Randi Berry testifies on permanent affordable cultural space and land trusts

Good afternoon, Deputy Speaker and members of the committee.

My name is Randy Berry, and I'm the Executive Director of Indie Space.

We are a community organizer and a grassroots service organization for low-income artists, cultural workers, and small-budget organizations.

We provide them with funding, professional development, and real estate expertise.

We believe culture should be treated as a public good and essential social infrastructure, not an amenity.

Cultural spaces help create connected, healthy communities, yet the people and organizations that sustain our cultural life are increasingly being priced out of the city.

We urge the city to enhance CreateMIC by, first,

You've heard this before today.

Integrating cultural assets into city planning.

This is critical.

Cultural space should be considered essential infrastructure alongside housing, schools, and parks, and incorporated into neighborhood planning from the beginning, not something that we try to accommodate after development decisions have already been made.

Second, create pathways to permanent affordable cultural space.

Explore creative land trusts, the use of city-owned properties, and a dedicated acquisition fund that allows arts organizations to act quickly enough to actually compete in the real estate market.

Third, incentivize cultural space and new development.

Create density bonuses for developers that are providing free or deeply affordable space.

and refine community facility definitions so that small cultural organizations can compete for these opportunities.

Including cultural space in a building is only meaningful if artists can actually afford to use it.

Fourth, streamline the process for creating cultural space in affordable housing developments.

The process of financing and building out cultural space can be complicated and very slow.

Through HPD and other relevant agencies, simplifying the capital process and allowing organizations and developers to work and fundraise in tandem for cultural space build-outs.

At IndieSpace, we work every day to fill the gaps that existing systems leave behind, but artists cannot be expected to solve a systemic affordability crisis through creativity and resilience alone.

We need public policies that make cultural space possible, affordable, and permanent.

New York's cultural life is one of its greatest public assets, and the city's cultural plan must help ensure that the people who create that culture actually have a future here.

Thank you.