Opinion: Why NYC Needs a Five-Borough Cultural Festival

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“Creating a citywide cultural festival of global proportions would give locals and visitors a powerful new reason to explore the five boroughs each year, while sharpening the city’s creative edge amid an increasingly packed international calendar of must-do experiences.”

Adi Talwar

The Mazarte Dance Company practicing in Central Park in December 2020.

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New York is home to a rich diversity of annual arts and culture events, from Lunar New Year festivals and the West Indian Day Parade to the Tribeca Film Festival and the Armory Show art fair. But New York still doesn’t have a globally renowned citywide arts and culture festival on the scale of South by Southwest in Austin, the Venice Biennale, or the Edinburgh Fringe Festival—the latter of which generates as many as 3 million ticket sales annually and $630 million in economic impact in the small city of Edinburgh alone.

New York City deserves its own turn in the global spotlight. Now is the time for the Adams administration to launch the city’s first annual five-borough cultural festival—helping the city tackle several challenges at once.

Even viewed through the optimistic glow of spring, one key facet of the city’s economic and social fabric has struggled to regain its former strength: the city’s arts and culture sector. New York City is home to fewer actors, dancers, and musicians now than before the pandemic. Broadway attendance this season is 16 percent below where it was pre-COVID, several arts and nightlife venues have shut down, and numerous working artists have left for more affordable locations. Indeed, the broader arts and entertainment industry has only recovered 84 percent of its pre-pandemic jobs.

There’s a lot that city leaders should do to strengthen the city’s cultural sector, from boosting investment in affordable spaces for artists to live and work to fully funding the Department of Cultural Affairs. But the city also needs fresh ideas that can breathe new life into its arts ecosystem—and help create a more vibrant and resilient post-pandemic economy.

New York City’s first annual five-borough cultural festival can help achieve this, boosting international tourism and regional visitation, and giving New Yorkers an exciting new reason to celebrate.

One of New York City’s greatest competitive advantages in the hybrid work era is the magnetic pull of culture and the arts. This festival would build on these advantages by enlisting hundreds of venues across all five boroughs and open streets, parks, plazas, historic buildings, city-owned properties, and other spaces for music, dance, theater, visual art, cultural performances, and immersive experiences.

Creating a citywide cultural festival of global proportions would give locals and visitors a powerful new reason to explore the five boroughs each year, while sharpening the city’s creative edge amid an increasingly packed international calendar of must-do experiences. By attracting new audiences, facilitating collaboration, easing red tape, and directly supporting artists, this major new festival could also help nurture a full recovery for the arts and culture sector and demonstrate a new level of support going forward.

Inspired by citywide arts events around the globe, New York policymakers should work with cultural and community partners citywide to cultivate an annual cultural festival of unprecedented size, scale, and significance. The key first step is mayoral leadership to make this idea a priority, identify a target week in the annual calendar, and enlist a small group of cultural leaders and civic-minded entrepreneurs to help develop the festival’s operational structure, agenda, and logistics.

While much of the costs of programming the festival could be offset by corporate sponsorships, sales of individual tickets and week-long passes, as is the case in Edinburgh and Austin, the city can help in other ways. For instance, it can offer up city-owned buildings and public spaces for concerts, performances, installations, and parades—closing streets to traffic and allowing performances to take place in parks, plazas, and other public land. The city should also coordinate preparations for a festival of this scale with partners at the state level, with a focus on leveraging state capital grants to help support accessibility and facilities upgrades for cultural venues across all five boroughs. 

New York still has work to do to keep pace with a vastly changed post-pandemic landscape. Creating an annual five-borough cultural festival would help bring the city together around the shared language of creative expression—and strengthen the city’s magnetism for people seeking experiences and connection.

Eli Dvorkin is the editorial and policy director of the Center for an Urban Future. Winston Fisher is a partner at Fisher Brothers and CEO of AREA15.

St. Paul Mayor invites city to Friday community lunch in Mears Park with infamous ‘Covfefe’ hashtag

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Tongue at least ever so slightly in cheek, St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter took to social media this week to invite the city out on Friday to Lowertown’s Mears Park, where food trucks will be selling lunch.

“People are calling our community lunch the best lunch they’ve ever seen!” wrote Carter on Thursday, copying the bombastic social media style as former U.S. President Donald Trump, who is scheduled to attend a Republican fundraising dinner in the capital city Friday evening.

“The BEST people and the BEST food trucks ok and by the way more people than that other event Friday! Only St. Paul can throw a lunch like this so be there ‘cause frankly IT’S GOING TO BE BIGLY! #Covfefe”

The mayor’s hashtag is a familiar one to meme-lovers. At 12:06 a.m. on May 31, 2017, then-president Trump tweeted six words — “Despite the constant negative press covfefe” — ending his social media post unintelligibly, without further explanation or edit.

The “Covfefe” reference instantly became the subject of countless Internet memes and even the name of a federal bill, the Communications Over Various Feeds Electronically for Engagement Act (COVFEFE Act), introduced by Democrats later that year, aimed at preserving presidential Tweets and social media posts for posterity in the Information Age.

Mears Park is located at 221 Fifth St. E. The lunch begins at noon.

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Hamline University’s protest encampment ends with 10 students facing discipline

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With both summer break and disciplinary action looming, some 30 student protesters at Hamline University began tearing down their longstanding encampment Thursday outside Old Main, the gothic administrative building off Snelling and Hewitt avenues that houses the office of the university president.

Students, some of them new graduates, said they were still committed to protesting the long-running Israeli bombardment of Gaza and wanted the university to publicly disclose how much money Hamline has invested in Israeli companies and American military contractors, and then ultimately divest from them. They’ve also called for Minnesota’s oldest university to move more quickly to create a “social responsibility committee” to monitor investments and serve as a student voice to the administration.

“There is a process by which such a committee is formed and we remain willing to explore that process with students,” said Jeff Pappas, a spokesman for the university, on Thursday.

While relatively small compared to a larger protest effort at the University of Minnesota, Hamline University’s tent encampment has been one of the state’s longest running, extending even past commencement ceremonies last weekend.

Hamline officials have offered a mixed reaction to student demands, at first agreeing to consider the creation of an “src committee” after six student protesters entered the provost’s office within Old Main on April 26 and occupied the building for more than 24 hours.

As commencement approached, student organizers said the administration’s tone shifted, and students learned Monday that at least 10 students would face campus code-of-conduct violations for refusing to remove their tents and defacing a statue of Bishop Leonidas Hamline with signs and masking tape. The bishop’s decorative cap and gown, which had been added for commencement, also disappeared.

Disciplinary hearings for six students could begin next week. Elisa Lopez, a rising junior and co-president of the Hamline student body, said Thursday she had agreed to an alternate resolution process in order to keep her on-campus employment. Lopez said the school’s undergraduate graduation ceremony unfolded Saturday without disruption, though some students attempted to pass Hamline University President Kathleen Murray index cards calling for divestment from Israel.

Murray refused to accept the hand-outs, which piled at her feet.

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Crookston police say officers fatally shot a man swinging a hatchet at them

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CROOKSTON, Minn. — Police say officers fatally shot a man early Thursday in northwestern Minnesota after he advanced on them while brandishing a hatchet.

Crookston officers encountered the man swinging a hatchet around 12:53 a.m. near East Seventh Street. After initial contact, the man rapidly advanced on the officers, who deployed “less lethal” force. But the man continued to advance and was shot by the officers.

Officers administered lifesaving measures, but the man later died at a hospital.

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is leading the investigation into the incident.

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