Chair Williams asks Commissioner Vij for CreateNYC's top achievements

Thank you.

Just some overall questions.

What are Create New York City's three most consequential achievements since 2017 and what evidence demonstrates their impact?

Yeah.

I would say, well, I really do think that the plan kind of transformed the way DCLA worked in terms of that really deep public engagement, having those office hours of the commissioners, the town halls, the borough workshops, the

public poll, it just like transformed, really opened the doors between DCLA and the people that we serve.

And that has actually been transformative, that kind of accountability direct to...

constituent.

I would say the funding transformations have been really significant.

The CDF reforms and the way that we think about SIAP funding or, you know, adding additional funds to target neighborhoods that are under-resourced.

And then also like the Disability Forward Fund, the Language Access Fund, and just in general, the cultural plan allowed the Department of Cultural Affairs to really transform its argument away from just the economic

argument into that social impact neighborhood level justification for what we do, right?

That we started to be able to say with proof that arts and culture have these like really meaningful and profound impacts on the social well-being of people.

So we're able to start

to move resources more on that neighborhood level and less only geared towards what art can do for tourism.

So in a lot of ways, it totally transformed how we think about our work and then how we're able to build policies outside of that.

And then I would say the DEI work was really significant and transformative.

And it is not something that before the Create NYC plan was part of this agency's purview.

And now it really is kind of core to how we work with the cultural organizations.

That it's a really big part of how they kind of have to be accountable to the city.