Studying NYC's cultural sustainability

Today New York City welcomes a new policy think tank dedicated to cultural strategies for the 21st Century.The Institute for Culture in the Service of Community Sustainability (ICSCS)will build synergies between arts and other sectors around a platform of cultural, community and environmental sustainability. Led by Paul Nagle and Lise Brenner, the organization will combine traditional research and evolving technologies with the collective wisdom of the community to gain new and deeper understandings of how culture works.

“From the trenches of Off-Off Broadway to the chambers of City Hall, Paul Nagle has spent the last 20 years fighting for a stronger cultural ecosystem,” said former NYC Councilmember Alan J. Gerson, for whom Mr. Nagle served eight years as cultural policy director. “The important unifying frame of cultural, community and environmental sustainability that he has created for ICSCS is a true and very needed innovation.”

ICSCS will develop strategies and recommendations that support artists; enhance the operating environment for multiple sectors; foster strong, diverse neighborhoods and communities; and strengthen New York City as an international creative economy.

“Humankind faces huge and existential challenges. Not accepting the limitations of time and space, nor the creed that nothing can be other than it is, artists and cultural workers can facilitate the great act of imagination that it will take for the human race to begin creating a sustainable life,” said Executive Director Paul Nagle. “ICSCS sees the health of the cultural community and the health of the greater community as absolutely interdependent.”

In addition, ICSCS has launched artspolicynow.org, an interactive website that will facilitate artists, policy thinkers and leaders from other sectors in working together on issues of cultural, community and environmental sustainability. Those interested in these issues can explore, engage and upload creative content, create profile pages, initiate public discussions, share information and co-develop initiatives with other users. The website will also be a searchable repository of ICSCS research and a valuable tool to spot trends, identify and facilitate collaborations, as well as coordinate data assembling and reporting across networks.

About ICSCS

The Institute for Culture in the Service of Community Sustainability (ICSCS) is headquartered in New York City and supports development of public policy that articulates and strengthens art’s central role in civic life and enhances cultural, environmental and community sustainability. Through regularly scheduled live events, integrated with ICSCS’s highly interactive website, artspolicynow.org, ICSCS assembles, interprets and disseminates new and existing empirical data and field research to combine it with the collective wisdom of the community. The organization facilitates artists, policy thinkers and leaders from other sectors to work together on issues of cultural, community and environmental sustainability, to coordinate data generation and to report across networks.