Collective NY: Fall Forum
An Invitation-Only Working Forum
Speakers / Guests: Michael Bobbitt (Opera America), Ana de Archuleta (National Sawdust), Frances Pollock (Yale CIL), Bloomberg Foundation, Mellon Foundation, and more.
Collective NY is an exploratory pilot bringing together legacy arts organizations, artists, universities, and state economic development agencies to examine a new model for cultural innovation. The goal is to explore how these partners can work together to create a more sustainable and scalable cultural economy through artist-entrepreneur curriculum, legally backed IP infrastructure, and catalytic capital to strengthen institutional capacity.
The model builds on work developed through the Cultural Innovation Lab at Yale and its emerging $1.7M program, funded by Connecticut’s Department of Economic and Community Development. Now we’re bringing this framework to New York to explore what a collaborative, statewide ecosystem could look like - and how artists, cultural institutions, universities, and public agencies might work together to build it.
As federal support and traditional philanthropy become increasingly uncertain, the cultural sector has an opportunity to rethink how it develops, finances, and sustains creative work. Collective NY is an opportunity to meet this moment by exploring new partnerships, revenue models, and economic infrastructure that can support both artistic innovation and long-term institutional sustainability.
This intimate, invitation-only working forum will bring together artists, arts leaders, producers, investors, entertainment executives, funders, and policymakers to help shape the vision for Collective NY.
Starting at 6:15 PM, we’ll explore:
Yale’s Proof of Concept: 5+ arts organizations, 25+ artists, and $1.35M raised in private capital for creative projects.
The Model in Action: Examples including Poppi’s Planet (artist venture), National Sawdust (arts organization), and OPERA America (R&D lab).
Panel & Discussion: What’s already been activated across arts organizations, foundations, and government partners - and how you can get involved in shaping the pilot.
As the funding landscape shifts away from federal support and traditional philanthropy, we’re passionate about exploring how arts organizations and artists can access the economic development resources, legal infrastructure, and investment capital traditionally reserved for STEM innovation.
The opportunity is to imagine a cultural ecosystem in which artistic production and economic development reinforce one another - creating more sustainable institutions, scalable creative ventures, and new pathways for artists to participate in the value they create.
Attendance is by invitation only.
Location
OPERA America’s National Opera Center is centrally located in Midtown Manhattan on the southwest corner of 29th Street and Seventh Avenue.
Enter on Seventh Avenue and take the elevator to the seventh floor to check in at the front desk. The facility spans the seventh and eighth floors of the building, with an internal staircase providing access between them. There is no external entry to the eighth floor.
Getting Here
You can reach us using more than a dozen subway lines, including the 1 train (at 28th Street), 2/3/A/C/E trains (at Penn Station), and B/D/F/M/N/Q/R/W trains (at 34th Street–Herald Square). You can also arrive by Amtrak or PATH service, as well as regional bus lines and airport shuttles.