Lucy Sexton testifies remotely on disability access, arts education, and affordability

Okay, Lucy is online in London and she can't stay long.

So we're gonna call her after this panel.

This is the entire note and this is what it said.

Hi, Lucy, joining us from London.

You love us so much that you are zooming in from Big Ben.

I couldn't miss it.

I have to come over here for work, but I'm coming back on Wednesday.

Thank you very much for hearing my testimony.

I really, really appreciate it.

Chair Williams, Council Members Maloney, Lewis Stevens.

My name is Lucy Sexton.

She, her, I lead New Yorkers for Culture and Arts.

Create NYC identified many problems and proposed solutions.

It also inspired the People's Cultural Plan, which identified and proposed solutions to further challenges.

I thank the many people.

Who worked on both those plans.

Create NYC included disability access, inclusion, and equity throughout the plan, articulating the importance of including cultural workers with disabilities in decision-making capacities like grant panels and capital project.

It also created the Disability Forward Fund.

Both of these ideas should be revisited.

The data on what they achieved and didn't achieve should be released, and we should most importantly get disabled artists and activists back at the table for real change.

One current initiative the city could support right now is the cultural access.

NYC project to research and build an accessibility hub, which would provide low-cost equipment and services allowing cultural organizations of every size to increase accessibility for artists and audiences.

Create NYC also proposed a Citizens Council and created a Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission.

Neither is active today.

We propose that the City Council pass legislation to make a cultural advisory group a permanent feature, one that would meet with DCLA on a biannual basis to discuss concerns and to see what can be done to address them.

Create NYC called for quality arts education for every student, yet we still do not have a dedicated art teacher in every New York City public school.

Create NYC emphasized equity.

Here are some concrete actions to take toward that goal.

In serving embattled immigrant artists, the city can help those communities be aware of and receive info on the council's cultural immigrant initiative.

Trusted messengers like the Asian American Arts Alliance should be funded to do this work.

In serving Black and other organizations of color, which are at great risk of cultural erasure due to federal attacks, the Council should increase funding to the Coalition of Theaters of Color.

Finally, queer art is mentioned but not meaningfully addressed in the plan.

The Council's LGBTQIA plus caucus has advanced a trans artist microgrant program, and they call for a $5 million fund for queer art.

In this time of attack on queer and trans art, the city should stand.

step in to proudly support these artists.

The People's Cultural Plan went further and addressed affordability and support for artists and culture workers.

These should be included.

Healthcare for arts workers is in crisis.

Many were recently dumped from the Essential Plan due to federal cuts.

City Council should advance the proposal from Freelancers Union to create a pilot program providing portable health benefits for teaching artists.

To address, in terms of affordable workspace for artists, philanthropic support has been withdrawn for a longstanding subsidy program that made subsidies so you get affordable rehearsal space for dance and theater artists.

That has dried up.

The city should step in with simple subsidies distributed through the art service organizations that have already been doing this work.

To address affordable housing, the city can and should, at no cost, pass legislation guaranteeing that the city's human rights law not be used to ban artist preference housing.

This would provide a pathway for nonprofit housing projects to increase the number of affordable apartments for the city's cultural workforce, many of whom are living at or near the poverty line.

To increase the amount of affordable cultural space for organizations, the city should look at the New York State Art Space Act, which proposed tax breaks for developers who offer cultural nonprofits below market rates on 20-year leases.

Finally, I want to lift up this idea of culture as civic infrastructure, which you've just been saying.

speaking about.

As the city looks at its new housing initiatives, it should do an environmental scan, not only of the neighborhood schools and hospitals, but of its cultural spaces and arts organizations that will serve the new residents.

As you heard from Mark and Susan, the researchers, data shows that robust cultural assets make for happier, healthier,

better educated, and more connected communities.

So let's build them.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Lucy.

You answered all the questions we had.

But if you could submit your testimony, though, because you have some really substantive solutions here.

And if you could also share, I don't think I've ever seen the People's Culture Plan.

So if you could send that to me, too, that'd be great.

Thank you so much.

Get some rest.

We're ahead, right?

They're ahead.

It's nighttime here.

Yes.

Okay, so get some rest.

I appreciate you.

Okay.