For close to four decades, City Parks Foundation’s SummerStage festival has provided the soundtrack for New Yorkers’ summer memories. Infusing more than 80 music and cultural events in Manhattan’s Central Park and a dozen other neighborhood spaces across the Big Apple, the celebration unfolds from May through October each year and is presented across all five boroughs of the city (Brooklyn, Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island). SummerStage attracts more than 200,000 people each year and includes dozens of free outdoor concerts featuring acclaimed artists across a broad range of music genres.

And yet, just because a concert is free to all community members doesn’t mean all community members are engaged in the concert experience. For many years, City Parks Foundation (CPF) struggled to connect with Staten Island residents, who attended their borough’s SummerStage concerts in lower numbers than other boroughs; organizers were also challenged by a lack of consistent, year-to-year interest from Staten Island residents.

CPF was determined to bridge this divide to increase engagement on Staten Island. So, in 2024, for the first time ever—and made possible by Levitt Foundation funding that in turn inspired a matching grant from the Howard Gilman Foundation—the nonprofit embarked on an unprecedented visioning project that would maximize the impact of SummerStage in the city’s southernmost borough.

The Levitt Foundation proudly supported these catalytic community visioning events, in which dozens of residents of the island’s historic Stapleton neighborhood, home of SummerStage concert site Stapleton Waterfront Park, had an opportunity to have a say in how the 2024 and future years’ SummerStage experiences would come to life. The abundance of insights shared by Stapleton community members and local leaders played a pivotal role in CPF’s approach to development, curation, and outreach efforts for the summer concerts.

Each year, SummerStage gathers more than 200,000 people to enjoy exhilarating live music experiences, including free outdoor concerts showcasing a variety of entertainers spanning dozens of genres. Photo by Will Oliver.

“There was a new and palpable joy at the events at SummerStage in Staten Island this year,” said City Parks Foundation Executive Artistic Director Erika Elliott, who has curated SummerStage programming for two decades. “The actions we took as a result of what we learned from community engagement injected fresh spirit into the Stapleton Waterfront Park concerts—in terms of the aura of it all, the change was undeniable.”

A New Chapter Begins in the “Forgotten” Borough

One of the oldest waterfront communities in Staten Island, Stapleton (located on the borough’s North Shore) was once a booming maritime and commercial hub. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, its local economy was supported by a variety of trades, from brewing to shipbuilding.

During the post-World War II era, Stapleton saw a period of decline, followed by years of disinvestment in the latter half of the century that impacted all Staten Island neighborhoods. It was, in part, this municipal disinvestment that earned Staten Island its contemporary rap as the “Forgotten Borough.”

Yet the community was, all the while, growing increasingly diverse—beginning in the 1950s and ‘60s, many African American and Latino/Hispanic families joined Stapleton’s large German, Italian, and Irish American population. Today, Stapleton continues to enjoy a rich multicultural social fabric, with people of color making up over three-quarters of its residents.

One constant has been residents’ sense of pride in their unique neighborhood and borough, along with the community’s deep-rooted yet unsung relationship with the arts, even in the face of adversity and few free performing arts opportunities.

Over the years, average concert attendance on Staten Island has consistently trailed that of NYC’s other boroughs. So, in near lockstep with the city’s commitment to strengthening the Staten Island community through reinvestment, City Parks Foundation revisited its strategic approach to bringing together Staten Island community members through the power of free, live music.

With support from the Levitt Foundation, City Parks Foundation’s SummerStage community visioning events on Staten Island engaged community members representative of over 40 local civic and grassroots organizations serving the Stapleton neighborhood. Photo by Anthony Gargiso.

Enter the visioning sessions that gathered over 70 local community members representative of more than 40 local grassroots and civic groups serving Stapleton.

Unfolding at the community center of public housing complex Stapleton Houses, the engagement effort was, in many ways, an opportunity for residents to have a seat (or 70!) at the table. City Parks Foundation’s Senior Program Director of Catalyst Ted Enoch explained that residents “noticed and appreciated” the event being held in their own area and were eager to share their perspectives, experiences, and new ideas.

“We heard about what the residents of Stapleton value most about their community and how SummerStage can recognize and celebrate these values in the neighborhood,” said Enoch, who explained that the neighborhood’s ongoing revitalization, its diversity, and its artistic vibrancy are all viewed as points of pride for Stapleton residents.

Community members supplied SummerStage organizers with a bevy of key insights to help ignite impact at this year’s concerts. Among the handful of topics explored during the community visioning sessions were cultivating community recognition, fostering a family-friendly environment, and deepening connections between SummerStage attendees. These discussions directly informed several impactful additions to the SummerStage in Staten Island program.

For instance, Enoch revealed that thanks to the community engagement sessions, SummerStage presented its “Vibrant Parks, Vibrant Community” awards to honor local leaders in the neighborhood during one of the Staten Island concerts. Additionally, local organizations tabled at the concerts, “giving attendees the chance to learn how grassroots efforts shape Stapleton and about ways to get involved,” Enoch said.  

Insights gleaned from the community visioning sessions supported City Parks Foundation in their efforts to make the Stapleton Waterfront Park concerts a more inclusive experience for children and families. Photo by Will Oliver.

As for nurturing a safe, all-ages environment, this year’s festival provided earplugs to support sensory-sensitive children and added a variety of new activities for kids: from arts experiences like face painting, sidewalk chalk drawing, and balloon animal crafting to bubble play and music making (using free mini tambourines, maracas, and egg shakers).

Setting the Tone

Further demonstrating CPF’s dedication to strengthening the Stapleton community through the performing arts was the fact that the community visioning sessions were organized as a cultural experience in and of itself—complete with a free gourmet dinner served personally by the head chefs of beloved North Shore and Stapleton restaurants, a mesmerizing performance from a local string quartet, and a stirring drum solo from a community imam.

“All these elements grounded the focus of the event in the arts and got residents excited for the Staten Island concerts, so there was a lot of great energy in the room,” Enoch said. “Local folks and their cultures were celebrated, recognized, and heard, and they felt it.”

As hoped, this excitement seamlessly flowed into the SummerStage Staten Island concerts, which infused multidimensional grooves into Stapleton Waterfront Park this past August.

Unfolding at public housing complex Stapleton Houses, the community visioning sessions were complete with their own set of cultural experiences, including a joyous drum solo performed by a local imam. Photo by Anthony Gargiso.

On Saturday, August 10, community members of all ages and backgrounds boogied, sang, and kicked back to old-school club jams presented as part of SummerStage Staten Island’s “Gotta Have House” showcase, which featured Jersey sound act Aly-Us, legendary house vocal powerhouse Lady Alma, deep house DJ Keith Thompson, new jack swing unit Entouch, and post-disco band D-Train—all of whose discographies symbolize iconic moments in house music history (much of which was made in New York City).  

The following night, Puerto Rican salsa star Tito Nieves headlined a high-energy celebration that drew an exceptionally large audience, noted Elliott. She explained that both weekend concerts were programmed to be culturally identifiable to the Stapleton community; Nieves’s passionate appearance, made alongside Boricua freestyle songstress Cynthia, particularly resonated with Stapleton’s large Puerto Rican population.

From festive dance beats and warm Latin rhythms to kids’ activities, local organization booths, and beyond, this year’s SummerStage concerts on Staten Island joyfully brought Stapleton residents together to celebrate both their neighborhood and safe, inclusive public green spaces through the power of free live music.

“Our goal was to enhance the entire experience—the feeling that members of the audience are part of something alive and vibrant, the sense of community that being together in a park fosters,” noted Elliott. “For us, it was beyond the performances on the stage.”

The concerts were also a remarkable testament to the power of building with communities.

SummerStage 2024 brought Staten Island community members of all generations and backgrounds to their feet for Tito Nieves’ legendary Latin grooves. Photo by Will Oliver.

“The community in Staten Island is as passionate as anywhere else in the city,” Enoch explained. “Levitt’s support helped us bring these active community members in and listen to them and give us a chance to draw ourselves closer to them through the front of our artistic programming—something we had never done before, and from which we saw great results.”

An Unforgettable Future in Store for Staten Island

So what’s next for SummerStage? Another year of exhilarating concerts, of course. For its 39th year, the festival will bring dozens of free musical performances to city parks in every borough yet again—and this year’s community visioning sessions will act as reference material for catalyzing future change.

“There’s a lot of positive will among our teams behind our 2024 project, and we are beginning to air ideas to continue similar work in the future,” said Enoch. “Without the engagement event, it would be harder for SummerStage to know where to begin, or for partners to meet one another. I think it filled everyone with excitement for what comes next.”

City Parks Foundation Director of Institutional Giving Cameron Robello echoed that sentiment. “The impact of our work in Staten Island changed the festival, and Levitt has inspired our staff with new ways of thinking,” he said. “It is not often that a single grant can have such a big effect on how we see our festival, how we see ourselves, and how we impact communities.”

Capital One City Parks Foundation SummerStage continues through October 20, with concerts returning to Staten Island in the summer of 2025.

The Levitt Foundation proudly supports events, programs, and initiatives that contribute to building more equitable, healthy, and thriving communities. Learn more about these partnerships here.