Queens Rising is a month-long multi-disciplinary celebration of the arts created to highlight my home borough’s culture and creative diversity.
The program has a specific mission that includes:
- Launching a wide-reaching campaign to promote Queens-based arts and culture.
- Amplifying venues, performance companies, cultural centers, institutions, and small businesses by promoting events around the borough.
- Outreach to less visible and often overlooked institutions and organizations interested in reaching new audiences.
- Unify neighborhoods by providing audiences with easy-to-find event and calendar listings featuring artistic and cultural offerings, and other sites of interest with specific communities.
- Connect artists, venues and businesses to provide as many opportunities as possible for arts and culture to be seen in Queens.
- Fundraise from both public and private sources, without pursuing or affecting any partners’ current or ongoing funding channels.
- Celebrate Queens with opening and closing events produced by local partners.
Queens Rising had an official launch event at Queens Museum that featured some speeches by a number of local officials including:
- Sally Tallant, President and Executive Director, Queens Museum
- Jeffrey Rosenstock, Assistant Vice President for Governmental Relations & External Affairs, Queens College
- Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, Jr.
- City Council Cultural Chair Chi Ossé
- Michael Goyfman, MD, Chief of Cardiology at Long Island Jewish Forest Hills, part of Northwell Health
- Seth Bornstein, Executive Director, Queens Economic Development Corporation
- Dennis Walcott, President and CEO, Queens Public Library
- Karesia Batan of the Queensboro Dance Festival
Caption: Queensboro Dance Festival’s Karesia Batan speaking at Queens Rising launch at Queens Museum earlier this week.
