CRNY & Partners Call for Statewide Creative Economy Plan
Prepared Testimony of Sarah Calderón, Executive Director—Creatives Rebuild New York
Before the New York State Assembly and New York State Senate:
Joint Legislative Budget Hearing on Economic Development and the Arts
February 26, 2025
Good afternoon, Chairperson Stirpe and members of the New York Assembly and Senate. My name is Sarah Calderón, Executive Director of Creatives Rebuild New York (CRNY). Thank you for the opportunity to testify today.
New York’s cultural sector accounted for 7.6% of its GDP, about $144B, in economic activity, powered by 450,000 jobs. However, despite their outsized impact, many creative workers can’t make ends meet. 60% of artists in our state are making less than $25K, and more than half of have no financial safety net and carry unmanageable debt.
This is the entire state, not just NYC. In fact, employment in the arts and culture sector across upstate New York surged 39% from 2013 to 2023, nearly 15 times the overall rate of employment growth upstate. Additionally, working artists are among the few segments of the population consistently growing in upstate communities with the resident artist population growing 21 percent in the same time period. These rapid transformations within our creative industries sadly outpace the state’s economic development tools to support workers.
This is why we are calling for a statewide creative economy plan. A Statewide Creative Economy Plan can help government study new opportunities to address the needs of creative organizations, businesses and workers—and include concrete, coordinated proposals for new investments, programs, and legislative initiatives.
New York will not be alone in this endeavor. Washington, Illinois, Delaware, Massachusetts, and California have these plans. California passed legislation to formalize its Creative Economy planning process. Supported by a legislative appropriation of $1 million, the workgroup is mandated to draw upon cross-sector expertise, including representation from county and city associations, multiple arts disciplines, higher education institutions, state economic development and workforce agencies, a federally recognized Indian tribe, and other relevant parties.
New York’s plan can take a cross-sector approach, and the plan can identify:
- Opportunities to expand benefits and labor protections for creative workers: Portable Benefits Pilots
- New ways to use existing economic development tools: Increasing funding for economic development projects that integrate arts and culture
- Opportunities to build a strong pipeline for creative workers to access quality jobs: Creating artist employment programs to address environmental, health, and safety needs in communities
- Potential innovations in arts and culture funding: Creating new revenue streams for arts and culture
- Opportunities to ensure creative New Yorkers can meet their basic needs: Incentivizing the development of affordable housing in places in New York with high concentrations of creative workers
A Statewide Creative Economy Plan should be supplemented by increased funding for the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), a budget of $200M for NYSCA, which includes $150M for programming and $50M for capital. These investments will help further the activities needed in a Statewide Creative Economy Strategic Plan.
Advancing these policies and strategies in an integrated, coordinated way is a more cost-efficient approach than piecemeal solutions. We are grateful to the organizations here with us today and those that provided written testimony, including the Creative States Coalition, New Yorkers for Culture and Arts Entertainment Community Fund, Black Artists Collective, and Henry Street Settlement.
Thank you for your support of creative workers and organizations across New York and for the opportunity to speak today.