Thrive in Place! Affordable Housing Workshop

Thrive in Place! by Creatives Thrive NYC

A guide to affordable housing options for NYC creatives, jointly presented three times per year by ArtBuilt and the Entertainment Community Fund. Learn about rent stabilization, city housing lotteries, affordable home-ownership opportunities, and how to qualify for these programs.

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ArtBuilt Presents: Creatives Thrive NYC

Creatives Thrive NYC (CTNYC) helps New York City Artists and Creatives build the financial skills to meet big challenges! CTNYC is an innovative new year-round training initiative providing expert financial knowledge, trusted resources and a network of reliable partners to help Creative New Yorkers thrive in our often chaotic economy.

CTNYC is a series of free, informative online workshops aimed at providing NYC’s creative workers with real-world financial tools tailored to their specific needs.

What’s included 2025 –

Thrive in Place
Winter workshop: February 27, 6-8pm ET
Spring workshop: June 19, 6-8pm ET

Get Shamele$s, a series of 1 hour & 15 min intensive financial workshops, each focusing on one aspect of building a stable financial life as a Creative New Yorker. Presented by Pam Capalad, CFP® AFC® and Dyalekt, Brooklyn-based financial educators focused on creatives and POC communities and founders of Get Shamele$s, Inc., topics covered will include:

January 16 at 1pm ET
Make more money this year

February 20 at 1pm ET
Office hours

March 20 at 1pm ET
The credit hustle: how to overcome even when the game is rigged

April 17 at 1pm ET
How to heal your relationship with money

May 15 at 1pm ET
Get shameless about retirement

June 19 at 1pm ET
Office hours

Presenter Bios –

Esther Robinson is the Executive Director of ArtBuilt and has worked on behalf of America’s artists for over 20 years as a foundation program officer, television and film producer/director, technology entrepreneur and arts activist. From 1999-2006, she was Director of Film/Video/Performing Arts at the Creative Capital Foundation and one of the principal architects of their innovative grant-making system. Since 2006, her non-profit ArtHome has provided financial-training and asset-building programming to artists and organizations nationally. In 2015 she co-founded ArtBuilt, where ArtHome’s asset-building programs continue alongside space-based initiatives including a 56,000 sq. ft. affordable arts and arts-business studio complex in South Brooklyn and an innovative mobile studio residency program in NYC parks/public plazas. Robinson is also an award-winning documentary filmmaker and producer. Recent producing credits include (among others): The Velvet Underground by Todd Haynes and the Academy Award Nominated film Strong Island by Yance Ford.

Randy Peralta is the Housing Specialist at the Entertainment Community Fund and is responsible for educational programs and resource sharing through the Housing Resource Center. Prior to joining The Entertainment Community Fund, Randy worked as an Occupancy Specialist for a affordable housing developer, West Side Federation for Senior Supportive Housing. Randy also worked at the Northern Manhattan Improvement Corporation as Case Manager within their Legal Department assisting clients with landlord/tenant issues.

Daniel Arnow is the Executive Director of the Actors Fund Housing Development Corporation a subsidiary of the Entertainment Community Fund. AFHDC brings together educational programming, advocacy, and real estate development with the goal of increasing access to affordable housing opportunities for people in the performing arts and entertainment community. Daniel has contributed to online publications including Createquity and Multiple Cities and participated in Next City’s Vanguard conference - an experiential urban leadership gathering of 40 rising urban leaders working to improve cities across sectors. With a background as a musician and arts worker, and a MS in Urban Planning from Pratt Institute, Daniel is committed to building sustainable communities in the arts.

Pamela Capalad is a Certified Financial Planner™ and Accredited Financial Counselor™ and has been in the financial services industry since 2008. She founded Brunch & Budget in 2015 to help people who felt ashamed or embarrassed about money have a safe and friendly place to talk about it and make real financial progress. Her mission is to make financial planning as affordable as possible for the communities who need it most. Pam has been featured in the Washington Post, Teen Vogue, Huffington Post, Vice Magazine, and was named New York Magazine’s Best of New York 2019. She was named one of Investments News 40 Under 40 in 2016, Financial Advisor Magazine’s Young Advisors to Watch in 2019, and received AFCPE’s Financial Planning Center of the Year award in 2022. Pam is a Global Good Fund Fellow, class of 2022.

Dyalekt has been a hip-hop MC, theater maker, and educator for nearly 20 years. He’s the director of pedagogy at Pockets Change, where he uses hip-hop pedagogy to demystify personal finance and help students take control of their relationship with money. He is the recipient of Jump$tart’s 2022 Innovation in Financial Literacy award. He’s rocked (performed/taught/keynoted) everywhere from conferences like AFCPE and Prosperity Now, to stages like SXSW and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, to classrooms that range from Harvard & Yale to your cousin’s living room. His most recent work, the Museum of Dead Words, is a Hip Hop theater show on communication and empathy in the age of the internet.

While doing deep research into the racial wealth divide and how it directly affected Brunch & Budget’s clients of color and cohosting the Brunch & Budget podcast, Pam and Dyalekt created the See Change program. See Change is a financial coaching and advocacy program specifically designed for People of Color to heal their relationship with money, navigate a predatory financial system, and build generational wealth. They regularly keynote on how art, culture, and media are used to perpetuate racial wealth inequality and how artists have the power to change the narrative.

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