By Nora Kowalczyk
BUFFALO — Mayor Sean M. Ryan’s arts task force wants City Hall to create a Department of Arts and Culture. It also wants an open, competitive grant process for city arts money, which it says has been handed out without a transparent process since 2013, and a long-term cultural plan built around the city’s 2032 bicentennial.
The CREATE Task Force’s final recommendations, an internal memo to the mayor dated Aug. 21, reached the Common Council on Tuesday. Council members voted 9-0 to refer the report to the Community Development Committee, according to the meeting’s minutes.
CREATE stands for Cultivating Resources for Entertainment, Arts, Tourism and Expression. Mr. Ryan formed the group in May.
“In 2026, we need to ask ourselves what it truly means to be an arts-friendly city,” Mr. Ryan said when he announced it, in a statement reported by Spectrum News 1. “This task force brings together voices from across the arts sector to help us think strategically about how City Hall can be a stronger partner moving forward.”
Who wrote it
The 16-member group was led by Rebecca Castaneda, the mayor’s director of special projects. Its co-chairs were Yuki Numata Resnick of the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo, Nick Schifano of the Cullen Foundation and Alexa Wajed. Members included Visit Buffalo Niagara chief executive Patrick Kaler, according to the memo and the city’s announcement as published by Buffalo Rising.
“I’m hopeful this task force marks the beginning of a new chapter for Buffalo rooted in collaboration, coordination and a shared commitment to a thriving arts and culture sector that serves residents across our city,” Ms. Resnick said in May.
The group met eight times, heard a budget briefing from Deputy Mayor Ben Swanekamp and met with arts officials and organizations in New York City, Kingston, Rochester, Detroit and Cleveland. It dissolved after Sept. 1.
The money question
The memo is frank about how little the city spends. It says the city’s grants-in-aid line for cultural groups is $400,000 or less a year. That’s too small, it says, for the city to “meaningful invest” in a revolving loan fund.
“Since 2013 the City of Buffalo has established a GIA line with no transparent, equitable process for funding,” the memo says. The task force recommends an open, competitive process for those grants, plus a separate program for grants of $5,000 or less aimed at small groups.
Many of the recommendations come with no new cost. The ones that do:
- A Department of Arts and Culture, estimated at $150,000. The memo says the task force found 32 cities with their own cultural affairs departments.
- An arts and culture master plan, $50,000 to $100,000. The memo says a plan would help the city win state and federal grants.
- An executive director for the Arts Commission, about $100,000 plus benefits.
- A “State of the Arts & Culture” event, $5,000 to $10,000.
Over the longer term, the memo proposes that once the cultural grants budget tops $2 million, part of it should go into an endowment for a revolving loan fund. It suggests asking the Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation to seed that fund.
Among its immediate next steps, the memo lists working with Buffalo State and the Erie County Cultural Plan. It says the city should “take advantage of” an anonymous donor “who is willing to contribute $1.5m over 5 years.”
A new name for the Arts Commission
Several recommendations target the city’s Arts Commission. The memo says three seats are vacant and the commission needs a new chair. It recommends renaming it the Public Design Commission, the name of a New York City body the task force consulted. The memo says the commission is expected to weigh in on things that aren’t strictly art, such as banners on light poles and historic markers.
It also wants a city department to sponsor each application. It calls for clearer code language on the city’s 1% for public art requirement and an annual strategic plan. On that plan, the memo says “no evidence that this has been done in the past 30 years has been found.”
On a citywide arts mission and vision statement, the memo’s entry reads simply: “Does not exist currently!”
What the public said
A city survey drew 557 responses between June 23 and July 31. Most respondents, 56.9%, disagreed that the city invests enough in arts and culture. By the memo’s breakdown, the most responses came from the Elmwood Village (111), North Buffalo (65) and downtown (64). Just 19 came from the East Side and 10 from Broadway-Fillmore.
Not everyone wanted more spending. One response quoted in the memo read: “None – do not spend my tax dollars on the arts.”
Some respondents also tied the arts to Buffalo’s rising housing costs, arguing that affordable studio space and artist housing are arts policy issues too.
The task force left some bigger ideas for later. Those include exploring a direct stream of 50% of hotel tax revenue for the arts, an arts designation in the zoning code and an arts graduation requirement in Buffalo Public Schools.
What’s next
The Community Development Committee will take up the report. Any new department or budget line would have to be included in a city budget, and the city is already under financial strain.
The Buffalo Chronicle has asked the mayor’s office which recommendations it plans to pursue in 2027 and whether the $150,000 department will appear in the next budget. The answers will be added here.
Featured image: The frieze over the entrance to Buffalo City Hall. Photo: w_lemay via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0, cropped.
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