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Mayor de Blasio unveils New York City’s first cultural plan

CreateNYC

Mayor de Blasio unveils New York City’s first cultural plan

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio unveiled the city’s first ever cultural plan, CreateNYC, which has been in the works for months.

CreateNYC is a blueprint for expanding the Big Apple’s cultural sector; it mainly focuses on increasing diversity across museum boards and addressing historically underserved communities.

The plan was built on feedback from nearly 200,000 New Yorkers and focuses on growing the cultural community across all five boroughs. 97 percent of respondents said that arts and culture are vital to the overall quality of life in the city, and 75 percent of New Yorkers said that they wish they could attend arts and cultural activities more often.

“New York City is the world capital of art and culture,” said de Blasio in a press release. “If we are going to continue to live up to that title we must use every tool we have to ensure that every resident, in every neighborhood, has the same access to cultural opportunities. CreateNYC is the first comprehensive roadmap to lifting up arts and culture across the city.”

Speaking at a news conference today, de Blasio also emphasized the city’s cultural institutions need for diversity and inclusion, according to the New York Times. “There is still the assumption among New Yorkers about where they belong and where they don’t belong,” he said. Sixty-seven percent of New York City residents identify as people of color, but only 38 percent of employees at cultural organizations are people of color, according to the press release.

Funding will come from the mayor’s office, with an additional $5 million from City Council to be allocated. The majority of it will go towards less prominent arts groups—especially those that lay outside of Manhattan. Approximately $1.5 million will be directed towards increasing support for low-income communities and underrepresented groups, while $4.5 million will be used to support the Cultural Institutions Group (CIG) in low-income communities.

A long-term goal of CreateNYC is the inclusion of public art in both public and private spaces, as well as increased support for the Percent for Art program. Again, the plan emphasized arts programming in public spaces in underrepresented communities.

A fair chunk of the funding—$5 million—will be used to help the cultural institutions achieve OneNYC sustainability goals of an 80 percent reduction of all emissions by 2050. The Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) will create a new position specifically to work with cultural organizations to help them reduce their energy consumption.

“It may be the least sexy of all the recommendations,” Cultural Affairs Commissioner Tom Finkelpearl said to the Times, “but it could be the most significant.”

CreateNYC’s full plan can be read on their website.

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