 and performance space and trying to preserve what we're doing so so we went and we made a meet the candidates forum last week and we had 18 city council candidates show up for it which was really great we had four from district two which is the east village in that area we had a bunch from district four we had two really great ones from district 35 which is around Fort Greene so that's going to be an interesting race to watch for those that are interested in the arts so we're going to make our endorsements around April the 20th and and you can follow all about this on our website LITNY.org so I'd like to just open it up while I have a minute or two left for any questions anybody has about what we're doing yes ma'am our organization was started around about 2009 the actual genesis of the idea was 2005 when a fellow named Kirkwood Bromley was given the Jo Chino award the New York innovative theater awards and he said we shouldn't be calling ourselves off off Broadway we shouldn't relate ourselves to some other avenue so indie film won't say they're off off Hollywood so we shouldn't do that either we're independent we're artist driven we're artist centric we're artist creative so then the big thing also at around about that time was we were seeing a lot of our spaces close this is right before the big financial crisis that happened in 2009 and we were still losing spaces to a great great degree I would hazard we've lost about 100 spaces since the latest turn of the century so that's really difficult for us so that's that's where it started we also focus on things like the actors equity showcase code if you know anything about that that's it's got some good things for actors I'm an actual member of actors equity but also some problems with trying to sustain a successful run for longer than three weeks so it's things of that nature and and we just really didn't have a unified voice since we started the organization we we've broken off into several organizations are one of our sister organizations the indie theater fund represented by randy berry here they do a really great thing of of taking funds from organizations that are part of the company who give five cents a ticket and they create a pool of money to give out grants annually so they do a great thing with that but we're separate from that we're focusing on really hardcore you know if we have space we'll put up a show when we don't have space we're in trouble that's that's our big thing at the moment yes ma'am great question um you know I I think there there's there's I think from up from our point of view there's a lot of things that get looked at as far as what's happening with with organizations that have budgets of 250 000 and above and most of our organizations are with groups that have less than that much less than that and I think that we also are dealing with organizations that for the most part we most of our companies last two to maybe three years because of all the pressures that are happening so it's just really hard for us to to have any kind of traction and have a unified voice in what's happening we it would be great to open up the cultural institutions groups and to and to have more funding for us as well yeah absolutely yeah both yeah yeah anybody else great thank you very much thanks chris uh next up david shingles from arts pool hi everybody um it's so great to be here um even with this intimate group um and the recommendation that I wanted to make to the city as a part of its cultural plan process is to make some serious investments and shared infrastructure for the arts field reason being um we as a field don't have a whole lot of money I never have and it does not appear there's a golden parachute on its way um and yet we all tend to go down the road of building independent infrastructure in the form of our own space our own staff our own technology that is tends to be the most expensive way to have infrastructure so we're spreading out our limited dollars even farther by by dividing and having independent infrastructure so the opportunity in shared infrastructure is not just to save money but to save time invested in maintaining that infrastructure and to create the opportunity to reinvest those savings in the mission driven work that brought us all to this field and is the basis of the impact that we have on society so to give the example of arts pool in terms of how we do this work um we were originally incubated by the alliance of resident theaters new york and when we were first developing arts pool what we knew was that relative to the equation of space staff and technology we wanted to focus on the labor and technology sides of that equation and we also knew that in terms of the administrative work that we wanted to create a shared infrastructure around we needed to find aspects of that work that we do in approximately the same way from organization to organization and that involve a lot of redundant transactional work because that's the basic profile of work that you can gain efficiencies on and over time achieve economies of scale through so where we landed in terms of the offering um includes compliance because we all have to be compliant and approximately the same way from organization to organization and it also includes the administrative functions that rest underneath compliance which are finance and workforce administration all of which involve quite a bit of redundant transactional work so um when an arts organization joins arts pool the infrastructure that they're sharing with the other members is a group of worker and workers and a suite of technology that's delivering their compliance finance and workforce administration functions um and we launched in December of 2014 in that transition art new york went from incubator to first member of arts pool and we've been growing that membership incrementally ever since we now have a membership of 13 organizations and to give you a sense of those organizations they are producing presenting service education and funding organizations they support all arts genres they have presence and reach locally nationally and internationally they range in budget sizes from 100 000 to 5.5 million and the reason I point that out is because it's so often the case that we stay in silos as a field in in relationship to the organizations and the artists that are most similar to us but we as a field need the same basic infrastructure and we use it in the same basic ways and so shared infrastructure also creates the opportunity to collaborate across those silos that we typically isolate ourselves in um so I have two minutes I did that fast um anyway so that's that's the basics here obviously you know we are one version of this there are other versions of this some that are addressing space some that are addressing other kinds of infrastructure and sharing opportunities we would encourage the city to invest widely um in these efforts and with one minute left if anybody has a quick question I'm happy to answer it okay oh in funding general operating support is always best because what we need is to build our own infrastructure so that we can bring on more members sure it could work either way but the truth about our model is that the faster we can scale the faster we can create efficiencies that drive down cost which then open our doors to a wider array of organizations so certainly the support in either direction would be useful but if we can't scale up our own operations we can't open our doors that widely to bring on new organizations so I think the the general operating support toward arts pool would be more valuable to meet both goals thank you thanks David uh let's see next step we have Wiley so hello um I wasn't here this morning so um I may say something that is irrelevant or you've bypassed it uh my name is Wiley Hausam I'm um kind of a career long arts worker uh in many well in several different disciplines and in different roles first part of my career I was an artist representative working in the theater um second part I was a theater producer working at the public theater under George C. Wolfe and during that time we opened Joe's Pub third chapter is as a university arts administrator um and I opened the Skirball Center at NYU in 2003 I guess it was um so this idea is just in the interest of of spreading spreading resources and covering more New Yorkers and serving more New Yorkers and it's sort of borrowed from a system that I don't know that much about but have heard about in Sao Paulo Brazil and essentially what it is is just a network of small locally deeply embedded arts centers that serve artists in that locality that neighborhood um and um would be funded by a combination of the DCA and city council members responsible for that neighborhood in the city um and it sort of stems from the thought that you know we we have this definition a long-standing definition of what is valuable arts and culture in New York City and it tends to be the large cultural organizations and the traditional disciplines and a lot of those organizations are becoming unsustainable financially unsustainable I mean we're talking about the New York Philharmonic the Metropolitan Opera the Metropolitan Museum they're all showing great signs of financial difficulty in the future and and the current arts uh construction or ecosystem really serves a very small portion of the of New York City and so the idea would be to try to serve you know ideally a hundred percent of folks through very close to the ground inexpensive support systems and that's really my idea I'll answer questions although I don't know that I uh have any answers hi I'm just to say a little bit about the Sao Paulo model it's run by Seski it's called and it's an interesting model the um I think in the 60s the kind of left-wing government came up with that great idea that every company in Sao Paulo has to pay 1.5 percent or 1 percent of their profits into a pool from that pool like 25 theaters have been built but they are not just theaters they have big buildings and they have a theater in the middle then they have a gym then they have a pool they have a library they have a restaurant and they have concert spaces if you are employed by any of the companies you go in everywhere for free so this is your they have lots of continuing education classes all winter long summer long spring and evenings with certificates without certificates and and then if you are a member of you live in Sao Paulo you go there but for a very small amount like for 20 you go 15 to the to see the play or the pool costs you five dollars a visit and supposedly 55 to 60 percent each year of everybody who lives in Sao Paulo uses these institutions so it's a sensational model very very successful they rebuild old factories one is called Pompeii by a famous artist and architect who redid that so it's a completely different approach but it really does does work and they might not have the mat or they might not have the Metropolitan Museum but they have this and it's sensational 25 theaters supported by this yeah and not by the city and that's about so the businesses question but I just on with you I'm also a fellow NYU grad but even recently I mean I've been attending a lot of these events and I keep thinking everybody talks about a cultural plan for the Lower East Side and I know there are areas which need money and culture cultural centers but I also think about the well-developed parts of New York City which is like areas close to Lincoln Center and you know Philharmonic because there are still communities there which don't have the real cultural experience and so this idea of having this small cultural space you know where even I mean the people there may be rich but they started off poor they came you know they're living this middle-class society and being rich can also be very alienating and I mean so having these cultural centers and having a provision for that is something yeah even when you were talking about that point I was like yeah okay someone is thinking like me well it would increase you know in-person connectivity by neighborhoods I've been very active in a lot of 30 seconds of political meetings in the last several months and what I've noticed is that people really like coming to be with other people in those kinds of intimate interactive ways because people are connecting in a way that is so hard to do with electronics Hi you know there are a lot of community art centers in New York and all the different boroughs but I just think that we even us in the arts don't even know about them like Queen's Library for example is that place you're talking about it's a library it's a community center they present art and cultural events there and it's also a meeting place for people in the community so what I think we talked about in our meeting this morning which is the manifesto is you know how to let people know that this is happening it's you know I think there's always this assumption that a neighborhood is nothing until it's gentrified you know oh finally you know people are here but we there are people you know I call them indigenous New Yorkers people that were born here that didn't come here for any reason that are here because this is where they live and they're part of the fabric so even in your you know it does happen it is here well actually could I have Patrick Grant is that tilted axis yeah from the stand because you're gonna find yourself in that situation and I myself this is where I asked myself what am I doing here I'm doing this for two reasons my name is Patrick Grant and I'm I'm a composer and a musician and a producer my background has been primarily in theater even though I have created music with diverse artists like John Cage, Billy Joel, Philip Glass, Quincy Jones so but I'm coming at it from a perspective of uh uh two paths one is I want to rehabilitate myself to the community and say hello everybody I'm uh want to make myself more active in my own um city's art community and secondly to quickly tell you about a project I've been doing for the last five years sort of off the grid that has had some good results that maybe you could use these examples as metaphors or direct application if they're helpful in any way so this uh what I'm speaking for is I'm speaking for music and music is a art that doesn't necessarily need words so it has to be given a voice but what I have found is that where there is music there is hope and what I have done is I've created a project called Tilted Axes Music for Mobile Electric Guitars and I created this for Make Music New York five years ago and the idea was I was going to combine my history of theatricality rock musicianship and um a sense of community and create a project where it sort of was my revenge yeah we would always put on shows and hope that people would come and see us well let's put together something where we can go where there's already thousands of people and so that's been a great experience it's a found resonance not only in this city but other cities in this country as well as in Europe and South America so I'm very familiar with the SESC system and they're fantastic even though they lost 37 percent of their funding this last year but how do I fund this thing so one of the things I working off the grid is I want to incorp I want to encourage the DCA to find alternative methods to find corporate funding what I was doing was um since we use musical equipment like vox amps or strings by Fender I would um go to companies and this could be maybe not a music company but whatever you're interested in find out what they're already spending money on and then tell them how you can you know get the same result um for whatever they're spending maybe cheaper so for instance I knew that the vox was taking out maybe 40 um spending money on ads to reach like 40 50 000 people in certain miracle um in certain musical periodicals so I said well if we do a performance in Union Square or some other big city I can reach that same amount of people showing people your logo so automatically that action became monetized so I was able to start approach people like so there was a value to all these things we were doing so it's in a nutshell with two minutes left these are the kinds of approaches and the kind of initiative I'd encourage I mean I know a lot of corporations are offering um um money for the arts but my advice is to take the initiative to call up their um their development people you'll probably find a colleague who is much like you who's their job is to go back to their boss with some cool new ideas and more often than not I find out uh they're starving for ideas so don't wait for them to come to you but pick up the the phone and take the initiative and you will find some success but it's better than no success but I um that's what I have and I also because I don't have um I'll leave uh I'll let the music speak for itself I bought a bunch of CDs I'll leave out there if you want to and um that will explain the project more deeply but I guess with one minute is there any burning question or anything I can clarify well one of the reasons is it would also enable me to um go into communities that needed arts the most and that's one of the things we like doing we like going into what we call war zones we've done a lot of work in Detroit and we've done a lot of work in Sao Paulo and other um neighborhoods of uh Düsseldorf which is mostly nice but there are if you go far enough away you'll find areas that aren't going to support they need and we also encourage people from the communities to join us with um some preparation in the rehearsal process so every project we do takes on the flavor um of that community so that's one of the um things that have made the project I think um uh very special so every incarnation takes on the character of the community in which it performs thank you very much thank you Patrick um next up we have Marianne Benedetto from Sparrow Film Project hi so I'm with the Sparrow Film Project which is a local film by excuse me I'm clearly one of the first speakers not from the theater community so excuse me um we're a local filmmaking competition we started in the spring of 2009 and have since run 13 major events and additional smaller ones uh our basic premise uh has remained the same throughout we give uh a challenge each year that's based on a theme and filmmakers who uh sign up in advance are given their specific assignments which they must complete in a three-minute film that is due three weeks after the assignment is given out we have always striven to give something it is an inclusive opportunity to our community um we are from Astoria which was one of the earliest homes of filmmaking after it moved out of Edison New Jersey uh where it was just a technological achievement um films were made here in New York um television is made here in New York now there are over 50 films that are 50 shows that are shooting every year but we want people to think of filmmaking and television and all of these these creative opportunities as not just something that you see a no parking sign and then there's a grip truck on in front of your deli and you know it's just a nuisance um we want people to be able to just get in there and experience what it's like to make a film what it's like to meet other people who will help you um realize this this dream that you have and our competitors have been amateurs they've been people who are um are involved in in filmmaking professionally um we have had people uh who are young our most recent best actress winner was eight years old at the time of filming our most recent um best actor was in his 70s we've had people who are hearing impaired who are vision impaired uh i myself am a queer woman and we have had people from the LGBT community one of our our best film winners um made a film specifically about violence against gay men and we so what we do is we do this uh competition every year and we're also trying to expand because not only are we trying to say that we have an opportunity for anybody to come out and make a film but we want to give people resources um in doing so i work in post-production primarily i'm a colorist for a show you may have heard of called sesame street um alongside my partner who is also a cinematographer uh we have uh so we have been doing educational programs now where we do um inexpensive workshops uh we you know speak about different topics that people may not consider um accessible without going to film school and spending a lot of money we have reached out to uh editors who have worked on major motion pictures um sound designers just different people who hey maybe if you'd like to make a film you don't know what your talent is or what you might be good at or you know how to fill in the gaps so we're giving people these opportunities um we also are trying to bring people together uh we've had more former participants who've moved out of New York City who have expanded um our reach by you know moving to they've moved to Louisiana or Colorado and they bring it with them they sign up online and they get locals there to take part um but we are primarily about New York City and about creating um this environment so we have mixers that we hold at bars where we just invite people to come down and meet other people they might um join a team with or talk about um challenges that they've had and just you know just speak out and you know form a larger tighter knit community it's in terms of budget we are a small group there's five of us um we do this all on a volunteer basis and it's you know it's a challenge but we've been lucky that we've had um help from Kauffman and studios and also the Museum of the Moving Image uh who who have given us the space to show every film that we make over the course of two days and then we host a gala celebration and award ceremony um in their beautiful facility um but otherwise yeah it's the our challenges is figuring out funding and resources are any questions sorry there's a lot to get through I mean it would be very helpful for a non-biased source of support um we've spoken we reach out to um potential corporate sponsors um but there's always the fear especially since we have this um sort of background where it started out of a bar um that's what Sparrow is and we don't want to have say um liquor brand X presents this um this this competition where we create the assignments that people have and we're afraid of having corporate sponsorship become like part of your assignment is you must put a bottle of that you know of that liquor in there and so forth so you know any sort of like a corporate um you know if it's corporate money for its if it's city money something that we know isn't going to force our um our our filmmakers to you know be biased in in some way or create something that's in some way inherently advertising and that's time thank you thank you Marianne um so let's see we had five people on this list I know some um other people have joined us since then if anybody um other uh has a talk that they would like to present about their own group or um proposals to the plan you're more than welcome to come up we could uh do it maybe assembly line style um up at the front and um and then maybe uh after that we can open it to small group conversations or impressions from the morning breakout sessions and things like that so anybody else would like to come up hi everyone I'm uh I'm Alec Duffy I'm the co-director of the art center Jack which is in Clinton Hill he started about five years ago I'm going to use the podium I'm going to get really formal here just because I have some notes on my computer so last week the activist Mark Rudd led a workshop at Jack and in talking about his time as a student activist in the 1960s he said that he felt like the present moment was a second opening the first for him being 1968 and um I don't know about you but I feel an opening myself right now and it's clear that DCLA does too they did the diversity survey two years ago or one year ago and the cultural plan this year um kind of opening up an opportunity to look at the how the why the what the where and the and the um who of cultural funding in New York when I was looking at the findings overview from the diversity survey there was something that caught my eye they surveyed all the organizations that they had funded in the past few years and in their findings overview they reported that 74 percent of the leaders in the cultural workforce were white but I wish they had written that 74 percent of the leaders of the cultural organizations that they funded were white uh the cultural workforces the workforce encompasses so many other groups and individuals that the DC then those that the DCLA currently funds I was talking yesterday with Deira Wright our co-founder at Jack and she told me that 10 years ago when she started her own arts organization Gather Brooklyn she started it as a for-profit enterprise mostly because she didn't feel comfortable with the bureaucratic hurdles and red tape that came with being a non-profit she preferred her her organization to remain autonomous we have to admit that there's a lot of trauma around the non-profit industrial process and grant making and we have right now an opportunity to examine the process of eligibility and the application for DCLA funding itself in what ways does it reflect and reward white organizational culture over those who have less capacity and resources to fully meet all the demands of their process um I wanted to let you know that a few of us are putting together something like a 10-point proposal to revise the funding guidelines and application to ensure that the DCLA umbrella is more inclusive channeling resources to those who are doing great work but for whom the trauma of an application to DCLA is a non-starter some of the things we're looking at is three minutes some of the things that we're looking at is um first off eligibility the rule that you have to be in in existence for over two years prior to applying those first two years are are are the years in which you that decide whether you survive or die and the only reason jack was able to get through two years is because my wife and I had put in 75 thousand dollars of our own money our life savings into jack in order to get it past that hump before we were eligible for significant funding even though we're not getting that yet but significant funding through the DCLA how many folks have the opportunity to do that um what we're looking at is opportunities for seed funding for just that purpose uh what if the DCLA put significant resources not not just the you know $50,000 cap for organizations under under $250,000 budget but even more $100,000 seed funding to arts entrepreneurs that want to start organizations uh number two simplifying the application took me about 40 hours to complete but for someone working two to three jobs that's an impossibility reviewing the panel process so one of the things that came up with someone I talked to who had been on the panel was that each year they they they tell you in the panel how much that person was granted the previous or that organization was granted the previous year and what that does is kind of inflect a little but bias into the panel process right so if this organization that's doing great work and they're asking for $25,000 if you see that they got $5,000 last year there's a little bit of a bias implicit in that and saying oh okay well maybe we'll give them $5,300 this year instead of saying we want to we support this or this application 90% so we're going to give them $23,000 or something like that um and then awarding awarding the money looking at multi-year funding niska does it why can't the dcla if you're interested in being a part of this small group drafting this proposal please let me know in person or you can email me at aduffy at jackny.org but also there may be other people already working on this and I would love to hear about those those folks so that's it thank you so much question yeah that's cool i mean what the we got we did get money from brooklyn arts council our first year uh maximum amount we could get was $5,000 we got $2,500 which was a third of our rent for a month um so it didn't go very far but if if there was a significant increase in the arts council ability to fund i'd be all for that thanks everyone multiple mics hey everybody my name is dawn krandall aka miss arora bubrialis i come to you as a part of the burlesque community in new york city um shout out to brad from living theater who sort of was like hey i don't think there's gonna be any burlesque people here you should come and say something so i almost got scared and was like oh i'm just gonna sit here and listen to all these people but i don't know if i per se have any recommendations but i just do want to speak to burlesque and nightlife and drag and a lot of things that are brilliant in new york city after hours that we and many of my colleagues do completely unfunded on shoestring budgets of our closets and things are brilliant and there are people that i think come out of that and then go into larger obviously you all know taylor mac who works with a lot of burlesque performers and stuff like that but for every person who is feared out how to get funding there's like hundreds more in the new york city cityscape that are putting on not just bar shows but brilliant theatrical pieces that often i think like my own oh yeah um i am co-founder of brown girls burlesque and all women of color burlesque troop i'm no longer in bgb i started with two other people now brass brown radical ass burlesque recognizing that just because one is of color doesn't necessarily mean they are radical so we had to name that in our new troop um but i want and we brass we've gotten a little bit of funding um we live in lower manhattan um from ellen labets you know what i'm saying i know i was like i was about to say not the community let's see we've gotten some funding and we were able to do a show two years ago and actually have budget to get props and costumes and pay people and oh my gosh it was amazing and but i think very often in the burlesque community people don't even realize that there's funding to be had so i don't know i guess i just wanted to force myself to come up here and say that there's this whole aspect of creative arts in new york city that is so even not even thinking about how to get funding and i literally was on a new york city um facebook burlesque performer group i was like hey anybody want me to say something i'm going to this meeting shout out if you want me to say something um they were like yay go okay um so more i mean one thing also is speaking earlier about the from 2005 on just the the venues that keep closing that's a thing that is affecting everyone in new york city but as burlesque producers tend to be independent and tend to be performers themselves and tend to not have a lot of finances so the amount of places that we can go and present shows keep shrinking and that's a big thing also theater and bar spaces that are actually accessible um is a big issue for trying to be inclusive as possible and not in in being able to get wheelchairs in and so that's a big thing um i don't like i said i don't have any necessary recommendations but i just wanted to to speak and and yeah force myself to to say hello and to name this whole part of the arts community in new york so if anyone wants to say anything or questions issues um if no one asks isn't there also still a law about dancing and drinking or it's against what can you tell about that i haven't been if anyone can speak to like the the old cabaret laws that obviously during juliani period were like getting actively enforced and i haven't been paying attention of if that's been in the past bunch of years i mean i know in the late 90s like was definitely more active i was part of reclaim the streets and we were doing a lot of protests and around there was issues of yeah you couldn't have a certain amount of people in a bar dancing and so anybody know if that has shifted anyone anyone i know i'm like i have a five-year-old it's still active it shouldn't be yeah right i mean it's like oh yeah that should be changed yeah so there's so much stuff but thank you for your time some recommendation around getting resources or information about resources that the city provides to different art fields right so it's not just that we're reaching out to theater dance music and visual arts venues but that there's some sort of outreach about resources in the nightlife community in puppetry and the you know in people that maybe are working in these smaller venues that somebody else was speaking yeah yeah and i think there's also something about like you know because burlesque goes into adult entertainment and there's this sexy atmosphere and and things so i think that also still can in some ways be a stigma like oh that's not serious art you're getting half naked or whatever um so yes well i know content they're not like i can't judge content either so okay i'd like to say something um again my name is alfredo Hernandez um i'm program manager at the field which is an artist services organization um in minhatten um i'd like to speak specifically about students uh today um i know since we're at cuny also um as a passion for arts education um but also thinking about um the role this cultural plan can have in educating oh sure in educating um future artists right artists who are kind of being put through the either however you like to think about it bfa mfa mill um uh and and we did have a breakfast about this last uh earlier this month um uh thinking through um how we're preparing students in in the city of new york to navigate this sector um and i think the cultural plan um you know i gave a talk at a pretty prominent university which will go nameless the program will go nameless as well but the students had absolutely no idea and they were advanced um uh conservatory students had no idea um one would a 501c3 organization was um two that this cultural plan was underway um and three uh that there was a department of cultural affairs so um or how to navigate all of that you know um in giving an hour long talk and trying to download all of this knowledge um i think um this cultural plan um does have the ability to provide some grounding for the next generation of artists as well and arts workers um by preparing them to enter this sector thoughtfully and um um critically so that's my spiel any questions or remarks and people outside of arts education um you know in higher education as well people who can't afford to go through a bfa or mfa program i think there could be more um resources out there on a dcla site or within the cultural plan worked in um towards programming and towards resource development on creating resources on how to navigate this sector and in this city specifically i guess my question is sorry is uh like yeah specific recommendations because i think one of the things i hear the dcla saying is we we give away money or we give money um they probably have some resources on their website but what would you um and they can obviously push money towards things as well right like the cig internship initiative but what would you recommend to meet the goal to meet the to solve the problem that you're suggesting that the dcla do is a primarily as a funding organization i think more public presence maybe more public events um so we know who are our cultural representatives are and um you know that that younger artists know you know who they are who to tap into you know who to call who to vote for things like that um i think that's one way but that's a good point about funding but i would say students you know coming straight out of school um wouldn't necessarily know even how to go about getting money public monies or you know especially if you don't know what a 501c3 is you're kind of working at a deficit already so that's just my point of view well as somebody who our group has looked into becoming a 501c3 and just hearing now about 501c6 we looked at what the you know the advantages and disadvantages are and one of them is that it's extremely complicated to do um and is a lot of time that we don't have because we barely have enough time to run our organization um are there opportunities for people who aren't in the non-profit world like you know how do people in that situation discover you know what are their best opportunities are is that something that um has been addressed at all i'm sorry i wasn't here this morning so i missed that part um and i can do a shameless plug for our organization the field is actually um a fiscal sponsor um one of the oldest organizations offering fiscal sponsorship in the city um uh whereby the the organization becomes your sponsor and acts as your 501c3 you're you're covered under our umbrella so to speak and you can fund raise and apply for grants that way um so that is one way and i know that this sunday at new york live arts there's a town hall about fiscal sponsorship being hosted by dance nyc the field has been involved as well with other fiscal sponsorship organizations across new york um there's some information um let's see i think it's it's on dance nyc's website but um you have to register uh to attend um so that is one way but uh i think a vast amount of young people who are just entering the arts sector as a whole aren't even aware of the different um structures you can take on as an artist or as an organization so that you can function um right as an independent artist as a fiscally sponsored artist or a fiscally sponsored arts organization or as an artist collective or as a 501c3 um so um yeah but i think that's something our educators uh need to be thinking about as well yeah i just wanted to speak to that i'll be there sunday night as well and i uh have fiscal sponsorship through one of your colleagues um but um as a bit of cross talk with the previous question just wanted to say um that's what my organization did figuring that it was a way of getting our non-for-profit toes wet without incurring a lot of the legal fees and a lot and especially a lot of the time that are consumed it's worked out pretty well and the way things are going i am we may become you know a 501c3 of our own in the future but it was a good way to it's a good it's a good middle space you know in terms of involvement so i'd if you can go sunday night uh sounds like a good thing i'll see you there thanks thank you hi i'm an artist and an art educator um you know we've been talking about funding and funding is always going to be an issue um so has um an artist uh and thinking about ways to integrate cultures and as an immigrant too um and how do you how do you integrate i mean why don't you why don't we think about integrating cultures sharing values and creating programs out of those and i think we should address it more to the um real estate i mean people in the real estate business where they can open spaces for more of these activities to happen so then the whole issue of funding probably wouldn't really come in you know where um i mean i'll give you a small example of a project that i've been doing for the last four years it is a community um creative engagement project which is um about sharing the values of an indian festival um but integrating the values with the contemporary life of new york city um and trying to see people who are interested in the values of another culture and and seeing if they can produce a cultural activity out of that you know it could be a designer an artist a writer and then you just share and and find collaborator spaces um i mean i've been working with barnard university and a couple of galleries that open up spaces um so i don't know maybe the cultural plan and ideas of collaboration like different kinds and um cross cultural integration of cultures of artists who can probably integrate with different cultures you answer oh i mean um i think it sounds great you know i i think i've i've i've been at a couple meetings where um maybe speaking to that issue is putting together some kind of and i think brad maybe we've talked about this at some of our own stuff is putting together some kind of um online resource where um either the city would create this database of public spaces that are available for or vacant you know for x amount of time and available for use um on a first come first serve basis or permit basis or something like that so like a centralized hub uh yeah um so that that kind of addresses the space issue a little bit um but yeah thanks anybody else i i i notice some other people have ducked in um you're free to come up and share your views about the work that you or your organization are doing or um specific points that you would like to um address publicly about the plan or make recommendations about their cultural plan to um the department of cultural affairs this is being live streamed anybody else or if you'd like to speak to any of the points you've heard today oh crickets okay thank you everybody and that concludes the afternoon portion but there is an evening portion the sharing of manifestos cultural manifestos which is such a cool word