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PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Beth Allens, Executive Director of Downtown Brooklyn Arts Alliance
5:01:58
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3 min
Beth Allens, Executive Director of Downtown Brooklyn Arts Alliance (DBAA), testifies in support of increasing the DCLA budget to $75 million. She emphasizes the importance of arts organizations in Brooklyn and the need for more funding to support small and mid-sized cultural institutions.
- DBAA is a network of 60 nonprofit arts and cultural organizations in Downtown Brooklyn, serving 5 million people annually and generating $200 million in economic impact.
- Allens highlights the challenges of gentrification and the need for increased investment in scaling up arts organizations to meet growing demand.
- She stresses the crucial role of DCLA funding, especially the Cultural Development Fund, in supporting small and mid-sized organizations facing financial distress.
Beth Allens
5:01:58
Hi.
5:01:59
Thank you Chair Rivera and Chair Brennan for the opportunity to provide testimony today.
5:02:06
I'm the executive director of the Downtown Brooklyn Arts Alliance, or we finally call it DBAA, and I am here to join with my colleagues in expressing my gratitude for the $45,000,000 baseline in the executive budget and to advocate for an increase of 30,000,000 to bring the full budget to 75,000,000.
5:02:28
Downtown Brooklyn Arts Alliance is a network of 60 nonprofit arts and cultural organizations in the greater Downtown Brooklyn area.
5:02:37
Our members include every presenting arts venue situated in the Brooklyn Cultural District, as well as a range of smaller venues, dance and theater companies, small galleries, and others.
5:02:48
Our members collectively serve more than 5,000,000 individuals annually, including over 100,000 school age children, employ around 4,000 individuals, and generate more than 200,000,000 in annual economic impact.
5:03:04
Our work is fostering a supportive network among arts and cultural professionals and addressing issues that affect our work at the neighborhood and borough level.
5:03:14
The context for our work is the growth and gentrification of Brooklyn, where we are fighting for attention and resources amid much larger scale investments in the commercial sector and to larger non profits, including sort of the fun they call eds and meds, so universities and hospitals.
5:03:34
There's been no equivalent investment in scaling the arts.
5:03:37
We talk about the arts surviving gentrification and not ask the question of what the arts need to grow and to meet the increased demand.
5:03:45
That is the question that I am largely trying to put out to anyone who will listen, where we all know the basic answer is more money, and specifically more money available to small and mid sized organizations to scale up, and more money available for the full range of talented artists and passionate administrators who work in the field and not just those who have proximity to wealthy donors.
5:04:07
DCLA provides crucial funding for this infrastructure, especially for its support of small and mid sized organizations who are the bulk of DBA members.
5:04:17
It's the only city agency fully devoted to supporting this infrastructure, and it's a crucial part of our community infrastructure.
5:04:27
Arts organizations are the ones that partner with schools and community centers.
5:04:31
Our venues drive foot traffic to local retail and restaurants.
5:04:38
And Cultural Development Fund is a very, very crucial source of support for these organizations, and as has been mentioned many times, are in a severe amount of distress right now, not least because of the National Endowment for the Arts cuts and various reallocations and foundation funding.
5:05:01
So this would be just a really, really huge benefit allowing us all to breathe a little bit more of a sigh of relief to have the additional $30,000,000 So thank you very much for the opportunity to testify and for your championing of our cause.