Dance/NYC Announces ‘Our New York City Dance’ A New Data-Driven Campaign following release of State of NYC Dance 2023: Findings from the Dance Industry Census

from Emily MT

Dance/NYC announces Our New York City Dance, a new advocacy campaign that follows the release of the recently published report, State of NYC Dance 2023: Findings from the Dance Industry Census.

Through the power of collective action, the Our New York City Dance campaign aims to tackle the challenges facing the industry highlighted in the report. This initiative is built on a vision for a dance community that is valued, protected, sustainable, and just—a vision that has been shaped by input from the dance community through the Dance Industry Census, Census Roundtable Discussion Series, and a variety of focus groups. Details of the campaign can be found at Dance.NYC/OurNYCDance.

“When Dance/NYC announced Dance Workforce Resilience Initiative, we set about collecting data that could inform many of the concerns we’ve anecdotally known but had no hard data to prove,” says Dance/NYC’s Co-Executive Director, Candace Thompson-Zachery. “Now we have that data in the State of NYC 2023 Report, and so the work before us is to not leave it on a digital shelf and really get the data in the hands of our community so we can use it collectively as a tool for change.”

During the next two months, Dance/NYC will roll out detailed insights from the report, focusing on three critical issues:

Dance Workers’ Lack of Value and Protections in Society
Financial Unsustainability within the Dance Sector
The Ongoing Struggle for Justice, Equity, and Inclusion

But more importantly, the campaign will share actionable tactics that individuals and entities alike can take—whether in their daily interactions, within their communities, or through their engagement with larger systems. For example, educating oneself on their rights as a freelance worker in NYC, implementing decolonization processes in their work and signing on to endorse legislation promoting economic equity.

In December 2023, Dance/NYC published the State of NYC Dance 2023 Report, an in-depth investigation of the economic realities of individuals and entities working in the New York City dance industry. The report is available in full at Dance.NYC/StateofNYCDance23. In conjunction with the report release, Dance/NYC launched the DWR Hub which serves as the go-to digital resource for the dance industry and wider arts & culture sector.

A culmination of Dance/NYC’s Dance Industry Census and Roundtable Discussion Series, the report forms a comprehensive picture of the dance workforce, using data to equip the sector with the tools to advocate for meaningful change in policies and practices that directly impact the industry and a new vision for dance in the New York City metropolitan area. Most importantly, it serves as an important guide for Dance/NYC’s ongoing Dance. Workforce. Resilience. (DWR) Initiative, which aims to address economic inequity and strengthen the dance ecology by directly serving individual dance workers, dance organizations, fiscally sponsored groups and projects, and nonprofit and for-profit dance entities. The Initiative works to build an infrastructure of partnerships, cross-sector support, and accountability to reduce the gap between dance workers and the resources they need to thrive.

Dance/NYC’s Dance. Workforce. Resilience. Initiative is made possible, in part, by leadership support from the Mellon Foundation, New York Community Trust, Doris Duke Foundation, the Mertz Gilmore Foundation and a coalition of general operating support funders, and by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and the National Endowment of the Arts.

Dance/NYC
Dance/NYC’s mission is to promote and encourage the knowledge, appreciation, practice, and performance of dance in the metropolitan New York City area. It embeds core values of justice, equity, and inclusion into all aspects of its programs and operations. Dance/NYC remains committed to delivering programs that address disparities in the dance field by continuing to fill gaps in the availability of resources where they are most needed. It believes the dance ecology must itself be just, equitable, and inclusive to meaningfully contribute to social progress and envisions a dance ecology wherein power, funding, opportunities, conduct, and impacts are fair for all artists, cultural workers, and audiences. Instagram @dance.nyc | Facebook @DanceNYCorg | X @DanceNYC | LinkedIn Dance/NYC

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