Voices for Creative New York (VCNY) is a statewide arts and culture advocacy coalition working to strengthen New York’s creative workforce and advance policies that support a thriving, equitable cultural ecosystem across the state. VCNY brings together artists, cultural workers, arts organizations, and advocacy groups across disciplines, regions, and communities to build shared advocacy infrastructure and coordinate collective action around the future of arts and culture in New York.
Officially launched on June 30, 2025, VCNY emerged from an 18-month participatory process incubated by Creatives Rebuild New York (CRNY). The process engaged artists, arts service organizations, and advocacy leaders from across the state to help shape the coalition’s mission, values, governance model, and policy priorities, grounding the organization in the lived realities and needs of the field it represents.
VCNY supports partner participation, individual artist engagement, statewide research and data initiatives, coordinated communications, and shared governance structures designed to foster collaboration and long-term sector leadership.
In its early years, VCNY is focused on building durable governance and organizing infrastructure, developing a shared policy agenda, convening working groups on key issues—including the creative economy, arts education, social protections, and research—and expanding participation across New York State.
VCNY works to ensure that arts and culture are recognized as essential civic and social infrastructure, and that the people who sustain New York’s creative life can live, work, and thrive throughout the state.
Objectives
VCNY is New York’s statewide infrastructure for culture and arts advocacy.
The coalition:
- Connects New York’s culture and arts community to statewide and national advocacy efforts
- Organizes artists and cultural organizations around shared advocacy and policy campaigns
- Supports collective engagement with the public decisions that affect culture, arts, and creative workers
- Creates space for learning, exchange, and collaboration through convenings, events, and resources
- Builds public understanding of the role, realities, and needs of the creative workforce
- Initiates and shares research to strengthen advocacy, policy development, and public accountability
Leadership Partners
VCNY is co-led by five nonprofit organizations with deep experience in culture and arts advocacy, organizing, labor, and cultural policy:
Action Council
The Action Council is VCNY’s co-governance committee. Its members bring distinct expertise, perspective, and relationships to constituencies across the state, and they receive stipends for their participation.
Organizations