While the above phrase made famous by the philosopher Heraclitus may register as hackneyed at times, it has never felt more pertinent to me. As we head into mid-summer after weathering months of constant adjustments to the ever-evolving “new normal” across our nation, I want to take a moment to update our broad network about how Brooklyn Arts Council is faring through all of this.
The global health and economic crises brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic have impacted our shared arts and culture community in profound and sometimes tragic ways, and Brooklyn Arts Council is no exception. Though we managed to sustain our operations over the past several months with emergency grants and PPP support, I am sad to say that the continuing calamity has forced some difficult decisions that are now coming to bear on the entire staff and organization.
Among the most distressing of these changes is a number of staff layoffs that will be rolled out between now and December of this year. In order to stave off further layoffs and furloughs, remaining staff will reduce their work hours in order to participate in New York State’s Shared Work Program. These measures come after thorough Board and staff review of various budget and programmatic scenarios for how to go forward responsibly in pursuit of our mission.
Rest assured that while some of our capacity will necessarily contract with this decrease in staff, the work of Brooklyn Arts Council will continue. We are dedicated to delivering essential programs to our constituency while confronting the issues raised by some of the most challenging public health and economic conditions we have ever experienced.
Amidst all of this, we are also listening to and working to amplify and ameliorate the issues of injustice, inequity, and entrenched institutional racism that have risen to the forefront of the national conversation. As an arts organization serving one of the most racially and ethnically diverse places on earth, some of that work starts by looking inward at our own practices to ensure that we are not perpetuating systems of oppression or exclusion, as well as outwardly and assertively supporting the transformation that needs to happen. We owe it to the artists and audiences we serve to continually interrogate our own practices, and to serve as an agent of change in our arts and culture community.
Here are a few key points on the ways we are seeking to address these overlapping issues:
How Brooklyn Arts Council is responding to our FY 2021 budget contraction resulting from the financial crisis precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic:
We have, with much sadness, reduced our staff capacity. Four full-time members of Brooklyn Arts Council’s devoted staff will be laid off as of June 30, with more potential losses anticipated between now and December. We are committed to helping our former employees secure gainful employment, be it within arts and culture or another sector.
We are reducing staff work schedules and salaries ethically and proportionately. Beginning July 6, Brooklyn Arts Council will enact temporary salary reductions of 20% for all full-time junior staff. Senior staff will receive a temporary salary reduction of 20-50%, commensurate with compensation.
We are participating in New York State’s Shared Work Program. Beginning July 6, Brooklyn Arts Council employees will participate in New York State’s Shared Work Program, which exists to offset salary/work reductions such as those we have implemented organization wide. This enables us to retain more staff and for all remaining staff to keep full health and other benefits.
We are making use of the U.S. CARES Act. Through July 31, the Federal government will provide an additional $600 weekly to Brooklyn Arts Council employees, current and newly laid-off, who are approved to receive state unemployment benefits — no matter the amount of unemployment they receive.
We believe that, by reducing salaries through the end of 2020, we will save jobs in the near-term and keep the current make-up of our talented staff intact so that we can continue delivering our mission in the long-term.
What Brooklyn Arts Council is doing to withstand and rise above the economic crisis:
We are continuing to put the borough’s artists first. As of today, all previously committed grants and payments to artists for work completed have been paid out. In addition, beginning July 15, Brooklyn Arts Council will be hosting a Mutual Aid Arts Sale to benefit local artists and our organization’s mission. Brooklyn-based artists participating in the sale have the option of 1) receiving all funds generated from the sale of their work, 2) splitting the earnings with Brooklyn Arts Council 50/50 or 3) donating all proceeds to Brooklyn Arts Council.
We are continuing public programming. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Brooklyn Arts Council swiftly pivoted to online programming through its Brooklyn Innovation Institute. To date, we have hosted and partnered on nearly a dozen programs on varied topics including grief, crisis finance management, affordable housing, and the creative process — with many more on the way.
We are developing remarkable virtual tools. Through a generous two-year grant from the Booth Ferris Foundation awarded in 2018, Brooklyn Arts Council was able to rebrand and rebuild its fifteen-year-old website. The timing of this project was beyond fortuitous. In June 2020, we launched this increasingly valuable resource. Included among its vast and varied features are event calendars, news updates, grantee profiles, resource pages, and a readily accessible archive of past virtual programming.
We will continue providing grants to local artists. Given the continued dearth of gigs and professional opportunities for the borough’s artists, it is paramount that Brooklyn Arts Council continue ensuring that our artists continue to thrive. Our next call for grants applications will open on July 13, 2020 with applications due September 11, 2020. We are waiting to learn from our City and State funding partners about how much funding will be available in this upcoming cycle.
Supporting the arts and cultural landscape of Brooklyn is why we exist — we are keeping our sights on that lodestar as we move through this transitional moment.
How Brooklyn Arts Council is working to dismantle racism and structural inequities in our work:
We are revisiting and rededicating ourselves to our organizational policies and goals around anti-racist work. While lifted from an internal policy document, some of the goals outlined below will apply to our work and its impact, such as:
Pursue cultural competency among our staff and Board by creating substantive learning opportunities and formal, transparent policies.
Generate and gather research related to equity to make measurable progress toward the visibility of our diversity, inclusion, and equity efforts.
Pool resources and expand offerings for BIPOC communities living in neighborhoods that do not have the resources afforded privileged white communities by connecting with other organizations committed to diversity and inclusion efforts.
Develop a system for being more intentional and conscious of bias during staff recruitment, promotion, and evaluation processes.
We are auditing our own grantmaking systems to ensure equity. We will examine and question our means of dissemination of information, review criteria, and other processes around how we distribute the funding we steward. This much needed audit will involve bringing our funders and stakeholders into collaboration such that compliance and responsiveness are in considered in equal measure.
We are turning the “diversity lens” upon ourselves. To that end, Brooklyn Arts Council is setting concrete goals around staff and Board recruitment such that those pathways promote representation of the communities we serve.
Whether you are a supporter of Brooklyn Arts Council, or one of the thousands of artists and audience members we aim to serve through our work, I want to sincerely thank you for your ongoing trust and partnership as we move through uncertainty and change toward much hoped-for better days together. We could not do this work without you.
Charlotte A. Cohen
Executive Director
Brooklyn Arts Council
The Brooklyn Bridge under construction, ca. 1869. Image courtesy Getty Images/Corbis/Hulton Deutsch