Name | Julia Forman |
District | 26 |
What is your plan for getting the city back to work, particularly in its hardest hit sectors? What kind of workforce development programs do you envision that would ensure access to communities of color and people with disabilities? | One of the first things I did as a candidate last summer was to organize a roundtable with local artists and art educators, because I saw how hard the artists around me were struggling. My campaign manager is a stand-up comedian, my deputy campaign manager is a writer and off-off-Broadway producer, and my field director is a photographer. It's no exaggeration to say my campaign is fueled by artists, so we are extremely aware of how hard this year has been for the community. We know there's going to be a push to get Broadway going again. We know there's going to be a push to get high-profile, high-income artists up on stages again. But we need to make sure that the art that is made by and for New Yorkers on stages of all sizes will be supported as well, and we need to make sure that legacy arts institutions are not recouping their losses by cutting union jobs and adding unpaid internships. I will fight for provisions to guarantee that large organizations funded by the city Department of Cultural Affairs do not balance their books through unpaid labor, ensuring real access to arts careers for people regardless of disability or socioeconomic status. |
What is your plan for creating healthy stable communities? How do you envision enlivening vacant commercial and city owned spaces? | I have been calling since July of last year for the city's Department of Cultural Affairs to take an active role in addressing the rehearsal space shortage we are going to hit when public performance is able to safely reopen. Whether that's using public parks and vacant space in public buildings, or helping the studios shuttered during the pandemic to reopen in an economically sustainable way, we must do everything we can to accelerate the creation of art in our city. We can view vacant spaces as a crisis, or we can treat them as an opportunity. I have long called for commercial rent stabilization as well as provisions in the property tax code to make cultural and artistic spaces viable businesses even when neighborhood property values go up (often thanks to the artists who build those communities up). These are simple, low-cost ways to make it easier for arts to thrive throughout our city. |
What do you foresee is the role of creative economies in supporting economic recovery in New York City particularly for communities most affected by environmental, housing, and health instability due to COVID including our aging, immigrant, and working class communities of color? | This is an area where I hope to continue the legacy of current council member Jimmy Van Bramer. I've been active in the Open Streets program, and have been working to help coordinate Open Culture events. While utilizing New York's outdoor space is currently a health and safety necessity, developing these spaces can also build the infrastructure of long-term arts resiliency. Outdoor performance spaces give the artists of New York a way to build their communities and businesses back up. They also recognize the city's legacy of outdoor artistic development, where performances from the back of a mobile trailer morphed into what is now the Public Theater and the Delacorte's Shakespeare in the Park. While not everyone will find the same level of success as Joe Papp, I believe now is a time to take a page from his book and treat arts as a vital part of our civic dialogue and responsibilities, and I will fight to make sure our city supports that end. |
What is your plan for the city’s school system and what is your vision of the role that arts in education plays? | If you had one map of average income by neighborhood and another map of average arts education access by neighborhood, you wouldn't be able to tell which was which. Too often, arts and culture are treated as luxury goods that can be funded through PTA programming, when in reality they are vital to developing social skills and critical thinking capacity. This needs to end. We must fully fund adequate arts education as well as after-school opportunities for interested students to engage more fully in the culture of our city. |
What are your plans for supporting incarcerated and formerly incarcerated New Yorkers? | In the same way that arts in education can be a path to critical thinking and social engagement, we should see arts for the currently and formerly incarcerated as a pathway back into full participation in their communities. As a broader comment, we should end the stigmatization and over-incarceration that necessitates these pathways in the first place, but the injustice of the problem's existence doesn't exempt us from facing the problem where it is. Artistic communities have long been places where people can feel free from judgment and engage in critical analysis about societal ills. These are places where the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated can thrive, and I will absolutely support funding for organizations that help to make that happen. |
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