Hot Town Summer in the City - Free Events Across NYC

Photo by Laura Hanifan, courtesy of  

City Parks Foundation Summer Stage 

Last Tuesday marked the first official day of summer and one of the best things about summer in New York City is the plethora of free events that abound.  The hardest thing, however, is figuring out how to track them all.  I've yet to find one comprehensive, easy-to-search  place online that lists absolutely everything, but I recently learned of of two great resources that list quite a lot.


The first is from a colleague of mine from grad school.  Check out her blog here and while there, subscribe to her Google Group for a weekly email (appropriately titled, "Hot Town Summer in the City"), which provides a long list of free art events across New York.  

The second is the calendar at One Percent for Culture's website.  If you're not familiar with them, One Percent for Culture is a fantastic organization that works to "demonstrate the value of culture to New York City" and is campaigning to get the city to designate at 1% of it's budget for nonprofit cultural organizations.  (Despite having an arts budget larger than those of some state governments, NYC currently only designates less than .25%)  If you're reading this blog, you likely already appreciate all that cultural organizations do for the city, so I don't mean to preach to the choir...but take advantage of this great resource, and if you haven't already signed their petition, do it - and help keep free arts events alive!