PAG E 8
INTRODUCTION In a national political climate that threatens the well-being of the three million foreign-born residents and their families who call New York City home, Dance/NYC commits to assessing and advancing foreign-born dance artists and cultural workers in the local creative ecology. By extension, it aims to further the role of artistry in fostering integration, inclusion, and human rights. This study acts on our organizational commitment by mining recent survey data on the workforce of legally registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit dance organizations and of artists and projects who have entered into a fiscal sponsorship arrangement with a 501(c)(3) organization. It offers the most comprehensive assessment of the characteristics, needs, and opportunities of foreign-born dance workers ever published as well as key benchmarks to guide action and measure progress over time. Foreign-born New Yorkers are shockingly underrepresented in the workforce studied. Only 15% of nonprofit respondents and 17% of sponsored respondents indicate a country of origin outside the United States, compared to 37% of the City’s population, according to United States Census data. The most common countries of origin for the workforce studied (Canada and Japan) differ from those of the City’s population (Dominican Republic and China).
