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PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Sheila Lewandowski, Executive Director of Chocolate Factory Theater
5:32:45
·
116 sec
Sheila Lewandowski, Executive Director of Chocolate Factory Theater, advocated for increased funding for cultural organizations in New York City. She expressed gratitude for the baseline funding and urged for an additional $30 million bump in the budget for arts and culture.
- Highlighted the importance of cultural funding, even as her organization has been zeroed out for two years
- Emphasized the role of culture in fostering empathy, freedom of expression, and New York City's position as a sanctuary for freedoms
- Announced her departure as executive director after 27 years, but continued commitment to advocacy through New Yorkers for Culture and the Arts
Sheila Lewandowski
5:32:45
So thank you Chairwoman Rivera for all you do.
5:32:47
Take us home.
5:32:48
Take us home.
5:32:49
I'm Sheila Lewandowski, founder and director of the Chocolate Factory Theater in Long Island City of immigrant parents born in New York, member of my community board, homeowner, voter, all of the above.
5:32:59
I stand with New Yorkers for Culture and the Arts and all of my colleagues asking thanking the administration for the baseline, asking for the bump, the 30,000,000 bump.
5:33:08
I'm also sitting here from an organization that has been zeroed out for two years in a row, still standing here for all of us to get more funding.
5:33:16
We don't fully know why, but we all stand together.
5:33:20
We are just about out of our savings, but we're keeping going.
5:33:22
We provide commissions.
5:33:23
We provide salaries.
5:33:24
We produce, host, and support other events, and we do this with a small staff on a regular relatively small budget.
5:33:32
I will just close this.
5:33:33
My third June 30 is my last day as executive director after twenty seven years at leadership for an organization, but I fought since I was a child.
5:33:41
My mother ran cultural programming community center and had us out petitioning, and I will continue as a board member of New Yorkers for Culture and the Arts, and I know you care.
5:33:50
We need those dollars.
5:33:51
So Chocolate Factory's not zeroed out, so we keep children in the arts education so they grow up to be the artists who are in these or in these cultural spaces or at Lincoln Center or traveling the world, taking our culture out there because culture is what it is to be alive.
5:34:07
It is how we are empathetic.
5:34:09
It is how we share.
5:34:09
It's how we get to know each other.
5:34:11
And the one thing I did wanna say is it needs to be supported, my problem, I'm not looking, in New York City at the highest level, especially now when culture of freedom of expression and speech is being oppressed, suppressed, manipulated, attacked, and whitewashed.
5:34:25
New York City will be the sanctuary for freedoms if we don't underfund and undermine the power of artists and shared cultures on a major scale.
5:34:35
Culture is living, and artists are our guides.
5:34:39
Please bump