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Q&A
Council member asks about the most impactful step to support the cultural sector
4:35:02
ยท
6 min
Council Member Carlina Rivera asks panelists about the most helpful step to support the cultural sector and cultural workers. The panelists emphasize the importance of the $75 million baseline funding increase and explain its significance.
- Panelists highlight the need for stable, increased funding to address structural deficits and ensure job stability
- The importance of timely funding for effective arts education programs is discussed
- Panelists stress the role of cultural institutions in retaining New York's tax base and providing career opportunities
Carlina Rivera
4:35:02
Thank you.
4:35:03
I'll just ask a very sort of general question.
4:35:05
I mean many of you were here for the administration's testimony, and I think we know the commissioner really like this is her thing, right?
4:35:16
She, founder, cheerleader, all of those things.
4:35:20
The most helpful thing to help the cultural sector, to support cultural workers, to really highlight that making a career as a cultural worker is something that is available and sustainable.
4:35:37
What is what would be the biggest step for us?
4:35:41
It would be the 75, right?
4:35:43
And just like just in a I guess in a nutshell or as concisely as you can, why, right?
4:35:50
Because I feel many people I try to outline this in my testimony but it's hard to do in a couple minutes.
4:35:56
You don't have people's attention span, you know what mean?
4:35:58
But you all have been still serving throughout these past five years through the pandemic pivoting to digital, all of these things that you've done.
4:36:08
What would that $75 mean and what message does
Coco Killingsworth
4:36:13
that send to like the globe about how New York City stands behind culture?
4:36:19
If I can just briefly do my best to answer that.
4:36:24
It is, as we said, we were so grateful for last year and that 45 which was, you know, and we've talked about things being unprecedented and it was unprecedented, but it really still effectively got us back to the ground floor and to start the dance again of this year of really stating what we need.
4:36:43
Our funding, our baseline has not increased in decades.
4:36:47
We've submitted really helpful data to the council, to our colleagues across the board to look at when the city has invested in culture, what the return has been, but also as the budget has grown by 90%, culture's budget has grown by 10%.
4:37:07
That is why you see this instability.
4:37:10
That is why you see institution after institution facing structural deficits.
4:37:14
These are not deficits just created one year or even just by one pandemic which was crippling.
4:37:22
These are structural deficits that we are, the investment that's being put into our sector does not match what the cost is.
4:37:30
And we are, you know, speaking for institutions, workers.
4:37:35
We want to be a place for families.
4:37:37
We want to keep New Yorkers in New York.
4:37:40
And our institutions right now are serving more New Yorkers than we are tourists.
4:37:46
Like our numbers are back up and most of those people are coming from New York.
4:37:49
And a lot of those people, I speak for the cultural institutions as we are public private partner, they're coming at free or reduced cost which is deeply important to us.
4:38:00
But that also inhibits our ability to we're not Broadway.
4:38:04
We're not, you know, we can't charge x amount of dollars for each ticket.
4:38:08
So these are the challenges that we're facing and so the truth is the city's investment has to catch up with the demand.
4:38:17
And that way we can be even stronger.
4:38:20
We are not facing the pegs that we faced last year which we're deeply grateful, but what is happening on the federal level is even more chaotic than the pegs.
4:38:32
And so this 75,000,000 baseline is what it takes to get us to a point where we are going to be able to, we can ensure that we are building institution and that we have the stability that we need to keep doing the work that you're expecting us to do.
Lucy Sexton
4:38:51
I would just add that it's jobs.
Christopher Leon Johnson
4:38:53
It's
Lucy Sexton
4:38:53
jobs.
4:38:54
You say I'm going to hire you this year if I get the money.
4:38:57
And then by the way, don't get it next year so the job isn't there.
4:39:01
That's not a way to run anything.
4:39:03
And you don't build a strong sector with that if you can't count on your funding.
4:39:08
And if we have to fight for this funding and we don't know if it's here or there, that's why baselining it makes a difference.
4:39:12
It tells us who we can hire and that it can be a real job.
4:39:15
And I would just say also, just to add to you, that you want to make sure this tax base stays in New York City.
4:39:22
I lived through the 70s.
4:39:23
We lost our tax base.
4:39:24
Then we lose everything.
4:39:26
This is why people are here, so they can go to BAM, so they can be part of this city.
4:39:30
So keep your tax base.
David Freudenthal
4:39:32
I'll just underscore the workforce development side of it that you heard earlier from the science institutions and so many of us have deep investments in providing opportunities for professional development for pathways to careers in arts administration.
4:39:51
For us it's in the music industry.
4:39:53
But this is a place where we are really investing about the future.
4:39:57
New York is exceptional in the level of job opportunities that there are in careers in the arts, and we're doing the work to make that happen.
4:40:07
All of us.
Kimberly Olsen
4:40:08
I'll add too also in terms of what my colleagues had said.
4:40:11
For arts education in particular, that's very much an interagency effort in supporting arts in our schools and communities.
4:40:18
However, that same inflation piece that Coco had mentioned, within New York City public schools, when you account for inflation, we're actually spending about $4,041,000,000 dollars less on arts education than we were seven, eight years ago.
4:40:30
Also, while I agree in terms of it is that funding component enabling us to have sustainability within the workforce, especially on my end when it comes to teaching artists, it's also all in the timing.
4:40:42
Making sure that we have those award letters on hand towards the beginning of the fiscal year, understanding what many we have available.
4:40:49
I can't tell you how many organizations I speak with that are only able to start arts education programming now in mid March or April.
4:40:57
That is supposed to end in June.
4:40:59
That does not make a sequential arts education.
4:41:01
We would be up in arms if we said we could only have social studies two months out of the year or science or math.
4:41:08
This has to be that it's very much all in the timing in that way.