Cultural Equity Letter FY24

Dear Mayor Adams:

We are writing to you on behalf of a community of arts organizations and workers that together represent a workforce of over 300,000 individuals and over 4,000 entities, and whose economic activity generates over $100 billion annually—making New York City the cultural capital of the world. 

With thanks for the city's record FY2023 investment in DCLA, and in solidarity with peer arts and culture organizations and advocates, we request a $50 million increase to the DCLA budget for FY2024, baselining at least $40 million of that increase; and propose a more collaborative path towards achieving model equity in cultural funding during your current term as Mayor.

Arts and Culture are crucial to New York City’s reemergence from the pandemic, as evidenced by our role in increasing tourism,[1] one of the City’s major drivers of economic recovery,[2] as well as our injection of activity to neighboring industries, including construction and transportation, to name but two.[3] Every community and neighborhood in all five Boroughs needs robust cultural organizations, whose presence has been proven to result in significant benefits to public safety, health, well-being, and education.[4] Frank acknowledgment that our existing budget process fails to allocate funding to the arts community in an equitable fashion is no longer controversial. Many worthy cultural organizations face challenges to our survival, especially those organizations led by or serving Black, Indigenous, People of Color, (BIPOC), immigrant, LGBTQIA+, low-income, disabled, and older New Yorkers. A recently published NEA report detailed the continuing lag of employment in our sector as compared to pre-pandemic levels.[5] While our work continues to be necessary for vibrant and productive communities, our organizations are facing insurmountable increases to our expenses due to inflation, and our workers cannot afford to pay rent or have their basic needs met. 

ACTIONS FOR EQUITY MOVING FORWARD

It is important to start with awareness of the funding inequities that have existed, which were further deepened in the FY2023 adopted budget. As you explicitly detail in your still urgently relevant 2016 op ed on City arts funding strategy, [6] the DCLA budget is distributed among thousands of programs that serve New Yorkers and the agency’s operating costs. In FY2023, the DCLA budget included approximately $140M (or 58.79%) distributed to the 34 Cultural Institutions Group (CIG) members, the majority of which are located in Manhattan, $52M (or 21.8%) distributed to 1,070 Cultural Development Fund (CDF) grantees, $30M (or 12.5%) in NYC City Council Initiatives, and another $16M (or 6.7%) in miscellaneous programming, operational, and fiscal costs. This budget distribution alone reveals the disproportionate allocation of resources across programs, and thereby across the City.

In FY2023, DCLA also implemented important reforms to the CDF, which moved the agency towards more equitable funding in that program. These reforms increased the lowest awards from $5,000 to $10,000; added 125 new organizations to the grantee pool; and distributed increases to many organizations serving BIPOC, disabled, low-income, and immigrant communities. Despite these important changes, the overall impacts of the agency’s grantmaking decisions for FY2023 resulted in many small and mid-sized organizations, including many led by and serving communities of color, being cut to make room for the increases to other small and mid-sized organizations. At the same time, the CIG program saw multi-million dollar increases across several of its largest members, in comparison with FY2022. This combined methodology of removing and/or decreasing funds from small to mid-sized entities, while increasing the funds to larger well-funded entities, deepened borough inequities across arts funding.[7]

A MORE COLLABORATIVE AND EQUITABLE EFFORT

The undersigned have not, for the most part, either as individuals or organizational representatives, been part of the internal process whereby options are weighed and decisions are made regarding the cultural budget and related funding allocations. Our opinions have gone on record for many years, but the purportedly shared goal of equity remains elusive.

In light of this ongoing experience, we assert that equity means giving more absolute funding increases to those organizations and neighborhoods that currently receive less, in order to correct for the historic underinvestment they’ve received and ensure equitable distribution of funding and opportunities in the future. This approach accounts for disparities that exist today as a result of intentional, consistent, and long-term underinvestment in our communities, and is also responsive to the realities we face in the midst of record-level inflation.

FIVE PRACTICAL STEPS

Developed in collaboration with peers across the sector, we propose five practical steps towards achieving model equity in NYC cultural funding over the next 3 years:

1. Create an Equitable Baseline Increase both to reverse harms made in FY2023 to many CDF organizations and to ensure that the funds allocated to DCLA in FY2024, and all future allocations, are equitably distributed, prioritizing baseline increases for smaller budget entities and historically underfunded organizations.

2. Work with DCLA to develop a new, replicable, transparent granting procedure across its entire budget that ensures the equitable distribution of City cultural funds, and which also acts on the recently passed ballot measure centering racial equity in the City’s operations and investments. 

3. Properly fund DCLA to implement this new process with sufficient staff earning living wages, to ensure DCLA has the administrative capacity to serve New Yorkers across every borough.

4. Properly fund the 2022 ballot measure to establish an office of Racial Equity, and ensure DCLA reports annually on total funding distributions by borough, neighborhood, organization size and category, and by demographics of communities served. Smarter accountability is needed because we recognize that borough metrics as they stand can be shallow in portraying the full story of impact to the historically underinvested.

5. Create a plan to increase DCLA’s funding to 0.5% of the City budget by the end of your first term as Mayor, starting with increases to the organizations and neighborhoods that currently receive the least funding, in order to achieve geographic equity in per capita funding, with a longer-term goal of achieving a 1% allocation to DCLA in the City’s budget by 2030. This plan should include pathways for established organizations that serve underfunded communities and geographies to receive benefits similar to CIGs, including baselined operating support, energy support, and rent support, even if they are not on city-owned land. The plan should also create a separate line of funding from the CDF for service organizations and arts councils, to ensure that they are able to reach many more individual artists and organizations not supported through the CDF.

This work is hard and evolving. The undersigned are eager to learn more about the challenges the City faces in meeting its equity objectives, and more importantly, to find a way to put solutions into practice.[8]

We look forward to scheduling a meeting with your team and working closely with your administration in FY2024, and over the next 3 years, to continue to build a city that harnesses the true impact and benefits of culture across the board.

Thank you for your consideration and all you are doing to care for the future of our great city. 

Notes for Cultural Funding Equity Letter to Mayor Adams FY2024

Research on the impact of the arts and culture sector on tourism, the economy, and community well-being (notes 1-5):

1. https://createnyc.cityofnewyork.us/the-cultural-plan/issue-areas/se/#:~:text=The%20cultural%20 sector%20is%20also%20a%20powerful%20driver,international%20tourists%20spent%20%241%2C 786%20per%20trip%20on%20culture.

2. https://www.osc.state.ny.us/reports/osdc/tourism-industry-new-york-city

3. https://www.artsactionfund.org/sites/artsactionfund.org/files/2022-03/New%20York%202022.pdf

4. See the report on Culture and Social Wellbeing in NYC conducted by the Social Impact of the Arts Project at the University of Pennsylvania. https://repository.upenn.edu/siap/

5. https://www.arts.gov/sites/default/files/National-Brief-final-3-16-23.pdf

6. As Brooklyn Borough President, you wrote an op ed describing the deep inequities in DCLA funding

   [https://www.cityandstateny.com/opinion/2016/08/arts-funding-strategy-should-keep-pace-with-brooklyns-growth/182616/], showing that the 33 (at the time) members of the CIG received the vast majority of the funding for the entire city; that Manhattan received 54% of the total funding going to all five boroughs; and that per capita cultural funding in Manhattan was 10 times that in Queens and 5 times that in Brooklyn. You called on the de Blasio administration to correct these inequities. We call on you now, as Mayor, to correct these entrenched inequities that remain in place to this day.

DCLA Funding Chart from Eric Adams’ 2016 op ed showing funding inequities by borough and organization size:

Inequities increased in adopted FY2023 budget for DCLA (June 13, 2022) - see note 7 below:

7. An analysis of the published FY23 adopted budget documents shows the following: the largest 7 CIGs, in terms of city allocations, received a total increase of $10.5 million in DCLA operating and energy support from FY22 to FY23. The middle 13 CIGs in terms of city allocations received a total increase of $1.9 million; while the bottom 14 CIGs in terms of city allocations received a total cut of $263,379, before adjustments were made post-adoption through supplemental support. In terms of boroughs: Manhattan, the borough already receiving the most, saw a total increase of $8.4 million; Brooklyn and the Bronx saw total increases of $3 million and $1.1 million, respectively; yet Queens and Staten Island saw cuts of $320,503 and $146,223 respectively. While all these figures don’t include the CDF, they do reflect the majority of DCLA’s funding, and paint a clear picture of a city where the organizations and neighborhoods that already receive more funding got much more than those starting with less.

A.R.T./NY and Dance/NYC separately conducted an FY2023 CDF Impact survey, reaching 139 (11%) out 1,250 applicants. Some findings from that survey, among responding organizations, are as follows:

• About half received funding decreases; 7% did not receive any award; 32% recipients; 8% applied but have never received DCLA funding; 1.5% (2) received awards consistent with previous year.

• A disproportionate amount of non-producing (arts service, arts education, presenting) organizations received funding decreases. While 50% of the entire pool was awarded decreased funding, 63% of arts service organizations received funding decreases; 63% of arts education organizations received funding decreases; 67% of presenting organizations received funding decreases; 43% of producing organizations received funding decreases. While 60% of all past recipients received decreases, 73% of non-producing past recipients did. For context, 53% of past recipient producing organizations received decreases. Only one arts service dance organization (CPR) was awarded increased funding. Within this data set, all other increases in the dance discipline went to producing dance organizations.

• The data reveal some notable though inconsistent findings between budget categories,  with nearly all organizations in some budget ranges receiving reduced funding: 88% of organizations with budgets between $500K and $999K received reduced funding; 90% of organizations with budgets over $10M received reduced funding; 70% of organizations with budgets between $2.5M and $5M received increased funding. In addition, more small-budget organizations received funding increases. While 32% of the entire pool received increases, 41% of organizations with budgets between $50K and $99K received increases; 46% of organizations with budgets between $100K and $249K received increases.

8. You will note that our demands do not explicitly call for a decrease in funding for the largest CIGs. We do not believe that austerity budgeting that removes resources from cultural partners across the city is equitable, nor will it address overall underinvestment of the artistic community. Instead, the CIG funding model provides concrete evidence for the thrivability that is made possible when institutions receive consistent, reliable, long-term funding. What is important to highlight about CIG funding, however, is that it is disproportionately centered in Manhattan and in a handful of cultural institutions, while the lion’s share of the sector serving the majority of New Yorkers is composed of small, local entities spread across all five boroughs. For example, in FY2023, the City provided the Metropolitan Museum with $25,273,849 in funding, an amount greater than all the funding allocated to all cultural institutions in the boroughs of Queens and Staten Island combined. The cultural funding going to the Upper East and Upper West Sides of Manhattan has enormous community benefits in terms of health, safety, education, and overall well-being, as articulated in the Social Impact for the Arts (SIAP) report—a benefit that should be equitably extended to all neighborhoods across NYC.

The sign-on form for the letter is still accepting signatures, and you can see the updated list of signers there. If you know of any organizations, cultural workers, or artists who have not signed on, but whom you believe would be aligned with the letter, please forward that link to them and encourage them to sign on. In Mid-June, we’ll incorporate any additional signers into the PDF and recirculate it one last time to the administration and to all of you.