As part of the Create the Vote Boston 2021 Coalition's effort to educate voters, we have developed a Candidate Questionnaire for Mayoral candidates to share their vision for Boston and the arts and cultural community. We will share completed questionnaires with arts and cultural supporters across the city. 

Addressing Citywide Issues

• The next Mayor of Boston will lead the city out of the COVID-19 pandemic and the city’s reckoning with racial violence. How will your administration engage and support the arts and cultural sector to address your top three priorities as Mayor?
  
  
• Boston’s legacy of racism deeply impacts all residents including artists, creative workers and cultural organizations. City policies such as event and space permits, police detail requirements and licensing have been used to discourage types of creative expression and have impeded Black, Indigenous and Artists of Color from producing their work, leaving Boston with a diminished arts and cultural sector. How will your administration address and reform these discriminatory policies?

Arts and Culture For All

• The Create the Vote 2021 Boston Coalition’s policy platform sets a goal for an equitable $20 million annual allocation of city support for arts and culture by the end of your first term. What revenue mechanisms will you identify to reach and maintain this goal?
  
  
• Institutional and systemic inequity permeates funding practices, deeply affecting historically underinvested and divested communities, including but not limited to Black, Indigenous, queer, trans, disabled and other people of color. How will you ensure increased funding for Boston's arts and culture sector aligns with your equity agenda to mitigate these inequities?

Creative space

• Boston’s space and housing crisis affects all sectors, all neighborhoods and all Bostonians - this includes artists and creative workers who are being displaced from their homes and creative spaces across the city as well as organizations who compete for limited spaces and venues. How will your administration increase sustained affordable space for the creation, presentation and celebration of arts and culture? 

Workforce attraction and retention

• In addition to lack of affordable and sustainable housing, issues including childcare, transportation and healthcare access are top concerns for workers living in Boston. This includes both full time and gig workers in the arts and cultural sector. What will be your administration's approach and implementation plan to retain creative workers who can no longer afford to stay in the city? 

Develop the Next Generation of Leaders in Boston through Arts and Culture

• The Boston School Committee recently adopted MassCore, which requires high school students to have 126 hours of arts credit before graduating. How will you ensure every Boston public high school graduate meets this benchmark by 2026, and how will you build on the district’s ongoing commitment to arts education for every student?  
  
  
• The Create the Vote Boston Coalition’s policy platform calls for increased city support for Creative Youth Development (CYD) including increased funding and embedding CYD organizations and practitioners in city initiatives, task-forces and programs that support youth in Boston. How will your administration achieve these goals?

Candidates running for Mayor are welcome to return completed questionnaires at their earliest convenience to createthevote (at) mass-creative.org.