Please Support Our Work to Create Access and Opportunity Through the Arts

a New York City family
Make A Special Year End Gift! →

In 2019, Cool Culture provided over 50,000 families with FREE access to more than 90 cultural institutions in the 5 boroughs of New York City, launched our first ever “We Are All Curators” camp for families, offered a four-part “We Are All Curators” workshop series to educators, and revamped our digital Family Visitors Project to gather information about the impact of sustained free museum admission.

Your vital support not only provides families with free admission to NYC’s arts institutions, it also affirms that their voices deserve to be celebrated—and that art belongs to everyone.

Make A Special Year End Gift! →

Creating access and Opportunity through art

Over the past 18 years, we have collaborated with families, schools, and museums to ensure equitable

access to cultural resources, to harness art and culture as tools for creative expression,

and to educate, create awareness, strengthen communities, and propel social change.

Racial Breakdown of Cool Culture Families

Languages Spoken by Cool Culture Families

Where Cool Culture Families Live

47% OF REGISTERED FAMILIES

Reported earning a household income of less than $35,000.

OUR PROGRAMS

At the core of Cool Culture's work is the use of art and culture as a vehicle for transformation that engages our emotional, intellectual and political imaginations. Cool Culture believes that art is a human right, a powerful means of self-expression, and a bridge that allows us to transcend boundaries between and across cultures to build community and to increase our capacity for dialogue and understanding.

  • Citywide Cultural Access Program

    Provides 50,000 families in 450 Early Childhood Centers and Title 1 Department of Education schools with a Cool Culture Family Pass that offers families a year of unlimited, free admission for up to five people to our 90 New York City cultural institution partners.

  • We Are All Curators

    Uses art, storytelling, and curation to bring together people and families from all walks of life — children, adult caregivers, educators, museum staff and community members — to tell stories through art, counter dominant narratives, build community and a shared community identity as well as advocate for cultural equity and access.

  • Intensive Community Collaborations Program

    Brings art to communities including Harlem, Chinatown, Corona, Queens and Bedford Stuyvesant/Crown Heights in Brooklyn, building relationships between families, educators, and museum professionals who work together to develop tailored programming for children and families.

  • Laboratory for New Audiences Program

    Creates and implements a series of seminars that guide the next generation of museum professionals in developing participatory programming. Participants also build skills in soliciting feedback from historically marginalized families about their exhibitions and programming, and in advocating for change in their institutions.
    Learn more.

     

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TESTIMONIAL

Three Words that Describe
Cool Culture

Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator at The Studio Museum in Harlem describes Cool Culture as enriching, radical, and purposeful. Watch this brief video to to learn why.

Thelma Golden

Director and Chief Curator

The Studio Museum in Harlem

IMPACT

Since 1999, over a million families have been positively impacted by our work.