative crowd of artists and musicians in the New York area in the last 25 years, the Immersionists, didn't get a speck of official arts funding. They made a home in a bullet-ridden section of Brooklyn (Williamsburg), jump-started a collaborative, environmentally inclusive culture (with some fairly wild elements), and paid for it with low rents and freelance gigs. As for the officials in Manhattan – not only did they not provide arts funding for these community oriented creators, they literally sold their post-industrial base right out from underneith them. Re-zoned for highrises and gave tax abatements to the same development dumpers ("devdumpers" ). It wasn't gentle at all (hence "gentrification" is out as a term and "devdumping" is in). 
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