Chair Williams asks about listening tour findings and written accounting
Vij says the listening tour has reached all five boroughs and 15 sessions, with affordable space as the biggest issue, and says DCLA is synthesizing findings but has not determined the reporting format.
Okay.
The committee understands that the commissioner, as you also mentioned, has been on a listening tour getting feedback from the cultural community about, among other things, the city's cultural plan.
What has DCLA learned from that tour?
And then in connection with a potential update of the plan, will DCLA provide a full written accounting showing what from existing plan was completed, modified, abandoned, or never attempted?
Yeah.
Well, the listening tour has been great so far.
After this week, we're going to Staten Island this week.
We would have been to all five boroughs, 15 of them total.
And we've learned, I think, like, to no one's surprise, the biggest issue everyone's facing is access to affordable space and then being able to stay in space.
So for artists, that's workspace.
For cultural organizations, it's their anchor spaces in their neighborhoods.
We're learning about how difficult it is to have consistent support for artists and workers around like
I mean, yeah, space and affordability, it's really, really big.
And for artists, it's also about health insurance and access to just the kind of basics to make a great quality life here in the city.
And in terms of reporting, we are currently, all of these listening sessions, we transcribe them, we take notes, we're synthesizing all of that information and we'll put out those findings.
We're still determining what that will look like and are happy to work with you as we...
Determine that.