LIAA Field Update
2025 Year in Review and 2026 Outlook
A snapshot of progress across our work to support Long Island’s arts community
2025 was a year where the work beneath the surface finally started to show its shape.
Much of what Long Island Arts Alliance does isn’t flashy or immediately visible. It is research meetings instead of ribbon cuttings. Data instead of headlines. One-on-one conversations instead of mass campaigns. But this year made something clear: when a system begins to understand itself differently, everything downstream starts to move.
What follows is not a highlight reel. It is a snapshot of how Long Island Arts Alliance’s work has contributed to shifts across Long Island’s arts community over the past year.
What Changed in 2025
Building the Case for the Arts, Layer by Layer
Layer One: Proving the Arts Are Economically Essential
In 2025, Long Island Arts Alliance released Sustaining Long Island’s Creative Spark, a research and policy report developed with the Center for an Urban Future.
The report builds directly on LIAA's work compiling Long Island’s first-ever regional data for Arts & Economic Prosperity 6, which provided a dataset large enough to demonstrate something we had never been able to show credibly before: the arts on Long Island are not a niche interest. They are an economic driver and a cultural backbone.
For the first time, we could demonstrate that the arts are not only culturally vital, but economically essential.
But economic impact was only the beginning.
Layer Two: Making It Human
Arts & Economic Prosperity 6 focused specifically on nonprofit arts organizations. That left out a major part of what actually sustains Long Island’s cultural life: independent artists, creative workers, and small studios. These are the people fueling downtowns, attracting visitors, and shaping community identity every day.
Creative Spark filled that gap.
It added the human layer, showing who is doing the work, where growth is happening, and where people are being left behind. It also offered something just as important as data: a shared framework and common language that advocates, funders, and policymakers can actually use.
It helped move the conversation from “Why the arts?” to “How do we invest wisely in them?”
Fundraising Rule:
No Number without a story, no story without a number.
The data gives our stories credibility.
The stories give the data meaning.
✢ Sector-Wide Context:
Together, these findings began to shift how Long Island’s arts sector could be discussed — from anecdotal to evidence-based, and from fragmented to regionally legible.
What the Data Told Us (and Why It Matters)
Some of the findings from Creative Spark were sobering and some were genuinely surprising:
➢ Arts and culture employment on Long Island grew 21.6% between 2014 and 2024, compared to 4.1% overall job growth, outpacing healthcare, tourism, and construction.
➢ The number of independent artists nearly doubled, from 1,760 to 3,179, contributing to downtown revitalization across the region.
➢ Resident artist and design workers grew faster than population growth, with especially sharp increases among craft artists, interior designers, and visual artists.
➢ Average arts earnings sit at approximately $46,500, roughly half the regional average, while housing costs rose more than 60% over the same period.
➢ Long Island represents 14.7% of New York State’s population, but receives only 2.8% of state arts fundingand less than 1% of federal cultural funding.
GROWTH WITHOUT INVESTMENT IS NOT SUSTAINABILITY
Turning Research Into Action
Removing Barriers to Public Funding
Before Creative Spark was released, Long Island Arts Alliance was already responding to a pattern we see repeatedly across the region.
Earlier this year, LIAA took a closer look at grant participation among Long Island artists. By reviewing application rates and surveying eligible artists about the hurdles they faced, we identified a clear need for greater awareness and more coordinated, hands-on support.
LIAA responded by testing a focused application support and fiscal sponsorship pilot for a state grant program that provides $10,000 awards directly to working artists. As a regional arts service organization, we were positioned to support artists at scale.
This work included:
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Targeted outreach to raise awareness of the opportunity
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One-on-one meetings with artists
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Review and guidance on written narratives and application materials
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Support navigating program guidelines
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Fiscal sponsorship where needed
In the previous grant cycle, only four Long Island artists received these awards.
In 2025:
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19 Long Island artists were awarded grants
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9 awards went to applicants directly supported by LIAA
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First-time applicants supported through this effort had a 64% success rate
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$90,000 in new state funding was returned to the region through a single program
This work was not driven by a report. It was driven by experience, by years of listening to artists and seeing where systems consistently break down.
Creative Spark later validated this need at scale, confirming that low application volume and limited support structures are key drivers of chronic underinvestment in Long Island’s arts sector.
The results underscored a simple truth: access and coordination matter.
✢ Sector-Wide Context:
By increasing awareness and coordinated support, application volume rose and more Long Island artists were positioned to compete successfully for public funding.
Strengthening the Field, Month by Month
Creative Community Huddles
In April 2025, LIAA launched Creative Community Huddles: monthly, open conversations designed to bring Long Island’s arts community together around shared challenges and solutions.
What began as a small pilot grew quickly:
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Participation expanded across disciplines and geographies
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Guests included local leaders and statewide partners
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The model is now being replicated at the state level
Most importantly, the Huddles reinforced something we hear again and again:
The field does not lack ideas. It lacks space to think together.
✢ Sector-Wide Context:
By increasing awareness and coordinated support, application volume rose and more Long Island artists were positioned to compete successfully for public funding.
Turning Data Into Tools
Throughout 2025, LIAA continued providing customized economic impact reports for member organizations.
These tools have been used to:
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Strengthen donor asks
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Compete more effectively for grants
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Secure partnerships and contracts
Members have shared directly that this work contributed to:
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Artists securing $10,000 creative grants
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Organizations winning contracts of up to $2 million
This work is not always visible, but it is quietly strengthening the sector.
✢ Sector-Wide Context:
By equipping organizations with credible, localized data, this work helps normalize evidence-based advocacy and fundraising across the region, strengthening the field’s collective ability to compete for resources.
What We’re Building in 2026
The Third Layer: Community-Level Data
After measuring economic impact and capturing the human stories behind it, the next step is understanding where and how participation actually happens.
With support from The New York Community Trust – Long Island, LIAA is launching the Long Island Arts Data Collective.
The model is intentionally simple:
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ZIP codes
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Attendance numbers
These are metrics most organizations already track or can easily add.
The goal is not to create new administrative work. It is to connect the dots between what is already being measured and talk about access, participation, and equity with real evidence.
Expanding the Long Island Grants Academy
One of the core recommendations of Sustaining Long Island’s Creative Spark is the creation of a Long Island Grants Academy: a coordinated system to help independent artists and small- to mid-sized organizations access public funding more effectively.
In 2026, LIAA is actively pursuing County investment to build this work into sustained regional infrastructure.
The Grants Academy builds on the proof of concept tested in 2025, but moves beyond individual interventions. Its focus is on strengthening the funding ecosystem by increasing application volume, improving success rates, and ensuring that public arts dollars reach Long Island more equitably.
This is about fixing the system that produces underinvestment, not helping applicants navigate it one grant at a time.
Regional Infrastructure and Access
LIAA is laying the groundwork to position Long Island as a leader in coordinated arts education infrastructure.
Our goal for 2026–2027 is to ensure that school districts, arts organizations, and educators are better supported with clear information and stronger regional coordination. This work responds directly to gaps identified by the field and supports preparedness, equity, and long-term impact.
Additional 2026 Priorities
In the year ahead, LIAA is also working to:
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Grow and amplify our a Corporate Partner Program that creates visible, consistent support for the arts across downtowns
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Overhaul the LIAA Member Directory, improving usability, SEO, filtering, and integration with the Long Island Arts Calendar and member websites
Why Support Matters Right Now
All of this work — including research, advocacy, technical assistance, and convening — is carried out by a small team with a regional mandate. That reality matters because the work Long Island Arts Alliance does is designed to support the entire arts ecosystem, not a single program or organization.
Unrestricted support allows LIAA to remain responsive, independent, and focused on long-term impact. It makes it possible to sustain credible data, provide coordination and technical support where it is most needed, and advocate for the arts even when doing so is uncomfortable.
Every dollar contributed is leveraged across the field, supporting tools, research, and shared infrastructure that no single organization can build alone.
If you believe Long Island’s arts ecosystem deserves to be visible, valued, and invested in, we invite you to help fuel what comes next.