Founded as Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, LMCC serves, connects, and makes space for artists and community.
Since 1973, LMCC has been the champion for independent artists in New York City and the cultural life force of Lower Manhattan.
We envision New York City as a place in which artists and community in dialogue are creating a more just, equitable, and sustainable society.
LMCC Serves Artists through:
- Residencies that enable artists to experiment and develop their work and ideas, with professional development, financial training, and networking opportunities
- Grant funding to artists that support local/neighborhood projects
- Presentation opportunities that allow artists to share their work and creative process with the public
LMCC Serves Community through:
- Free public programs in Lower Manhattan and Governors Island that activate neighborhoods and bring people together through performances and rich artistic experiences
- Access to the artmaking process to build connections and dialogue between artists and audiences
- Grant funding for neighborhood arts and community-based organizations
Our Mission
To create a fertile and nurturing environment for artists and arts groups, enlivening public spaces with free programs in the visual, performing, and new media arts, and to provide leadership in cultural planning and advocacy.
Our Values
We believe artists are critical to a healthy society as agents of change and new ideas.
We acknowledge structural inequities and we are committed to centering equity, diversity, and inclusion.
We are driven by curiosity. Experimenting, questioning, learning, and understanding are essential to creative development.
We are collaborative. We build partnerships and relationships, and we share our resources.
We listen. Adaptation and responsiveness are essential to meeting needs and ensuring resiliency.
We give with openness and care. We strive to be radically generous and accessible to all.
Community
We value an equitable, diverse, and inclusive world and actively work to counter discrimination on the basis of race, national or ethnic origin, citizen status, ancestry, age, religion, disability, sex, gender identity or any other characteristic or identity.
We acknowledge structural inequities that have excluded individuals and communities from opportunities and are committed to providing opportunities that help to rebalance those inequities in our work.
Sustainability
We define sustainability as an adaptive, balanced, and measured approach that appropriately considers potential economic, environmental, and social impacts on the communities in which we live and work.
We work with artists, partners, stakeholders and communities to position arts and cultural activities as drivers in building sustainable neighborhoods and cities.
We believe that sustainably-driven cultural initiatives will not only improve quality of life for cultural workers and local residents, but can also catalyze conditions of social equity and vitality, economic vibrancy and diversity, and overall community attachment and resilience.
Land Acknowledgement
We want to acknowledge that the work we are doing to support artists and communities is happening on the traditional lands of the Lenape people. We are situated on the Lenape Island of Manahatta, today known as New York, and more broadly in Lenapehoking. We offer our respect to the Lenape and other Indigenous caretakers of these lands and waters; and to their elders who have lived here, who live here now, and who will live here in the future.