Downtown Art

Downtown Art (DTA), led by artists Ryan Gilliam and Michael Hickey, has been working to make art and build community here on the Lower East Side for over twenty years.  In June 2016, we opened our new home at 70 East 4th Street with three floors plus outdoor space to support projects and artists working to address issues of equity, increase diversity, and engage communities creatively. 

DTA has an extensive history of collaborations with young people – creating over 115 performance projects involving more than 1600 teens.  The company regularly receives support from the NYC Dept of Cultural Affairs, the New York State Arts Council, and several small private foundations.  Ryan has been recognized as a leader in the field, serving on the boards of NYC arts service and advocacy organizations and honored as a ‘Local Hero’ by the Alliance of Resident Theaters/NY and Bank of America.  Although DTA is a small organization, it has made a difference in the LES community -- a contribution recognized by more than $5 million in public support from city government toward the renovation of the company’s new home.  

Examples of recent DTA projects which range from artistic creations to community celebrations include –

• 'Bending the Arc’ and ‘Birmingham 1963’, a series of original theater works performed by teens which address racism in the U.S.
• co-founding Lower East Side History Month which every May engages over 85 community organizations to celebrate the diversity of our neighborhood through festivals, exhibits, performances, and tours, and 
• providing below market space to South American, Filipino, and Arab American theater artists, the Laundromat Project and People's Climate Arts, FABnyc, Theater of the Oppressed/NY, training in Undoing Racism for artists, presentations by Groundswell - Oral Historians working for Social Change, and others
• transforming a vacant, dilapidated building into a new arts center 

This new space on 4th Street will not only be a home for Downtown Art projects, but will be host to other community-oriented arts organizations and projects.   Our ‘shared space’ program, which provides below market rate cultural space to artists and organizations around a curated focus on equity and diversity, meets a powerful need in the field.  

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