Written Testimony: Oversight – Affordability in New York City’s Arts and Cultural Sector

Hon. Deputy Speaker Dr. Nantasha Williams
Monday, February 9, 2026

Thank you to Deputy Speaker Williams and the City Council for holding today’s hearing. My name is Kimberly Olsen, and I am proud to be the Executive Director of the NYC Arts in Education Roundtable. We are a nonprofit service organization working to improve and advance arts education across NYC. Congratulations on becoming Chair of Cultural Affairs — we’re so excited to work with you in this new role!

In NYC, arts education in school and community settings is delivered in partnership by in-school arts teachers and cultural organizations who employ Teaching Artists. A workforce at least 10,000 strong — Teaching Artists are practicing, professional artists that teach and integrate their art form, perspectives, histories, and skills into a wide range of learning settings. They can be found in schools, senior centers, libraries, justice/incarceration settings, hospitals, veteran’s centers, afterschool sites, and more.

According to the Roundtable’s 2025 report, “Paying for Professionalism: A Report on New York City Teaching Artist Compensation & Employment”, Teaching Artists are clearly an essential and actively engaged part of New York and often are among the most diverse parts of the cultural workforce. Yet, the report findings underscore significant challenges related to stagnant wages, limited access to benefits, and delays in government contracting — ultimately impacting the sustainability of the profession overall.

Increased Cost of Living and Stagnant Wages
Teaching Artists in NYC face significant financial challenges, with many earning incomes that are alarmingly low relative to the city’s cost of living. The median individual gross income for Teaching Artists in 2023 was between $35,000 – $50,000, which is consistent with findings from the Roundtable’s 2018 report — despite a 28% increase in the cost of living over the past seven years according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Furthermore, 68% of Teaching Artists reported a household income under $75,000, falling below the median household income in NYC of $76,577 in 2023. 79% of respondents did not feel their Teaching Artist work sufficiently supported living in or near NYC.

“The structure of hourly teaching artist pay and juggling multiple part-time teaching artist jobs is not something I can afford to sustain into the next decade of my life.”
— 25-to-34-year-old Teaching Artist

Limited Access to Essential Benefits
Access to critical benefits, particularly medical insurance and retirement plans, are lacking across the field. While 88% of Teaching Artists reported having health insurance, only 6% received it through an employer. Barriers to providing benefits include limited and inconsistent funding, the part-time and/or seasonal nature of the majority of Teaching Artist positions, and insurance carrier restrictions that often require a minimum number of weekly work hours for medical coverage. These structural barriers make it challenging for employing organizations to offer robust benefits, yet piloting a portable benefits program or a pooled insurance program for smaller organizations could help alleviate some of these barriers.

“I’d like to work just as a Teaching Artist. The one thing that is preventing me from going there entirely, is the fact I do not get health insurance…. I will need to leave my profession of 22 years in order to have children so I can get proper insurance.“
— 35-44 year old Teaching Artist

“Working [as] a Teaching Artist is increasingly unsustainable for me. [The field needs] to figure out a structure that makes it sustainable… to stay in the field, I need health insurance, job security, and retirement benefits. Without those, I am looking to leave the field.“
— Brooklyn-based Teaching Artist

Need for Efficiency in Government Contracting & Sustainable, Multi-Year Funding
We can’t talk about affordability without talking about the broken government systems threatening affordability and livelihood of this workforce. For employing organizations engaged in contracts with city government agencies, persistent delays in payment and the reimbursement-model of contracting can greatly impact an organization’s cash flow and financial stability — ultimately having a trickle-down impact on Teaching Artist compensation. NYC Public School’s Multiple Task Award Contract (MTAC) is a prime example. Arts organizations with decades long experience working with NYCPS are waiting 15, 18, up to 28 months for their contract to be renewed — resulting in lost revenue, disruption to arts programming for students, and ultimately lost income for teaching artists. Furthermore the financial negotiation stage of this process increasingly puts pressure on the arts organization to lower pricing structures and subsequent TA wage limitations. As one organization put it:

“After engaging in an MTAC process for about 9 months, we were asked to cut our budget so we’d be paying our teaching artists just above minimum wage… We love providing high caliber teaching artists to our schools and ensuring a high level of service, and the pricing change in particular didn’t seem sustainable to us.” – Organization Representative

The Roundtable hopes that we can continue to work with our partners in the City Council and across government agencies to address some of these real, but fixable challenges that stand in the way of affordability for NYC’s arts education workforce. Thank you for your attention and consideration.