Showing posts with label People's Cultural Plan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label People's Cultural Plan. Show all posts
Thursday, September 21, 2017
AAAC Testimony on the Cultural Plan for NYC

AAAC Testimony at a City Hall Hearing on the completed Cultural Plan for NYC    
Sept 20, 2017

Int. No. 419 stated in 2014 in its opening statement,  “It is important to understand the scope of cultural services throughout the City, where these services are lacking and how cultural service gaps may be filled.” Many sought to seize the opportunity afforded by this visionary effort to address the problem of cultural equity in NYC. After decades of a history of benign neglect, racism, and discrimination suffered by the POC artistic and cultural community, a resolution to this problem was sought through listening to the needs and concerns of all those affected. Even the CIG started to worry publicly their funds might be shifted to POC orgs, reversing 40yrs of documented inequity. With the completion of CreateNYC that promise has now died.
Commissioner Tom Finkelpearl testifies at the Hearing. City Councilman Peter Koo are among those listening.

Asian American Arts Centre was one of those who saw in this an opportunity that had been impossible for forty years. After nearly two years of listening to New Yorkers and the publication of an extensive record of such interactions, the city has demonstrated it fails to listen where listening counts. AAAC and a thousand other arts organizations and the communities and boroughs they serve, our voices go unrecognized. Instead the lions share of funding to CIG has been re-inscribed, their funds assured, 67% of NYC as people of color their homes and their neighborhoods, are left to the real estate developers. Opportunity in America reigns - for developers, as the people get priced out of their homes and their neighborhoods.  

At the Cultural Equity Conference held in April of 2015 sponsored by the Cultural Equity Group of which I am a member, I stated the need to recognize the value of multiple cultures, especially traditional “wisdom bearers” who should be honored, and recognized, as well as the elder nonprofit cultural organizations many of these begun in the Civil Rights era whose community infrastructure has grown priceless in their value to the city of New York as a roadmap to cultural transition.

At a New York Community Trust gathering held at Museo del Barrio In November of last year I spoke again of these elder community organizations how their need for succession funding was crucial for their continued survival. City officials including Tom Finkelpearl were present at both these events.  The city listens, however it listens selectively. Now today three of these elder POC organizations are dying as our Mayor fiddles with the numbers of people of color on the staff of CIG institutions.

CityCouncilman VanBramer, sponsor of the Int. No. 419 and chair of the Cultural Committee listens to all who testify at the Hearing 

 Clearly this is just a ruse, the return of the New Audiences program of the 90s in another guise.  This was when the work of artists of color became so prominent, funding was given to established institutions to ‘grow their audiences’ instead of the POC organizations where these artists were developed.  Our Mayor cant seem to give resources to organizations where POC are on staff and also in control of their institutions.

Will the CreateNYC plan fill cultural service gaps, or offer even a few glimmers, in the next three to five and more years? Yes, however the challenge of a cultural plan for NYC, meaningful to race and cultural relations in NYC will have been lost. The question then becomes, how will 60-70% of NYC population deal with the continuing tradition of cultural neglect, denial, tokenism, misrepresentation, and suppression? 

Perhaps it should be no surprise that our Mayor, and all those to chose this time to address cultural equity, could not rewrite a cultural policy that has been in place for generations, consistent with domestic and international policies going back to before the ideas of Manifest Destiny if not to slavery itself.

Marta Vega (far left, of the Caribbean Cultural Center) testifies pointing out flaws in the language, definitions that affect the validity of the whole plan.
The record of the history of this nation, of the many streams that constitutes its mainstream, the entitlements it has endowed to itself, to empire, and to its dream machine, does help us to see the diverse forces fighting for its soul. Technology may open vistas to an incredible future, but our limits, the delusions within our ambitions, our human foibles, may give us pause before indulging in dreams that may be better left as dreams.

Waves of immigrants have dreamed bringing their energy to these shores. The price extracted, that their descendants pay is to leave behind who they were - a truncated memory. The price we may all pay for this is a society rooted in materialism, in dollars.  Seeing the CIG in this light, their role in maintaining  NYC and the USA as head and shoulders above all others, it is conceivable though not necessarily laudable why our Mayor has chosen to re-entrenched them.

He may claim New York as a sanctuary city, but there are limits to what our Mayor means by it. POC can take greater clarity as to the reality of our status, our difference, and those who dream can be forewarned - the social consequences generated, regardless the rewards it offers, how they may be used. 

In speaking with artists who live in countries where limits to artistic freedom is explicit, some council that their situation is not so bad, once as artists you accept your role, and that desperate times require desperate measures.

Thuan Uyen Le recently spoke in Brooklyn on the censorship artists have learned to live with in Vietnam.

This is about insight, the vision of the arts and artists – their gifts given to us. It is oddly from this room, this hall, that it is inappropriate to speak of art as art, to even see or recognize such a horizon exists. Arts voice is where the horizon speaks.  For those of us who are listening deeply, and there are many, this legislative process is quite antiquated.

The issue of a multicultural America under whatever revised terms it becomes known by, will remain a question beyond my generation and perhaps for many generations. It is likely to become increasingly central to what shapes this country and the people who reside in it.


Robert Lee, Asian American Arts Centre

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Monday, April 10, 2017
Chinatown and the Department of Cultural Affairs Collaborate at the Florentine Music School

On April 1st, The Florentine Music School and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DLA) facilitated an event that allowed Chinatown and the DCLA to collaborate together, in order to evaluate the Cultural Plan, and hopefully inspire local community members to create a cultural plan of their own.

Aside from bridging the gap between locals and officials, the event also provided the Asian American Arts Centre to promote the People's Cultural Plan. Bob Lee, who attended the event, explained that  it is important for officials and locals to be given a proper amount of time to communicate, and to form a cultural plan that satisfies both parties.

We thank DCLA and The Florentine Music School for facilitating the event, and for providing a space where two seemingly different communities are able to communicate and collaborate.


Participants
An Attendee Begins to Recite Poetry and Songs, Both in English and Chinese, for Five Minutes Straight

Olympia Moy (Right) and City Council Woman Margaret Chin (Left)
Ms. Chin Not Only Participated, but Also Stayed Throughout the Entire Event

*All photographs were taken by Bob Lee
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Friday, March 31, 2017
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  • March 31, 2017
  • 1
The Asian American Arts Centre is proud to provide the final version of the People's Cultural Plan! It will be officially made for public view soon.

It is important to note that everything posted on our blog pre-dates this version.

The People's Cultural Plan for Working Artists and Communities in New York City

Inequity in arts and culture is a persistent problem in New York City. The worsening climate of fear, intolerance, and fascism, especially affecting immigrants and people of color, must be countered with more than lip service in support of “diversity”: Only by implementing true equity in all city policies will the most vulnerable be protected from the multiple crises facing our communities.
Displacement and dispossession (also known by the euphemism “gentrification”) are the greatest threats to culture in NYC, because culture is rooted in place, and skyrocketing rent threatens to displace working class black communities and communities of color, working artists, and underfunded arts organizations. The contracting of real estate development firms James Lima Planning + Development and BJH Advisors LLC as NYC Cultural Plan consultants indicates that yet again, arts and culture are being used as a Trojan Horse to usher in still more displacement and dispossession. We demand a plan that calls for the elimination of these pro-developer policies and rezonings, for an immediate rent freeze, and for the development of more just rent control policies at the State and City levels.

The exclusion of artists and workers of color and the exploitation of artists and low- wage workers has always been a threat to culture in NYC. But in combination with the housing crisis, that threat is compounded, pushing most artists, especially those who are working-class people of color, elders or disabled, close to their breaking point. From low-wage workers servicing museums, to underpaid administrators of nonprofit organizations, to the unpaid labor of artists—workers across the supply chain contribute to making the arts a multi-billion dollar industry. We demand a plan that insures truly equitable inclusion (not tokenization) of artists and cultural workers of color, equitable and adequate wages, employee benefits, job protection, and upward mobility for all artists and cultural workers.

Cultural funding is among the most inequitably distributed resources in NYC, and the policies of the Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) exacerbate that inequity by giving nearly 60% of its funding to Manhattan alone out of the five boroughs, and almost 80% of its funding to only 33 of the 1,000+ organizations funded. Inadequate funding to oppressed and exploited communities – and austerity in public services generally – operates in tandem with real estate development schemes to displace communities; inadequate funding to small and POC-run organizations makes it difficult to pay adequate wages and artist fees. We demand a plan with generous and equitable public cultural funding that directs all increases in DCLA funding to the neighborhoods, organizations, and artists who need it the most, rather than to institutions that are already receiving generous allocations, many of which are not adequately serving the communities they purport to.

We, the people, a multi-racial coalition of artists, culture workers and tenants from the many neighborhoods of NYC, demand a cultural plan with concrete policies to: 1. End displacement and dispossession in NYC; 2. Insure truly equitable inclusion of artists and cultural workers of color & equitable wages for all artists and cultural workers; 3. Distribute public funding equitably; and 4. Commit to rectifying the documented history of neglect, disinvestment and theft from communities, organizations, and artists of color in NYC, by investing new funds for these groups and supporting their self- determination. We further demand that changes in funding and housing policies be subject to community control – that the neighborhoods to be affected by policy changes determine the specifics. The most crucial component of equity is equity in power and in decision-making, and we will accept nothing less.

Because we recognize that indigenous communities, black communities and all communities of color have been disproportionately disenfranchised through historically unjust policy making at the municipal, state, and federal levels, as well as through the de facto funding priorities of private philanthropy, we call on the DCLA to endorse and support all of the following demands in its Cultural Plan for New York City, and we call on The State and City of New York to implement the necessary legislation that will lead to true equity for all New Yorkers.
As a sanctuary city, any cultural plan for New York must be supportive of the lives an contributions of tribally-enrolled indigenous people, black communities, communities of
color, and immigrants.
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Monday, March 27, 2017
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In recent news, (President) Donald Trump has announced plans to exterminate the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), as well as the National Endowment for Humanities (NEH), in an attempt to balance the Federal Budget. According to National Priorities Project, the Federal Budget in 2016 was approximately $3.871 trillion. According to their websites, both the NEA and the NEH spent around $148,000,000 within the budget, which is, according to Washington Post’s Philip Bump, is only 0.03% of the overall budget. Despite these statistics, Trump believes that these organizations should still be defunded, and even terminated.

The defunding of the NEA and NEH could lead to devastating consequences, especially for community-oriented 
artists and organizations, as Dr. Marta Moreno Vega explains in her article entitled, “Eliminating the NEA Will Disproportionately Hurt Communities of Color”:

“Slashing federal art funding will not only have a disproportionate effect on organizations of color, it will also further limit access to funds at the city and state levels. Those communities with the most need for arts and culture programs stand to lose big from these measures.”

To put this idea into perspective, she highlights efforts made by the Caribbean Cultural Center (CCCADI). They had held an annual event, “Trade/itions: Trans-Atlantic Orisha Sacred Traditions,” last February, that attracted “hundreds of members of the African Diaspora from across the U.S. and the Caribbean.” There, they framed “Black sacred and cultural traditions as key elements in the movement for social justice.” Community gatherings, on that scale, would be possible without the held of federal funding — the NEA partially funded the event. Now, with the NEA under threat, community-based organizations and events will be in serious trouble. She provides further explanation:

“According to a 2011 research report by Holly Sidford for the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, the top 2 percent of American arts organizations with budgets over $5 million are those that receive significant foundation grants.
These organizations predominantly focus on Eurocentric arts. Very few organizations ‘rooted primarily in non-European aesthetics, or founded and run by people of color [have budgets of over $5 million].’ Only 10 percent of grant dollars benefit art groups that represent the ethnic and cultural diversity of the nation.”

These cuts extend beyond marginalized communities, and may effect state and city institutions. “Slashing federal art funding,” Vega writes, “will not only have a disproportionate effect on organizations of color, it will also further limit access to funds at the city and state levels. Those communities with the most need for arts and culture programs stand to lose big from these measures.” This means that schools who provide programs, as well as training for educators, that aim to enforce multicultural experiences, will be a victim. 

“Beyond the financial implications,” Vega writes, “eliminating the NEA would exact a symbolic toll. Trump’s budget proposal clearly outlines, in his view, what aspects of human experience are worthy of our taxpayer dollars—war, yes; art, no. It also seeks to define who gets to speak, who has the right to culture, and who has a license to creativity. It silences and de-values many of the individuals that have built this nation.” Authentic representation of different marginalized communities — elite institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Lincoln Center only scratch the surface of the rich and complex narratives each individual artist holds. 

The Asian American Arts Centre lived from 1976 to 2009. We survived, and were able to squeak by largely because of NEA funding, particularly the Expansion Arts Program — which got cut and, eventually, eliminate because of Senator Jesse Holmes. The program was the watchwork for who we are, and who we continue to be: a cultural institution deeply rooted in, and a part of, our community.

To quote Vega, “It is the responsibility of each of us to call, write, demonstrate, and stand up to the attempts to silence our freedom. We must speak louder than ever through our creativity, our art. Anything else would be an affront to our nation’s promise of embracing the full spectrum of human experience.”

The full article can be found here:
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-eliminating-nea-will-disproportionately-hurt-communities-color

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Thursday, March 23, 2017
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Hello!

During these next few days, the People's Cultural Plan are hosting a series of community events, throughout New York City, pertaining to #WeCreateNYC #CreateEquityNYC, the People’s Cultural Plan, town halls being coordinated by arts/cultural groups as well as many feedback events (both live and virtual) being offered by #CreateNYC. 

 Here is an official statement from the People's Cultural Plan for Working Artists and Communities in New York City:

The People's Cultural Plan 
for Working Artists and Communities in New York City

Inequity in arts and culture is a persistent problem in New York City. The worsening climate of fear, intolerance, and fascism, especially affecting people of color, must be countered with more than lip service in support of diversity: Only by implementing true equity in all city policies will the most vulnerable be protected from the multiple crises facing our communities. As a sanctuary city, any cultural plan must be supportive of the lives and contributions of communities of color and immigrants.

Displacement and gentrification are the greatest threats to culture in NYC, because culture is rooted in place, and skyrocketing rent threatens to displace working class black communities and communities of color, working artists, and underfunded arts organizations. The contracting of real estate development firms James Lima Planning + Development and BJH Advisors LLC as NYC Cultural Plan consultants indicates that yet again, arts and culture are being used as a Trojan Horse to usher in still more gentrification and displacement. We demand a plan that calls for the elimination of these pro-developer policies and rezonings, for an immediate rent freeze, and for the development of more just rent control policies at the State and City levels.

The exploitation of artists and other low-wage workers has always been a threat to culture in NYC, but in combination with the housing crisis, that threat places most artists, especially those who are working-class people of color, close to their breaking point. From low-wage workers servicing museums, to underpaid administrators of nonprofit organizations, to the unpaid labor of artists—workers across the supply chain contribute to making the arts a multi-billion dollar industry.  We demand a plan that insures equitable and adequate wages and employee benefits and protections to artists and workers in the field of culture, and additional supports to artists and workers of color

Cultural funding is among the most inequitably distributed resources in NYC, and the policies of the Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) exacerbate that inequity by giving nearly 60% of its funding to Manhattan alone out of the five boroughs, and almost 80% of its funding to only 33 of the 1,000+ organizations funded. Inadequate funding to poor neighborhoods – and austerity in public services generally – operates in tandem with real estate development schemes to displace communities; inadequate funding to small and POC-run organizations makes it difficult to pay adequate wages and artist fees. We demand a plan with generous and equitable public cultural funding that directs all increases in DCLA funding to the neighborhoods, organizations, and artists who need it the most, rather than to institutions that are already receiving generous allocations, many of which are not adequately serving the communities they purport to.

We, the people, demand a cultural plan with concrete policies to: 1. End displacement and gentrification in NYC; 2. Insure equitable wages for artists and cultural workers; 3. Distribute public funding equitably; and 4. Provide additional supports to communities, organizations, and artists of color, to begin to rectify the documented history of neglect and disinvestment for these groups in NYC. 
We further demand that changes in funding and housing policies be subject to community control – that the neighborhoods to be affected by policy changes determine the specifics. The most crucial component of equity is equity in power and in decision-making, and we will accept nothing less. 


Contact: peoplesculturalplan@gmail.com
The calendar link below will provide information pertaining to the the scheduled events, such as the National Endowment for the Arts Rally, on April 3. Here is the link to the full schedule:

https://wecreatenyc2017.tumblr.com/post/157627917755/a-calendar-for-us-to-use

The calendar will continually be updated by the People's Cultural Plan.

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Friday, November 25, 2016
NYC's Cultural Research in Practice - #CreateNYC

As cultural advocates and arts leaders discuss what a comprehensive cultural plan for NYC would look like, Mark Stern of the Social Impact of the Arts Project (SIAP) at the University of Pennsylvania gave a lay of the land at the convening Cultural and Racial Equity in Practice: Current Policy and Research and the Future of New York City. 

The images of the maps really clarify what the city was thinking and how they were going about doing it.

Full Talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99rncCM1Vxc
















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