The arts -— literature, music, drama, painting, sculpture — form a narrative that helps explain the origins and promises of a society. The arts help us explore our history and imagine our future.
While Long Island is well known for health sciences and aerospace technology, it is also a major home for culture — the arts and artists. Think of Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, F. Scott Fitzgerald and “The Great Gatsby,” Stanford White and the Gold Coast, Harry Chapin, Chuck D and Public Enemy, Adelphi Professor Paul Moravec’s Pulitzer Prize for Music, Billy Joel and countless others.
We are fortunate to have the Long Island Arts Alliance, a regional arts service organization dedicated to strengthening the arts and arts education across Nassau and Suffolk counties. It does this through advocacy for private and public funding, research into best practices and innovations, programming for people of all ages as well as for performance and recognition, and promoting collaboration across sectors.
LIAA partnered with the Center for an Urban Future to report on the condition of the arts and arts education on Long Island. The report, “Sustaining Long Island’s Creative Spark,” offers important insights. Among them are:
Arts and culture employment on Long Island grew 21.8 percent from 2014 to 2024, more than five times the region’s overall job growth.
Long Island’s resident artist and design workforce increased to over 10,500, even as the under-65 population declined.
Nonprofit arts and culture organizations generate $330 million in annual economic activity on Long Island, supporting 4,905 jobs and $81 million in tax revenue for local, state and federal governments.
The center found that Long Island’s arts sector is performing at a high level, but state funding lags. For example, Long Island received about 2.5 percent of the total grant funding awarded, and received about 3.2 percent of awards. Yet Long Island is home to 15 percent of New York’s population.
In addition, grants to Long Island arts organizations were about 21 percent lower than the statewide average. So Long Island not only receives a small share of the total; it also receives smaller average awards than the rest of the state.
The size of grants to Long Island artists, however, increased about 375 percent over 2024. This reflects a small but targeted pilot program that LIAA ran this year. It acted as a fiscal sponsor and outreach coordinator, met one-on-one with artists, reviewed proposals, and helped first-time applicants navigate the process. LIAA submitted 14 artist applications; nine were funded, and all nine were first-time state grant recipients.
The pattern is clear: when Long Island has the support and infrastructure to compete, it can bring in substantially more state funding. Without that support, the region continues to be underrepresented.
LIAA is now advocating for Nassau and Suffolk to seed a Long Island grants academy for the arts. The goal is to build a reliable, long-term pipeline of grant-ready organizations and artists so the region finally gets its fair share of state and federal arts funding.
The proposed academy would provide training and coaching for artists and small or midsized nonprofits; offer shared tools, templates and guidance for preparing competitive applications; and deliver cohort-based workshops and one-on-one support tied to the New York State Council on the Arts and other public funds.
LIAA is seeking an initial investment of $50,000 from each county to scale this model. The results to date suggest that even this modest local investment can unlock hundreds of thousands of additional state dollars for Long Island’s creative sector.
To date, more than 50 organizations and individual artists have indicated support for the grants academy concept. LIAA will continue to advocate for this resource at the county and state level. It is imperative to step up advocacy for Long Island arts, and essential for the LIAA to expand its influence in promoting the value of culture to the community.
Robert Scott is president emeritus of Adelphi University and the author of “How University Boards Work.”
