We Rise
for Arts & Culture
Stimulating our creativity and boosting our economy.
Culture is the core of NY State’s economy. For the past decade, New York State's creative economy has contributed more than 7% to the GSP annually, and pre-pandemic it generated 484,000 jobs and $120 billion in economic activity. New York's tourism industry depends on a thriving creative sector. Culture taken as a whole is the number one driver of tourism in New York State. If we want the tourism industry to survive, we need to invest in the cultural sector that brings visitors to our state.
Culture is a jobs multiplier, providing work not just for artists, but for museum administrators, security guards, sound technicians, costume creators, and the myriad other jobs that make up the creative economy.
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• The creation of a New York Works Progress Program Pandemic Response to commission live performances as well as other arts and infrastructure projects, as set out in S1141/A2409, would be a strong step toward making a life as an artist viable for many more New Yorkers.
• Works programs are a proven model for economic regeneration across all sectors, as shown in the success of the WPA, created in 1939 as a response to the Great Depression. That WPA directly led to the employment of millions of Americans and helped kickstart an American Cultural Golden Age.
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• Encouraging the development of Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts (NOCDs)
◦ Provide a framework to recognize and support a more inclusive, equitable vision of a neighborhood’s culture.
◦ Recognize the power of neighborhood-based arts and culture as an integral part of an equitable and culturally vital city.
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• Public art has been found to provide a positive impact on communities by supporting economic growth and sustainability, enhancing meaning in our civic spaces, and adding uniqueness to our communities.
◦ Expand public art outside of Manhattan by utilizing our vast parks in District 36 to support legislation that encourages museum miles in our outer-borough parkland.
Funding
There is a critical need for support for the arts and culture sector of New York State in the legislature. In particular, it is time to increase funding for neighborhoods and organizations hardest hit and historically under-resourced so that every community can share in the state’s recovery.
Federal relief funds will run out in 2022. BIPOC-led/serving cultural groups have received the least relief and are historically the most dependent on public funding. In the legislature, Christian will:
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Fund the NY State Council on the Arts at a baseline of $150M in order to fully support the thousands of arts organizations doing critical work across the state, with a $50M increase in funds to be used to deliver ongoing stabilizing support to BIPOC-led/serving organizations that have been historically underfunded and are at increased risk post-pandemic.
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• Grow New York state’s diversity and arts job training program.
• Ensure that applicable productions are available and accessible for low or no cost to low-income New Yorkers.
• Contribute to the New York State Council on the Arts cultural program fund an amount of up to 60% of the total credits received if productions earn ongoing revenue.
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• Create a $150 million COVID relief fund for the most damaged parts of the cultural sector, including a $10M fund to support arts workers, routed through the Empire State Development Corporation to rescue and support non-profit and for-profit arts organizations and artists who continue to lose work due to the pandemic.
◦ With priority to the performing arts venues that were first to close and continue to experience shutdowns.
◦ This would be a relief fund delivered directly to the sector, on par with the $150M cultural relief program California is enacting.
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Remove barriers to the existing Small Business Relief fund to allow access to nonprofit cultural organizations and sole proprietors, and eliminate the additional barriers to eligibility based on the previous receipt of relief funding or limits to the size of the organization.
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The Broadway Bridges program ensures that all New York City high school students see a Broadway show before they graduate. I will help allocate funding to expand this program across the State of New York.
Arts Education
Students from minority and low socioeconomic backgrounds met or exceeded state testing averages when involved in arts-integrated programming.
New York State must utilize funds associated with the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) to fund grant programs. ESSA is the federal law that outlines how states can use federal money to support public schools.
We know that factors such as school climate and culture and social and emotional learning affect both student and school success. However, the arts can play a role in developing each of these areas. We can use the arts as a strategy to improve New York State’s most pressing measures of success.
Christian will increase funding for arts education so that arts-integrated programming is available for all students and can help high schoolers achieve the Arts Pathway to graduation.
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Support Arts in Education by allotting $150,000 to support an Arts Associate position at the NYS Department of Education. Arts need to be supported in every public school in NYS, and a dedicated arts person at the NYS DoE is a critical first step in overseeing the state’s arts education.