CreateNYC: A Look at How NYC’s Cultural Roadmap Makes a Case for the Social Value of the Arts

In July, the City of New York released CreateNYC: A Cultural Plan for All New Yorkers, a first-of-its-kind comprehensive plan to establish New York City’s cultural roadmap for the next decade.  The plan sets forth objectives and strategies for achieving a more inclusive, equitable, and resilient cultural ecosystem. It examines a number of issue areas including diversity, equity and inclusion, education, affordability, and health of the cultural sector that are essential to a vibrant, creative city. Following recommendations in each of the issue areas, CreateNYC also lays out a number of immediate actions including a targeted increase in City support for arts and culture in low-income communities.

Led by the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, the CreateNYC cultural planning process began with an intensive research, discovery, and data collection phase that laid a foundation for the work to come. We harnessed the voices of nearly 200,000 New Yorkers in a robust community engagement process to inform CreateNYC.  In addition to hundreds of public meetings and months of digital engagement, these efforts included a Siena College Research Institute public opinion phone poll of NYC residents, which revealed that an eye-popping 97% of respondents agree that arts and culture are important to quality of life.  The poll also uncovered barriers to cultural participation such as transportation and cost.

Read the complete blog at cecp.me/2Badykl