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 three 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. 

In this City Limits op-ed, Eli Dvorkin and Winston Fisher make the case that an annual five-borough cultural festival can help breathe new life into the city’s arts and culture ecosystem, boost international tourism and regional visitation, and strengthen the city’s magnetism for people seeking experiences and connection.

Read the full op-ed here.

This op-ed builds on CUF's recent report, Big Ideas to Help NYC Thrive in the Post-Pandemic Economy. CUF also has a history of research and forums on supporting New York's arts and culture ecosystem, including the report Upstate’s Creative Spark: How the Arts Is Catalyzing Economic Vitality Across Upstate New York, the related forum "Upstate's Creative Spark: Harnessing the Arts to Boost Economic Vitality in Cities Across New York State," and the reports Creative Comeback: Surveying NYC’s Cultural Ecosystem in the Wake of COVID-19 and Creative New York.