Grantee Profile
The Alliance for the Arts
The Rockefeller Foundation’s New York City Cultural Innovation Fund supported the Alliance for the Arts’ development and launch of NYC ARTSApps. NYC ARTSApps are an iPhone application and calendar widget that allows people to access arts information on iPhones and third-party Web sites. The free iPhone application uses GPS technology to show users what New York City cultural opportunities are available nearby. The free NYC-ARTS.org widget lets users create custom calendars of cultural events and post them to their own sites—for example, a blogger who writes about dance could add a widget to her site that lists upcoming NYC dance events.
These services encourage arts participation by making it as easy to locate cultural programming as it is to look up movie times or make restaurant reservations and put the arts in the palm of your hand.
About the Alliance
The Alliance for the Arts advocates for the arts in New York through research and audience development. It aims to be the authoritative resource for policymakers, funders and cultural leaders seeking data and analysis about the field and the health of the arts, and the authoritative resource for arts audiences seeking information about cultural programming. Since 1976, the Alliance has served the cultural community and cultural participants, building bridges—between organizations to create a stronger collective voice and between these groups and the audiences they wish to attract.
Its audience development efforts concentrate on finding ways to better integrate cultural information into people’s lives and make the arts a more likely leisure-time choice. Its flagship audience development Web sites, NYC-ARTS.org and NYCkidsARTS.org, re-launched in June 2009 and provide users with a comprehensive guide to New York culture. The sites provide visitor information for nearly 1,000 New York City theaters, performing arts spaces, art galleries and other cultural venues, and list thousands of performances, plays, exhibitions and other cultural events. The sites are designed to help users explore all of the arts in New York, presenting them with opportunities across all disciplines so they can make the most informed decisions.
As it works to move individuals along a continuum—from rare or one-time attendees to arts enthusiasts and patrons—it keeps attuned to how they access information and create pathways that facilitate interaction with culture. Since 1995 it has kept pace with new technology developments to deliver arts program and activities information in locations were people increasingly expect to find it, and that continues with the launch of NYC ARTSApps.
