Mark Stern urges DCLA to adopt a neighborhood-focused approach

Looking ahead, DCLA for most of its history has served as a means of funding individual nonprofit cultural providers through the Cultural Institutions Group and the Cultural Development Fund programs.

The 2018-2017 Cultural Plan called on the agency to use what we think of as a neighborhood lens.

In allocating funding.

As a result, the city expanded the CIGs to add members located outside of Manhattan

and shifted CDF funding to target neighborhoods identified by the city's Task Force on Racial Inclusion and Equity.

An earmarked fund for underserved communities increased funding to about half of CDF grantees.

Applying a neighborhood lens to funding program was a good first step, but the next phase may require the agency to

rethink itself more thoroughly as a neighborhood-focused agency, including changes in how it operates internally, its relationship to other city and borough agencies, and the support for grassroots effort across the five boroughs.

In terms of neighborhood focus, we learned a lot from one of our colleagues in Philadelphia, the Reinvestment Fund, a community development financial institution.

Their slogan is build from strength.

That is to identify a neighborhood's strength and build links between it and other neighborhoods that are more vulnerable.

We've learned that civic clusters are points of strength that the city could use to build other stronger neighborhoods.

In some ways, cultural providers and civic clusters are already doing this.

We found that CDF grantees in civic cluster neighborhoods are connecting to other community-based organizations in their neighborhood more often than those in other neighborhoods.

We also found existing examples of cultural providers employing strategies to build community capacity, including community asset mapping, and here we noted

the Bronx Council on the Arts was working on this, employing community organizers.

To link community concerns to cultural expression.

Of course, Queens Museum began using that quite a while ago.

And finally, cultural organizing to activate neighborhood spaces with the Kensington Cultural Council in Brooklyn being an example of that.

We're likely to overlook the fact that cultural engagement is a public good.

What are the economic consequences of fewer low-weight births or stronger social connection in a neighborhood?

The economic consequences of these social impacts

affect all New Yorkers, especially residents of lower and moderate income neighborhoods across the five boroughs.

The city made a good choice in addressing the unequal distribution of cultural assets among neighborhoods.

It can now build on that success by refining its approach to achieve a more just city

led by a more equitable cultural ecology.

Thank you.