NYC Performers in Sacred Places
Partners’ experience and research has shown that many urban congregations are overwhelmed with the burden of caring for surplus space. At the same time, artists who are struggling to find adequate and affordable space in which to work, may not know that the former Sunday school wing of a local church could be available for office, performance, or studio space. Partners’ Arts in Sacred Places program (AiSP) was designed to capitalize on this challenge by facilitating mutually beneficial space-sharing relationships between arts organizations without a home and the city’s houses of worship with space to spare.
CreateNYC, New York City’s most recent cultural plan, lists affordability as one of its primary issue areas. The report notes, “the [arts] sector cannot continue to make the city great if the artists, scientific researchers, cultural workers, and nonprofit organizations that make up much of the cultural field cannot afford to do their work. The current supply of affordable places to live, work, exhibit, and perform falls far short of demand. This affordability crisis not only severely affects the well-being of the 250,000 New Yorkers that work in the cultural field, but it also threatens the city’s future as a global cultural center.” (CreateNYC, 12)
For these reasons, Partners for Sacred Places began our NYC Dance in Sacred Places program in 2019, with a goal to create and foster sustainable, mutually beneficial space sharing relationships between dance organizations and sacred places. We spoke with and inventoried sacred places, starting in Manhatt and Brooklyn, then expanding to other boroughs, to identify underutilized spaces that could be potential rehearsal, office, and/or performance space. Through a series of training sessions, we connected the sacred places with space to share with performing artists who were actively looking for space to rent in the hopes of crafting mutually beneficial space-sharing arrangements.
Little did we know what 2020 would have in store for all of us. By mid-March of 2020, things seemed to be progressing in a bad direction, NYC was shutting down and folks were told to stay in their homes. Seeing space sharing as potentially problematic in our socially distanced world- Partners took the time to reassess our work to align with the priorities of New Yorkers, we hosted two happy hour Zoom sessions. No agenda, no work expectation – just a check in with our friends in the Big Apple. We discovered that our work may have an even greater impact than before. With the possibility of losing some key dance maker spaces in NYC, our work opening up and drawing connections with sacred places was key to revitalizing the dance scene post COVID – keeping it alive by providing much needed affordable creation space.
By the end of this project in 2024, we had reached 64 congregations and 70 performing artists / arts organizations, and were successful in increasing affordable artistic space in religious properties through a three-fold process to:
- Inventory religious properties that are available for rent by performing artists, and providing this information to the NYC performing arts community;
- Provide capacity building technical assistance to religious properties and performing artists, so they are empowered to form mutually-beneficial space sharing relationships; and
- Providing a subsidy to performing artists to rent space at religious properties.
Advisory Committee
Randi Berry, Executive Director, IndieSpace
Savona Bailey-McClain, Executive Director/Chief Curator, West Harlem Art Fund
Ann-Isabel Friedman, Director, Sacred Sites Program, The New York Landmarks Conservancy
Ingrid Kapteyn, Co-Founder, HEWMAN, Welcome to Campfire
Kate Toth, Project Director, Bricks and Mortals
Jason Labate, Senior Associate, Goldstein Hall PLLC
Stephen Hill, Artistic Director, The ChoreoJoey Project
Daphne Lasky, Architect, Board Member of Greenpoint Shul
Amanda Iglesias, Architectural Designer, Robert A.M. Stern Architects
Colleen Heemeyer, Deputy Director, Sacred Sites & Preservation Services, New York Landmarks Conservancy
Candace Thompson-Zachery, Co-Executive Director, Dance NYC
Our Collaborators on this Project
Dance/NYC, IndieSpace, and NY Landmarks Conservancy
Law Firm Partner
Goldstein Hall, PLLC
Funding provided by
The New York Community Trust
Contact for more information:
Karen DiLossi, Director of Strategic Partnerships
kdilossi@sacredplaces.org
215-567-3234 x16
