Members of New Yorkers for Culture & Arts say that cultural programming can help communities heal and improve public safety. In an op-ed for the New York Daily News, Amy Andrieux, executive director at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts in Brooklyn, and Daisy Rodriguez, executive director of government and community affairs at the Wildlife Conservation Society, pointed to New York City programs as models for engaging underserved, low-income communities.
NYC has experimented with various programming: the Department of Probation and Carnegie Hall launched NeON arts, which runs creative workshops for young people in neighborhoods with high rates of probation. Ritual4Return is a 12-week theater workshop for the formerly incarcerated that helps with reentry. Hospital Audiences/HAI, defunded in 2018, would once run arts and culture programming at shelters and other public health facilities before it disbanded. “Culture connects us, it heals us, and it creates safe, strong communities,” the authors argued, encouraging New York City politicians to invest in cultural programming as they finalize the city’s 2023 budget.