As the new president of the Performance Space New York board, I am honored and pleased to share Performance Space’s new mission statement with you.
 
Over the past year, Performance Space New York has dedicated itself to studying its internal structures, talking to its communities, and rethinking absolutely everything—how we operate internally, how we elevate and support experimental art and art practices, and how we can best function as a space that says:
 
 
YES to Artists
 
YES to Risks
 
YES to Community
 
YES to Every Body
 
YES to __________*
 
 
*For the fifth point we would like to hear from you. What else do you think Performance Space should say YES to? If you have ideas you would like to share, you can do this here.
 
On February 23, we will hold a town hall meeting, inviting people from our communities to propose ideas and be in dialogue with our staff, board, and collaborators. Keep your eyes open for an invitation in your inboxes!
 
At the town hall you will also learn more about what it means to us to say:
 
YES to Artists
Performance Space New York commits to creating deeper relationships with artists through long-term engagements and providing space for experimentation and development. We commit to providing artists and art workers with just wages and fair employment practices. Artists are actively involved in the stewardship of the organization with a board that consists of at least 50% artists.
 
YES to Risks
In order to create, artists have to take risks. If we want to change as an organization we have to do the same. These are unprecedented times and no one knows exactly what an equitable and future-oriented art institution looks like. The only way to find our way forward is to experiment, to take risks, to test ideas, which also means we have to be okay with failure along the way.
 
YES to Community
Performance Space seeks to engage openly with the communities of which we are a part of and to whom we hold ourselves accountable. Through programs like Open Room and Open Movement community members have direct access to our spaces. Community Councils will have input on the program and decision-making. At annual town halls, everybody is invited to make proposals for future directions for the organization.
 
YES to Every Body
To build accessibility for everybody, Performance Space will continue to listen to those in cross-disability arts communities who take seriously the lived experience of disability while privileging its ubiquitous intersections with BIPOC, poor and working-class, queer and trans, and young and elderly disabled artists. We will continue working with various disabled artists to institute programs that don’t separate accessibility from artistic form. Performance Space is committed to transform the accessibility of both our methods and our spaces toward the activation and celebration of interdependency and collectivity so that everybody may gather without separation.
 
Obviously, this is only the beginning. We commit to the continued practice of listening and invite you to join in on our journey. I look forward to the future of us and saying YES.
 
 
Roxane Gay,
Board President of Performance Space New York