Brooklyn's Progress
July 2003

By Deutsche Bank

The Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation recently announced that together with The Rockefeller Brothers Fund it has awarded a total of $1,050,000 in grants to seven New York City-based arts and community organizations including Brooklyn Alliance’s Fulton FIRST program.

The organizations are each receiving $150,000 payable over two years as part of Deutsche Bank’s Arts & Enterprise initiative to promote the arts as a tool for community revitalization.  The grants will be used to develop place-based strategies that leverage the arts as a catalyst for positive economic, physical, and social change in distressed communities.
 
Other organizations receiving grants include:  Bronx Council on the Arts, Heart of Brooklyn, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, The Point Community Development Center, Queens Museum of Art, and The New York Foundation for the Arts.

“There is a tremendous amount of innovation taking place in the arts and cultural sector creating a new sense of vitality in many of New York City’s neighborhoods,” said Gary S. Hattem, President of the Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation.  “The purpose of the Arts & Enterprise grants is to develop new partnerships that can leverage these cultural activities more efficiently.  We are confident that this will be a successful model for the future and help stimulate economic growth at a time when New York City is facing severe cutbacks.”

This is the second in a series of Arts & Enterprise Grant Programs sponsored by Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation to promote the arts as a tool for community revitalization.  The first set of grants awarded a total of $600,000 payable over two years to 12 New York City-based non-profit organizations.

The Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation launched in 2002 the Arts & Enterprise grants program to encourage the use of arts, culture and design as tools for economic development in distressed communities, as well as to provide residents of these areas with new employment, career and entrepreneurial opportunities.

Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation provides a strategic program of loans, investments and philanthropic grants to assist low and moderate-income communities that are in the process of revitalization. The firm also supports projects that promote the arts, education, and cross-cultural understanding.

A recent study from The Center for an Urban Future commissioned by Deutsche Bank as well as other foundations found that from 1992 to 2001 New York City’s cultural industry created more than 150,000 jobs with a 52 percent growth rate.  It concluded that New York City, unlike other cities, has lacked a cohesive cultural development strategy and that the arts could become a major economic growth engine in targeted communities leading to increased tourism, job creation and the establishment of new local businesses.