Molly Garfinkel was our respected guest presenter during the RCNY Breakfast at the UN so kindly arranged by our member Pat Duffy, Chair of Breakfasts. Molly gave a most relevant presentation on the focus of City Lore and the various points of engagements.
Founded in 1985, City Lore’s mission is to foster New York City – and America’s – living cultural heritage through education and public programs in service of cultural equity and social justice. City Lore encompasses a Lower East Side gallery space, performances, lectures, the People’s Hall of Fame, a POEMobile that projects poems onto walls and buildings, and programs throughout the five boroughs.
We document, present, and advocate for New York City’s grassroots cultures to ensure their living legacy in stories and histories, places and traditions. We work in four cultural domains: urban folklore and history; preservation; arts education; and grassroots poetry traditions. In each, we seek to further cultural equity and model a better world with projects as dynamic and diverse as New York City itself.
City Lore is a pioneer in working collaboratively with folk and community-based artists, embracing different aesthetics for the creation of art in an urban context.
Poetry plays a key role in New York’s ethnic and cultural communities. For many immigrant communities, poetry is the most accessible and profound way for people to express themselves. Every community in New York City has its poets. City Lore is committed to finding ways to give these poets voice, finding the venues and formats for them to convey their artistry to their own communities and to the city at large, often finding new and innovative ways to communicate across languages.
Education is core to City Lore’s mission of advancing cultural equity. We bring a uniquely cultural and decolonial lens to arts education by centering culturally-rooted arts, including folk and traditional art practitioners, in meaningful ways that connect to young people’s own heritages, identities, experiences, and communities.
City Lore develops a wide range of special projects, some generated by the staff and others by talented filmmakers, folklorists, artists, and historians who are developing innovative projects in keeping with our mission City Lore produces documentary films and collaborates with filmmakers whose work relates to the organization’s mission.
We were honored by the presence of visitors from the Rotary Club of Nairobi Kenya and the Rotary Club of Kharkiv. Both gentlemen made contributions to the meeting and the gentlemen from Ukraine invited NY Rotarians to join in a solidarity yacht event prior to the Rotary International Convention 2027 in Barcelona, Spain.
