Hearing: New York City Council, Committee on Cultural Affairs, Libraries, International Intergroup Relations

Submitted by Kimberly Olsen, Executive Director, NYC Arts in Education Roundtable

Thank you to Chair Chi Ossé, fellow Committee Members and Council staff, for your passion, leadership, and support of arts, culture, and arts education in New York City. 

My name is Kimberly Olsen, and I am the Executive Director of the NYC Arts in Education Roundtable. We are an arts service organization that works with thousands of artists, educators, and cultural organizations each year to improve and advance arts education in NYC.

The Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Development Fund are a critical resource for NYC’s arts education community. For many organizations in our membership, the impact of CDF and cultural initiative funding enables organizations to provide critical arts education services to young New Yorkers in every neighborhood across the five boroughs. We often say at the Roundtable — it starts with the arts. These afterschool arts programs, field trips, arts partnerships, teen programs, and more are funded by CDF seed and grow the next generation of arts workers and audiences.

Funding through the Cultural Development Fund was also one of the first funding that my organization received back in 1998. That $5000 in funding transformed our organization 25 years ago. For most of my organization’s history we operated with a budget under $250,000, and only recently have been able to go that threshold in part due to (first-time) multi-year funding received through CDF. 

With that pathway in mind, the Roundtable applauds the agency for taking steps towards centering equity, diversity, and accessibility in its application process. Yet we acknowledge that this work is and will be ongoing and should be responsive to the needs of the field and the students and constituents we serve. 

I join my colleagues in asking for the following reforms to CDF:

1. We ask that the grant schedule start earlier so that grant letters can go out AUG 1st to better align with fiscal year and school-year programs.

2. We ask that DCLA clearly explain the available funding streams within CDF and how best to navigate the system to be considered for them — many within our community are eager to learn about and be considered for initiative funding, but simply don’t know where to begin. 

3. We ask that DCLA create a dedicated funding stream for art service organizations so we are not competing with arts producing and presenting organizations. 

4. We ask that DCLA re-evaluate the budget size tiers and award amounts and create new and narrower tiers, so that orgs are competing against peers of similar sizes, and award amounts are better reflective of the relative size of the organization across all tiers. (In particular, create two tiers within the broad $500K-$2.99MM tier) 

The full list of recommendations are in my written testimony. As our city takes action-able steps towards the recovery and resilience of our community, the City should establish an equitable foundation for arts in every community to support pathways to a bright, bold future for all.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

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