 We will promote you to a panelist once the item is called that you're presenting on so just hang tight and you'll be able to see all those controls once you're a panelist. And we are standing. Great. Thank you, Eileen. All right. Hello everyone and welcome to the December 6, 2021 art and public places meeting. I'd like to call the meeting to order. A little housekeeping before we start the meeting a reminder to committee members to keep your audio on mute unless you are speaking. Pursuant to government code section 54953 E and the recommendation of the health officer of Sonoma County. Art and public places committee will be participating in this meeting via zoom webinar. Members of the public may view and listen to the meeting as noted on the city's website and as noted on the agenda. A recording secretary will you please review how the public may comment and participate in today's meeting. Members of the public wishing to speak during item three public comment or during any of the scheduled items will be able to do so by utilizing the raise hand feature, or if calling in by pressing star nine on their phone. They will then be given the ability to address the committee. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Eileen. Next up, I would like to do rolled call recording secretary. Will you please take roll call. Thank you. Present. Vice chair Jones Carter. Present. Thank you. Member Baumgartner. Present. Member Quente. Present. Let the record request that member Nathanson has said that he will be joining a few minutes late and is not currently presents. Great. Thank you, Eileen. Number three is public comments. This is the time when any person may address matters not listed on the agenda, but are, but which are within the subject matter of the jurisdiction. The public may comment on agenda items when an item is called when the item is called. Each speaker is allowed three minutes. Eileen at this time do we have any general public comments. We do not nor do we have any emails or voice nails for this meeting. All right. Moving on to item four. I am 4.1 approval of minutes. Today we are reviewing meeting minutes for approval from the November 1 2021 meeting. You all have a copy of the meetings. Sorry, of the minutes. Are there any changes or corrections. Seeing none with someone like to make a motion to approve. A motion that we approve the minutes as written. Or the November meeting. No, October. November 1. I'll second that motion. Great. Thank you, Lisa. Can we get a roll or can we get a vote? So, a chair keeper. Yes. Vice chair Jones Carter. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Okay. Moving right along. Item five scheduled items. Item five point one, we have the creative sonoma business plan. Creative sonoma director, Kristen Madsen will present an overview of the recently completed creative sonoma business plan for 20, sorry, creative sonoma business plan 2021. And highlighted areas for possible intersection with the public art program. This item is recommended action information and discussion. We'll now kick it over off to Tara to introduce our speaker today. Hey, thank you, Kristen and welcome Kristen Madsen. As Lisa, excuse me, as chair keeper just stated, we're happy to have you here to present the creative sonoma business plan. I know you have been the director creative sonoma for more than five years now I believe so. We are, it's wonderful to have you running this organization here in our community and to be great partners we've worked together on many projects so thank you for being here and I won't just let you run with it. Let us know if you need any assistance running your presentations otherwise we'll let you control it from your end. Thank you Tara and thank you all for letting me steal some of your time I know you're in a lot of meetings and so hopefully this will be a little bit interesting and a little bit of a change of a pace for you all. As Tara said, we have created a sonoma that's been around for just about six and a half years now and I have been the director for that time. I want to just give you a thumbnail of how we got to here and then to get us up to this point of creating our new business plan, which we did with the same consultants you all used for your strategic plan. So, some of this, and the process will seem familiar with really great to be part of your strategic planning process, and have Tara and Rayisa both be part of our planning process as well as we've been moving forward through this. Then I'll give you a couple of highlights of our plan. And as was mentioned, maybe looking for places where we think they naturally intersect, because I think that there is a lot of commonality, and then also talk to you through for the big project that we are already planning on to work on together with time for questions and comments along the way. So, as I mentioned, been around for six and a half years. We got started with one staff person and a $200,000 annual budget. We are now at full full time staff and about a million dollar annual budget. There have been ups and downs in that process. It wasn't a straight line. And some of those ups and downs came as a result of the various crises that we're all used to dealing with in Sonoma County these days. So, Fire, Fire, Flood, Fire COVID is how we refer to that. I'm sure you have your own ways to deal with it. But that, in many respects, what was before all of those crisis brings us really easily to where we are now and how we responded to COVID, because it's really in our response to COVID that the business plan, this new business plan was born. One of our responses to COVID is a project that is a precursor to some of this work. And it's a project that we did in conjunction with the city of Santa Rosa, your programming, as well as in five other communities around this county. And you may be familiar with this in Santa Rosa, it was called Open and Out, which I'm sure you are familiar with. The generic name for it, Countywide, was a creative reopening project. And so there were five other communities that participated. And I don't know how many of you, I'm thinking maybe none of you, according to Tara, have actually seen a brief video that we made specific to the Open and Out in Santa Rosa. And so I thought I would take it just a couple of minutes to show you this video and you'll get a clearer picture of what this was all about. So I'm going to share my screen. And hopefully this will work for everybody. Can you see my screen now? All right, so here goes. And let's have the volume as well. In response to the COVID shutdowns, Creative Sonoma funded a workforce of artists spread out all across the county to help our businesses reopen safely. We partnered with local chambers of commerce and downtown business organizations who handle all the logistics like street closures and licensing and permitting. Our funds paid to match up the artists with businesses so that they could animate and enlighten these spaces so that our community members would come back feeling not only safe, but also creatively engaged. Each of the participating communities pursued its own unique vision in this project, but all of them were grounded in the belief that the arts play a role in solving community problems and building community cohesion. You know, I was really excited when we had the opportunity to apply for creative reopening grant funding and we had so much hopes for outdoor dining because we're in the middle of COVID. And it just seemed right to be able to marry the two in the sense of businesses benefiting and having artistic elements to that work. And we were able to create a great marriage between art and parklets and business retention. This project is about welcoming people back both directly and metaphorically. Directly, this creates an incentive to bring people down to the plaza and visit our businesses and the community. And indirectly, this creates a special gathering place that's going to bring people together. We're a hospitality community that didn't get to welcome guests in 2020 and this is a really great opportunity for us to just say, we're here, we're open for business, our community is thriving again and we're excited to see people back here in our historic Sonoma Plaza. We created the United States Portal Service behind me and that box will receive letters to the pastor future. You can send a letter through the portal service and we'll respond. Art in public places is about kind of democratizing the art world. A lot of the times art is behind museum walls and tucked away in places that are not accessible to the public. And so to put art up in spaces like this, especially BIPOC faces, it breaks down so many barriers and it makes sure that we are able to tell stories that are unheard in a way that everyone can see it. We have seen a big change, you know, people waiting for our table and it has improved our business. Yeah, we feel like it's been bringing in a lot more people just to see it, you know, people stopped by and so we really feel that it's been really like a great addition to Fidel de Mayo downtown. We have 87, almost 90 percent of our community tell us that they have been waiting for something just like opening an house. This program we know from direct feedback from our restaurants in particular was the only reason they have been able to stay alive through this pandemic. I see the space that's been created here as the most exciting thing I've seen happen in downtown Santa Rosa since I've been working for the city and since I've lived here. And it almost gives me goosebumps to even think that maybe this is the start of something that's going to last forever. Thank you Tara for the fantastic summations of that video. That was a great way to deal, have that done. So we're crazy about that project because it really embodies so much of what we think we are and can be and should be in Sonoma County and doing this work. I'm going to take one second and turn off the video because it's still going. Okay, I'm back. So what we're also really crazy about is it really shows how art plays a role, as you all know, in our public realm in solving civic problems, in beautifying our downtowns, in building bridges, and all the good and wonderful things that art can do. That particular project was such a great example of them. And that in many respects fed our process with what we wanted to do as we came out of COVID. So Creative Sonoma had the great opportunity through a grant that we received from the Hewlett Foundation to take stock of where we were after COVID and think about where we wanted to go into the future. And it was through a program they funded that they called adaptation grants. It was really designed for a number of arts organizations to figure out how they would adapt to the kind of changes that COVID was forcing on us all. And so if we, and it was enough money for us to pay for a consultant to come in and work with us, and that's why we hired third plateau to come in and work with us and think about how we would respond as a government agency a little different from obviously what some of the nonprofits were thinking about. What we ended up coming to very quickly was what we need to be is an organization for whom adaptation is our single most defining characteristic. We're in a place where we are, and in a time when we are going to have to adapt all the time. And so that needs to drive whatever it is that we decide we want to do. And in our document, our plan, you'll see we talk about it saying this was a unique opportunity to take a big step back, reassess who the community is, what the community needs, and reimagine how we can be of service. We have our mantra going into it with adaptability being the core characteristic. All programs that we talked about has to be able to scale up or down depending on what resources are out there for us or depending on what the need is. We need to become a more visible and trusted partner with our other county departments that we felt like that was critical because even though we've been around for six and a half years, you know, county governments being what they are could say tomorrow. Yeah, maybe this isn't our priority anymore. And if we're just seen as this sweet little tool program over here on the side that can get locked off. That's one easy way to get rid of us and save some money in the budget. But if we are integrated with many more of the departments in county government and doing work that is government wide and helping solve civic problems. And that's the way the opening out program did that makes it a little harder for anybody to say, yeah, it's just the arts, we don't need them. So those were two other driving forces forces we went through the plan. And the third thing is it's really it's an operations plan, it's not a strategic long term plan it's an operations plan. Adaptability is at the core of that that should still last us for a good four to five years we would think no matter what kind of crises come our way. But it was really about how are we going to what are we going to do and how are we going to do it in this next period of time. So I'm going to go through just a handful of items on this now and I want you to be listening for areas that you hear that will fill reminiscent to you in your strategic plan I read through your plan again on Friday and we have a lot in common. Which means that there's a lot of room for us I think to work together and we can talk about that as we get through to it so let me bring up I'm going to share my screen again now. And this is just an easier way to look at some of the information that's in the and then going through it page by page, in terms of what you have in front of you so there I am all the way at the bottom. We need to start at the top. All right, so as I mentioned we work with third plateau a really fantastic consulting partner and they as they were with you they were really thoughtful and creative with us. So our vision which we didn't really have articulated before is that we wanted creativity to be a defining economic driver for Sinema County. So as we do, we are housed in the economic development department of the county as you are in the city. And we really like it there. We like being there as opposed to other areas of government because we feel like it gives a certain credibility and heft to our community as contributors versus economic drain. I think people think about arts and creativity and they think oh they just all take money to have grant funds to succeed and they don't give anything back economically and we all know that that's not true. So living being housed in the economic development board helps us with that. Our mission stayed the same as what it was before we started which is that we are here to support and advance the creative community of this county. So it's pretty pretty basic pretty broad and we're happy about that. So we did do guiding principles which we have not had before and I won't read through all of these but I'll point to a few that I think are especially critical. First of all the third bullet equity drives creativity. We are believers of that and we are trying to remind ourselves and work carefully that we embody that belief that we don't just speak it but that we actually embody it and all of our actions. We also love the fifth bullet that creativity is a muscle that really speaks to the fact that everyone has some creativity in them they just need to exercise it and for us that means we can speak to our whole community as audiences and appreciators of art in a different way if we remind them that they have creativity inside themselves and it's not something that is just precious and lives on a shelf. That fourth that six point culture workers must be paid. That matters I'm sure the artist on this phone call understand that and the artist in our community do but we feel like there's room for us to do work on that in Sonoma County where there's not always an understanding and therefore appreciation that making art costs money like making any other service or commodity and that artists deserve to be paid for that work. They don't do it just because it's fun and they like it and they're compelled to do it although those things are also often true. And then the last piece as I've been saying adaptability fuels impact and so that's again about watch phrase for us throughout all of this time. So when we devise the plan, we decided to use some simple organizational structures that made sense to us and would help us cleanly and clearly about what we're doing and we took a page out of the business sector on demand side and supply side programs and so we have programs and services for the demand side and that would be speaking to the audiences who are users and purchasers and supporters and sponsors of the arts and then the supply side which is trying to work with the artistic and creative community. And so I'm going to spend this is these next two slides of where I'll spend the predominant amount of time that I will on the plan itself to talk about the kinds of programs that we are in the middle of undertaking or about to as we go through this process. So the first is on the demand side. And there are four programs here some of them we are already working on and some are relatively new for us. And in this regard, we're talking again about the government partners in terms of the demand side government and also our folks over in the newness in the county government and the other departments that are there as I mentioned, and also businesses. We haven't really done a ton of work reaching out to the businesses in our community to figure out how creative Sonoma might be of service to them to help them think about art in their business decision, business decisions on their business plans and how they might use that. So that's that's who we're talking about here and the online resource bank is one that we have had already going that can be a service for the whole community but we think especially businesses, we have a really robust website full of what we call creative profiles there are maybe 700 of them. This is where any individual or organization or enterprise that has creativity at its core can have an individual profile on our website. They can put photos, they can put audio, they can put videos up and they can talk about themselves. I am such and such an artist my work is in watercolor my studio is open from two to five every day, or by appointment only and here's samples of my work and here's how to reach me and links to all of our social sites. It's robust in the sense of we have a bunch of profiles up there, but the individual profiles are some of them are dated, some of them are not very complete. It's not as effective as we would like it to be and quite frankly we think there's probably thousands or more profiles that are there. We'd love to be able to point to that site to anybody that wants to do anything with artists and creative, creative companies and say, go to the website first, it's fully searchable, see what you can find, we don't want to necessarily be picking who people should meet with and talk to, we'd like them to explore and find out who those people are. So that's, we need to work to make that a more robust and effective tool. Consultancy I kind of touched on that a little bit. That's where we would really like to work with businesses or or other entities that need one on one services to think about how art could be incorporated into their business. So when we're talking about a business we're thinking of things like maybe you want to talk to someone about putting artwork up on your walls in your business. Okay, we could help with that or point you to people who do that for a living. Maybe we could help you think about how you might use an artist in one of your creative brainstorming sessions for your business because we know that artists will bring a different perspective to your, you know, your standard ruts that you get into when you think about planning. Or maybe you could think about hiring an artist to work with your HR team for team building activities that would be wonderful and fun and creative and would give your folks an outlet that's different. How do we help work one to one to develop an art plan for someone who's looking for that policy development that is going to be related very much right now to thought leadership because in the policy development area we are very much working on the idea of having a percent for art ordinance for the county of Sonoma. You all probably know that you have a fantastic program in Santa Rosa, we do not have one for the county of Sonoma. And so we've worked, we have leaned on I should say Tara and your team extensively for any projects you've done in that area. But we are ready, we think to get to the county and say, it's time we need to adopt a policy for the entire county and so for any unincorporated areas or any county projects. We need to make sure that we've got our associated with that and so that's our key work in policy development in the coming year. And then in thought leadership. It's very much the same thing as we were just talking about with consultancy for businesses, but this time with our government partners. How do we help our government partners think about using art in their day to day activities, how many public relations campaigns would be improved if an artist was involved in helping develop the messaging or the packaging of what those campaigns are about, etc. So that's the demand side that we're thinking about I hope I'm not going too fast. Let me raise your hand if you're, if you need me to stop on the supply side, a little more robust. As I say that's where we probably focus more of our work already. And so we had a little more room to build and expand what we were doing there. As many of you are familiar with what we've been doing in this regard but networking has been a critical piece trying to bring artists and arts organizations together with each other and get to learn in peer learning sessions and get to know what each other is doing, and also a lot of workshops. So we've been doing a fair amount of professional development since we got here on all kinds of different subjects that we think are important. We're very excited about the potential of doing one together with the city of Santa Rosa, although it's going slowly because chosen facilitator for some workshops we want to do on equity arts and social justice is really in demand a woman from Oakland that we're trying to get to come up here but we hope to keep working on that as well as other workshops and continuing to do that good work. New to that side of the equation though is our arts and equity fellowship program will be launching in about a week to 10 days. This will be a fellowship program for up and coming leaders who work in and for BIPOC communities and with the idea of trying to raise those voices and provide opportunity for people who have a really thorough and thoughtful understanding of those communities and their needs to get training and money to do what they do and get stronger at it and get better at it and be more accountable to the people we hope to get into the river if you will of resources that are available for artists that some of our folks in this community have been standing outside of because they haven't known how to write a grant or haven't even known that these programs were available or have figured out how to engage with the kind of resources that can help them do the work that they want to do. This fellowship, these folks will get money, they'll get training, they'll be part of a cohort that will last for about six months together to work with each other and network with each other and then also we're paying them a stipend to attend the workshop. We know that for many folks actually taking time off a regular day job or for childcare gets in the way of them coming and taking advantage of professional development. So that's another piece of this that we think will hopefully help us get to artists and voices that haven't been at our table certainly in the past and we hope to raise them up in the broader community. And the creative engineers program I'm just going to briefly touch on because it's more in the future but is there anyone on the call who is not familiar with leadership Santa Rosa, the program leadership Santa Rosa. Very briefly it's a program run by committee of the Chamber of Commerce that brings in up and coming leaders in the community to meet over the course of the year on a monthly basis and learn about the various industries that comprise Sonoma County by having a day full of panels and guest speakers etc and so that they feel that they know better how to work as leaders in the community. Well, if you take that model and you shrink it down to be just about the creative sector here won't be necessarily as long won't be as many sessions but to bring people who want to know about the creative industry to know what's happening in this community and therefore hopefully groom new sets of good champions and spokes people and advocates and potentially board members or potentially arts and creative workers in our community. Sometimes folks that are newcomers to this community that want to know what's happening here and don't know how to get introduced, or some folks who have been here for a while so we're, we're hoping to run that to just sort of expand again our network of who are we serving and how are they supporting the overall creative community here. And then briefly on the far side, the other supply side is where we have our art education work with the working in our dedication. Pretty diligently for at least the last four or five years and we will continue to do that work, and we'll approach that in a micro version of supply and demand on the supply side working with teaching artists, helping train them helping them feel like their skills are up to speed on how to work in schools, how to go through the bureaucracy of school, how to make an art curriculum that fits the state standards in arts education. We did already a couple series on trauma infused trainings for artists to help kids that were dealing with all the trauma that they're experiencing in our communities. We'll keep doing that training, and then on the demand side work with schools, helping them know how to work with artists, and as long as the money last also do fee subsidy for putting artists in residence in school. So we start to do some of that matchmaking and get arts experiences in more of our schools across the county. And then finally, grant making which has been the one of the core services that we have provided at creative cinema. And again that that balloons up into and shrinks down depending on what the resources are that the county offers or that we are able to bring in from outside sources. So last slide on the plan and then I'll stop and ask questions and get any other kind of comments are immediate next steps are that we are working on expanding our staff a little bit. This is also due to the funding from the grants that we receive from Hewlett so we're looking for a contract worker to help us with the piece I described about expanding our creative profiles on our website so that that can be really robust with it's not up to date because we haven't had time to keep it up to date. So we need to get some help to get that done and get folks used to updating it on their own a little more. And then, once we feel like it's ready, we'll pivot and market it and start to make that a big piece of what we talk about in the community and and state of the community you want to know what creative Sonoma is. We'll look at this list of 1000 artists of creative people and creative organization. This is the heft of creativity in this county when you look at this website. And then the other piece refers back to what I mentioned about our leaning into policy, which is, we are in have just received responses to an RFP that we put out for a consultancy to create a percent for our ordinance for the county. We are very happy to let you know that Tara has agreed to serve on our review committee she has such great expertise and knowledge to help us select who our consultant might be for going forward. We will award that contract in January, and we hope that we will be on track to have something in front of the supervisors no later than December 2022 to vote on as to whether they want to approve a percent for our ordinance. In not too far the back of our minds, we are remembering that the county is about to embark on a brand new county complex. That's going to be a big budget project. Last I heard it was about $500 million. So we want to make sure that we've got a percent for art ordinance in place before $500 million gets spent on a building project. If one or 2% of that could go for the arts that would be a huge jumpstart for a program like this. So that's why we're pushing that at this particular point. So that is my brief on our plan. I would love to hear from you all any questions or comments and also I've got a list of the things I think our commonalities with yours but I would love to hear from you what kind of jumped out in terms of what you think are areas of intersection that you see right away. Thank you for your presentation, Kristen. Committee members, please raise your hand and I'll call on you to facilitate. Lisa. Hi, Kristen. Thank you so much. This was great. I looked over this on the weekend and I reviewed quite a few what you had. And a lot of it is, is, you know, it's the same. It's the same thing as we're trying to do and not all of it but there is definitely some highlights and stuff that we're trying to get together and how our agenda has completely changed and we're really trying to reach out there and and have people notice us and who we are and what we have to offer and, you know, to partnership and to assist people is something definitely what we would like to do. And what also to what I think is important is that we don't unnecessarily duplicate duplicate anything that doesn't need to be and but when I was talking because and I are partnering right now and we're going over everything and we had a meeting last week and we're going. So I think, you know, when I was reaching out to a lot of organizations within Santa Rosa and individuals and especially from people who have any kind of ties with Rosalind and a few other areas. You know, I'm telling them all about what we're trying to do and what we're trying to offer. And it's, I'm not getting a lot of the feedback that I wish I mean I'm getting some feedback, but I'm not. For one of the things that you said that really stuck with me as you said we need to be a visible and trusted partner. And I think that is an and I's main focus. And so that's what we're going to try to do now is first before we can do anything we need to be a visible and trusted, you know, partner to the community to the creative community. So, which I think is extremely important. Do you have any, I mean, what were your responses be about that and how do we get out you know I'm thinking, you know, we need to be. We need to brand ourselves as something else as someone else and you know, even whether it be to be part of different kinds of art events that are going on set up a booth or something and tell people be there, go to the people, because we can't expect the creative community to come to us when we're not that visible trusted partner yet. Thank you for outlining the challenges, particularly well, yes. Those are definitely all of our calendars I think and it's especially hard as I'm sure everybody knows during COVID because we aren't out in groups of people meeting the kind of way that we used to and it's a little hard to develop relationships with people when you are starting from a strange, stranger place and trying to do it one on one. I don't, I'm not going to tell you about I have any reshattering responses to that for creative Sonoma. We have, for example, on our arts and equity, cultural equity fellowships. We ended up hiring a contractor who is co producing the program with us and will be the face of this program. We don't create a moment does not need to be the face and the owner of this in this moment we are happy to take a backseat and take whatever possibilities we get from it. That sounds a little counter to being visible in the community, but we're going to be visible in this in new communities through our consultant helping us reach folks that we wouldn't have otherwise. Once we've provided meaningful service and hopefully that we do a good job with and that people want to brag about, then we should have all the fellowship participants being able to be those voices into the community for talking about creative Sonoma and you know it's a little out of time I know but that's definitely the, you know, it's the she told two friends and then she told two friends kind of mentality about it to try to expand what we're doing that way. And then, you know, as always, we're always looking for ways to just work with in the other regular structures of social media and news, you know, media, etc here to try to do that but I think word of mouth, especially for that trusted piece, it has to be word of mouth in order for that trust to be established. Okay. That makes sense. We I thought there were, you know I felt like the obviously public art is now a crossover area we would love to supplement what you all have been doing so well in places that are outside Santa Rosa so that will be really great for us. I love that you all have using community leaders to champion arts programming that feels like a really common goal for both of us to be able to do that focus on diversity and bringing new voices. You guys are looking at, you know, nimble I think is the word in your strategic plan we're using adaptability but those are very obviously common ideas. I think there's, you know, there's just really a lot and the building mutually beneficial relationships with our other government partners I know you're thinking of that at the city level just as we're thinking about it at the county level so I think we can learn from each other. And the more we can sort of model together how this can work the better for both of us you guys are obviously the big dogs. We have a lot of municipalities in the county and we we lean on that heavily and are delighted by having had the relationship that we've had so far with who you are and what you're doing and just are looking forward to doing more. I would do two minutes more but I don't want to, I'm not paying good attention to time so you should let me know if I've got a couple minutes to talk about the project that we're just getting underway on. Yeah, I think that's fine. So, sort of as an outgrowth of this whole concept is a campaign that we're working on that will be a county wide campaign. And again I'll point to Taris has been a really good partner with us as we've been pulling this together. And it's really going to be a county wide creative place making campaign. And the focus of it is to highlight the value of art in community development and in our public realm and all the things that we talked about as we went through this plan. And we're going to be talking about working on this campaign in two tracks one is on the art artist track and one is on the advocates track and advocates in this context. Wait, rewind one important thing to say this concept is in the planning stages. This will still more fan change along the way not everything is fully defined. So this is not a fully baked idea, but it's getting closer so back to the tracks artists and advocates advocates in this regard are going to be people who are users buyers sponsors supporters of art and that businesses that could be municipalities, it could potentially be arts organization that use and support artists in their work, all of whom are going to be driven we hope through this narrow end of the funnel of doing creative place making in their communities. So, for artists, the program is going to involve training. Again, we all the things that we normally do that we talked about in the plan trainings on place making and those place making skills how to work with public agency. How to collaborate things that some artists say they want to do but may not have skills to do things that are getting required more and more for artists who want to respond to our feet. You know they're more and more asking them how are you going to talk to the community about what it is that you do here and what kind of community engagement techniques do you have so we feel like doing that training will help our folks help our community, but it will also help our artists and creatives compete better for commissions they may be looking for outside our community. So they're going to get training. They'll be networking through a cohort of the artists that will participate in this program which will go over a few months, and they'll get many grants to fund new work that they will be placing in the public realm. They'll be at a business that could be it on public property, you know, could be any kind of location, but that we will give fine funding we have some and and we'll be providing that funding for those projects to occur, and they'll be using whatever that project is, as they go through the training so it'll be here's the project, and you're working on it and learning about it and learning how to use these techniques, as you're developing this project. The advocates track very similar, they get training, they get to learn how to work with artists, they get to learn how to incorporate art into their business models, they will get speakers talking about case studies of good and bad examples so for example we'll probably talk about that, why did that work, why didn't that work, you know, and so they can learn about how can they best use art and who's in this community that they can rely on or they can reach out to to talk to about doing it. They'll get to network with these other potential partners in their cohort, they'll get access to these newly trained and skilled artists that we've got going through this cohort, and then they'll get access to be the host of one of these art projects that's built for and designed for their particular space. We're hopeful that they will volunteer their spaces to do that, and so, you know, then all the details of how that all works, who's carrying the insurance, how is the, you know, who owns the piece, how do we get them all together, that's all still to come. But we think that we have enough funding and enough interest to be in multiple communities across the county, we know we have interest in Petaluma, in Sonoma Valley, in Windsor, in Santa Rosa, and in Heelsburg, and hopefully we can get a few more communities to participate. We're working with municipalities and chambers of commerce and local art centers, those are the key starting points. We're working with a fantastic organization out of Minneapolis to do the training, they do this for a living, they are the best of the best springboard for the arts. So we've got some really wonderful resources to rely on to get it done. And we think at the end of this will have a dozen or more, maybe two dozen new pieces of art all around the county that if we all come together and talk about it with our arms wrapped around it and common messaging. We go back to the concept of how are we visible, how do we let people know about what we're doing because we're all saying the same thing about art and create a place making all over the county. So that's it, a thousand things still are going to go wrong with that whole plan, or that aren't designed yet to be finished, but that's the general idea. And again, we're really looking forward to that and partnering with you all on it. And in terms of how that fits, how what you are already doing can fit into that and help us decide and how to talk to other communities about how what they may already be doing can fit into that big, big scheme as well. Anybody have any other, any questions about that or anything else happy to answer them. This is awesome. I'm Kristen. Are you working or with Sonoma State or JC or other kinds of places where people are getting slightly higher level arts, if not art degrees there is actually beyond just feeling artistic there's actually schooling and pursuit of career or is there any connection with finding people in that sort of realm. I want to make sure I'm hearing your question. So yes, we do work with the JC and FSU, particularly through our arts education efforts. There's a current conversation going on about getting a certification program together, for example for teaching artists and maybe that will live in one of the other of those places. And yes, we know them and work with them in terms of trying to get the word out to students or recent graduates or others who participate in our programs. I just was kind of thinking about those kind of bubbling up places where so I just wondered if they were standing alone. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I come from Seattle, which is it really has some really interesting layering of foreculture and which is a great kind of spawning I got to be part of that when I was just coming into kind of an emerging artist kind of stage and there was like retreats and it was like artists rooting for one another they would sort of award grants and money and awards for different people at different times of their careers are different levels of things they were doing like many cities do. But then it wasn't like everyone you know you didn't get it I mean you never will. There was this sort of sense of people coming around like the artist community was watching each other come forward and come. It was really, it was really nice. So I hear some of that and what you're talking about. Yeah, it's not just getting the fires that the people that went to pursue or consume art or you know integrated it's also support amongst the artists, I really have a heart for that of just that they aren't alone and we're not just pushing around to do things so I just want to say that I think it's great. Yeah, I have a related thought that's a kind of a recurring question for me in my limited involvement with arts advocacy organizations, which is that artists tend to, you know, have really robust networks and organizational capabilities for, you know, producing conceiving of and producing and executing their own kind of projects. And I often wonder about how receptive organizations can be to those kinds of projects that are really conceived of and driven by artists. I don't know if I'm making sense. I think a lot of the time it's easy to get as an artist it's easy to get hung up on. You know, questions about how to engage with the these kinds of structures. You know that are that are sort of being laid out by the advocacy organization. I think as opposed to shorter term. If I'm hearing you correctly if there's the, the struggles from time and memoriam of an artist vision and compare making that fit and be in sync with the person who may be the, I'll call it sponsors flash flash commissioner of an art project is that what you're asking about. I guess I'm asking about the methods that you're using as an organization to encourage and accommodate artists driven and initiated projects. Well, so there are, let me, in this particular big project that we're talking about, I think we are not designing this that it is artist driven or advocate driven. We are designing this to be, we've got artists, and we've got advocates and they're on parallel tracks. And by the way, they're going to come together. So, hence the topics for workshops about collaboration about learning for businesses how do they work with artists for artists how do they work with businesses, etc. So the idea being not one superseding the other but everybody gives and takes a little as you come together and make something happen together separate from that. So we're giving in our grant program or regular grant making program that is a place where that is about within certain guidelines that we have because of the funding that we receive in any stipulations on that. Tell us what you want to do. And here is funding for that so that that would be a place where something that's a little more purely designed by an artist and organization would have room within what our current offerings are. Thank you. Thank you. I'm just going to say thank you so much for for everything that you guys have been doing and the energy that you're all bringing to the table it's been five years since I last spoke to this group and I don't think there's a single carry over maybe one carry over So, yeah, there we go right. So it's nice to see fresh spaces and perspective engaged in this and we're really looking forward to where you guys are going to head with your strategic plan and where we're going to head with ours and hopefully we'll be able to, you know, have some success together so thank you so much for the time to talk about it all. I'm just going to jump in and say, I'm sorry I was late, Kristen I think the plan from my initial review looks great and I look forward to working together as it's always a pleasure. Thank you. Absolutely. Great. Thank you. Do you push me back to obscurity now I go off screen. Thank you, Christian. Thanks. Thank you so much, Kristen. So Kristen keeper. I think that if the committee wants to have any other discussion we should, we can. There's no action being taken but at some point you do need to ask for public public comments just to make sure there aren't any. Okay, at this time. Were there any other questions from committee members. Any thoughts about Kristen's presentation. That we we can discuss as a committee seeing none. I'll ask a recording secretary do we have any public comments for this item. We have no public comments at this time. Thanks, Eileen. I want to say I do appreciate hearing about the strategic plan from creative Sonoma and am very encouraged that there is a lot of overlap between the two plans and but to echo Lisa's point I don't want us to, or I want us to be thoughtful about how we're duplicating any work but working in tandem with our supporting partners and very exciting that the county is considering a percent for art funding program. This was something that I was a little surprised that we didn't already have in our county so I'm, I'm looking forward to hearing more. Great. So, in lieu of there being no further discussion topics on item 5.1. I will move next to project updates 5.2 Tara will you please give us a presentation about updates on current projects. So, Kristen I just have a few verbal updates today and will hopefully be bringing back some of these items to the committee for consideration at our next or a future meeting. So to start off to let you know about the unum sculpture for courthouse square we were hoping to bring the final engineering and design and recommended list of words to the art and public places committee for approval. At either our November or December meetings but due to delays with the engineering on the artist side, she has requested more time and the item will appear on a future agenda. So that's the update on that piece. Next street parking garage project the help each other grow design the artist services agreement with the selected artists is being finalized, and we are still on track for an installation of that project in early 2022. For the assault art panels. Great news on this one last week Council approved using $300,000 of one time funds from the PG and E settlement to fund the bronze casting and installation of the panels in courthouse square. Yay. At the same time they also approved the agreement that we need with the foundry who will be doing the work for us so I will be making a site visit down to the foundry actually this week to take a look at the mold tests. They have been making which is like a traditional bronze mold making process versus a 3D scanning mold making process. So we're looking at the results that will help us determine what the best option is for this project. The SAWA family members as well as the project conservator will also be there to assess the results. And deservingly so this project has received much attention it was featured on the KQED newscast last week and it's been in local print media among others so it's been great to have the attention on getting these panels back for the public to enjoy them. So and the so the project that we started talking about with the project development committee which is Nathan and Kristen, which is including artists in the general plan update. We've been working hard on figuring out what that means what that could look like and the project development task force has been really helpful in that brainstorming. I've continued to work with the San Rosa forward team the other city staff in the planning department, as well as their consultants to come up with an outline on how we might be able to proceed with this project. They actually have grant funds through a Kaiser grant for the general plan update and the equity component to it and we are proceeding with identifying, identifying artists and sites in equity priority communities or areas in San Rosa for these types of projects. And they would be based on the topics of environmental justice health and housing. So we're narrowing that down we've got a good framework going and because it's receiving grant funding outside of public art funding which is wonderful. We're really proceeding with kind of getting that fully fleshed out identifying artists and possible locations. And then I'll be bringing back a full fuller report more comprehensive report on what that looks like to the committee as soon as I have all of that prepared. And then I wanted to share a little bit more information about what Kristen touched on this big project that we've been collaborating on with springboard for the arts. So if you recall we did identify in the strategic in our strategic plan the public art strategic plan, and in this year's annual plan, a line item for commissions and grants to artists for installations or performances and underserved neighborhoods that are reflective of the graphics of the community. So we're really looking at the possibility of potentially using the funds that we had set aside for those projects combining them and essentially acting as an advocate in the advocate artists relationship and how this project would work so that we can be a partner in this project that creates numbers launching. So again I'll be bringing back a full report on this on a future agenda so you can see what that might look like for our participation. But it's been great to do the brainstorming with her to see if that's all possible. So those are the project updates that I have today and I'm happy to answer any questions. Thanks Tara. I have a quick question regarding it unum and the. So the final design the engineering in the words will be coming back for public for our review. Do you have any anticipation for project installation at this point or is this subject to that that update. I mean there's been obviously a lot of delays in the project right we had COVID that set us back about six months and so if we hadn't had any other delays due to COVID we were looking at early 2022 as our expected installation date, but because the outreach component to gather the words and phrases and languages for the piece took longer than anticipated. And now that the artist is having delays with the engineering on her and you know that might get pushed back. Again, but we should know more from from her when we get the final documents for this last approval that's needed from our public places so hopefully I can provide a timing update when that presentation comes up. And then for our information is there a building permit coordination, or is it only with the engineering division. Only with the engineering division but it will have building review obviously there will be footings being put in the square for the piece, but because of how it's a city project it will just be going through engineering. Thanks. And then I had one other question. Thanks to the Kaiser grant for working with the general plan update. You mentioned the equity priority areas and focusing on environmental health, housing, and I missed the third topic. Environmental justice, justice, sorry health and housing. Thank you environmental justice is is the is one thing. Great, thank you. Do any other committee members have any questions for Tara regarding our update today. Great. Thank you Tara. We appreciate it. Some great news going into the holidays this year so Item number six, going forward we have ad hoc task for task force reports and discussion. Do any. Sorry, I'll call on the different diversity equity inclusion and access task force first you guys have an update to prevent. Yes, and I do we've been discussing a lot and then also reaching out to, you know individuals and creative groups, and what I'm, you know, and after I did because I read everything down what we're going to you know what we're trying to do but after I did look at creative snowman what their, what their plan was their agenda. I think that did stand out and this is what I found to what I've said before was the being a visible and trusted partner and even though I'm explaining to us to as many people as I can anybody who will listen and our agenda and you know how we're just completely have a completely different idea who we're trying to reach out to and what we're trying to do. And being accessible being visible and being a trust in being trusted is that has not been established. And that's a big hurdle that I think we need to establish. And I'm not sure I mean we're just trying to brainstorm a lot of ways how do we do that how do we make ourselves visible I mean, do we go, you know do we, like I said before do we set up booths do we go out to these events. And, you know, and be there and invite people to ask us questions who we are what we are and make a brand for ourselves and you know we are part of the, we're a committee that's part of the city of Santa Rosa and we're here for you, we're not. We don't want to be a hurdle we want to be an open door and give you as much information as possible. And, and do you have it and anything else that you'd like to add. One thing we did we haven't talked about too is that it would be really great to get someone appointed for the Roseland area and understand that it's a process people need to apply they need to be in the bank was that right, Tara things to be. There needs to be an application, and they need to be willing to sit on these meetings and spend this kind of time I realized not everyone's interested in this kind of work, although the more and more I have a friend that has been with the city's arts and culture in Seattle for some years she was a parent when I was teaching up there. And I corresponded with her quite a bit she sent me some documents and turned this on to Austin Texas has been doing a lot of stuff just trying to get more diversity into their very program and policies. And a lot of it is having people represented at every level. And so this seems kind of an obvious that we would have more representation on our board. And so our committee whatever we call us. So we talked about that and not knowing those people I don't, I feel a little bit hands tight on that. And so I don't, maybe does anyone have any ideas about how to reach out and get some people so that that council person could actually nominate someone. That was another thing too that we discussed I mean if you know because we did Rosalind does come up and since we don't have someone there to partner with someone that represents that that does become that does in an issue and I've been telling everybody please apply but then I realized, we need to also let them know, do you have questions before you apply how can we assist you to apply it's not you know and just give them the low down on this is what you know it takes to be on the level of what you need and, you know, I just think there's, there's some hesitation of the unknown, and I that unknown I don't want to be there anymore. And so, to be make a presence and just to be, you know, I want to get ideas, I am and I are looking at, you know, what other ideas what can we do, how do we go about doing this, but I also want to get ideas from other community committee members here on what you think would work what ideas do you have. Yeah, I think it would be very helpful to have public facing events. And I know this is a particularly difficult time for that. But I'm organizing this art fair in March. Different Bay Area artist run organizations I think that would be a good opportunity for art in public places to have a booth I don't know how feasible that is. In terms of how many representatives we could have. But I don't you know, I think that might be a good. That's something that occurred to me. Yeah, no and I'd be building, I just, you know, just planted out at different events, more than willing to show show my face with another person or be out there and just, you know, be visible and people have a questions. Here I am, please and, you know, ask us questions we're here to help and assist. But to even have a semi a schedule of things that are actually like that as we open up more that are going on that that would be part of our meetings that we would know where there were things happening in our city. And we could talk about how we could either both get to them ourselves or have some representation. So, I agree. I know previously I did attend a couple of the city's open houses and participated as a member of the art and public places committee and handed out brochures and maps about the public art program. I think there was the QR code poster in one of the, or sorry, there was a QR poster in downtown Santa Rosa and Square to advertise the walking tour that you can do around downtown. And I think that that to be a very great way to advertise and what our city has in general already, but to kind of get ideas about where else, you know, opportunities could happen, or it's interesting that, you know, our purview is really kept to the projects that are on public spaces and so thinking about our involvement there, but thinking about how there can be smaller or different types of projects than just the traditional installation of a mural or a sculpture. I think that that's a fruitful conversation to have with people to not just advertising of hey this is who we are and what we do but hey what do you want art to look like in your community, I think that might be another my opening conversation to have. I just wanted to add that we, I know that I've mentioned this before but and we'll have more updates coming but we are working on how the public art program is branded through the out there Santa Rosa program and so you know, the programs are kind of merging into one. It's still called out there Santa Rosa, but the new website that we're currently working on that should be launching soon so early next year. Really is is a lot of what you're talking about in terms of a place for people to see all the cool unusual art creative things you can do in Santa Rosa. It's not necessarily a calendar listing because there's already places for that. We don't want to duplicate efforts there but it's specifically highlighting Santa Rosa through the out there lens. Right. And so public art and the types of projects that we do and support and are aware of that maybe aren't ours, our own commission projects but in the community, we want to highlight those and lift those up and make them visible so I think that that ties in a lot about what you're saying in terms of how are we a visible and trusted partner. I think can happen a lot through the launching of this new website and how it's branded throughout their Santa Rosa. One of the cool components of the new website will be a map of Santa Rosa so that is drawn by a visual artist so there's a real representation of the geography of where we live as well with key kind of icons art summer artworks throughout Santa Rosa you can recognize buildings architecture, open spaces, things like that so anyway I think that just keep that in mind that there's a lot going on that's happening on that front that as soon as we have that ready to share. I'm sure our consultants would love to come and talk to you about it. That's great to hear Tara thank you for the update. Great. Jeff. Do you have a quick little update about community engagement, or kind of just some questions that our team can think about. Yeah, so, Melanie and I did not meet have a chance to meet this last month, specifically about a PPC community engagement, but Melanie did attend museums. We had a committee meeting about community engagement as a, as we reported previously, we're looking at parallel goals and collaborating where we're possible. It looks like there will possibly be a possible, a future endeavor in which a PPC the museum and other organizations my partner on what we're looking at trying to establish which would be a storytelling festival that would happen annually. Oops, pardon my phone ringing off and off the ringer. And the idea is somewhat loosely based on a project from Toronto which is called block by block in which people sharing their stories. So it's a very cultural and historical lead to performances and public art works that help define a particular neighborhood. So we're looking at this model at something that we need to do a little bit more work on and then most likely in the not too distant future or sometime in the new year will be bringing something to the this committee to talk about because we see the potential for us to go generally block by block or neighborhood by neighborhood to try to engage the community in a project that will have both both the storytelling as well as performance as well as public art component. Most likely in temporary projects, but you never know. I mean, maybe there might be some possibilities for for future permanent projects as well. It's all baby steps right now. And that's, that's pretty much it. Great. Thank you. That is exciting to think about as a neighborhood storytelling event. I'd be interested in hearing some so we'll some more about that. So please share when you have more information to be continued. Okay, I'll I'll start off the project development task force update. Nathan Tara and I did hop on a meeting with the city's Santa Rosa forward team and their consultant for the strategic for for the general plan update. Sorry was that in October I'm not remembering when that meeting was but since that point Nathan and I didn't have an opportunity to connect specifically but it sounds like there has been some update that Tara just presented to us today about the Kaiser grant and that is some great fuel for us to connect and think about and get back to to our team. So, thank you Tara for presenting that forward. I will say I was very excited to hear about Christian Madsen talking about placemaking as a big part of creative synomas specific plan and then going forward with the county and you know that being layered into their strategic efforts, sometimes placemaking. So when I was in school it was a very exciting concept but then in actuality the application of it can be quite abstract unless you have a specific project. So I was glad to see, or I see opportunity for project development. I think that with creative synoma, especially in those workshops and classes. I will look into taking a mouse but Nathan did you have anything else to type in. No, sounds good. Great. Well thanks guys, this has been a fruitful conversation about where we're going next with our task forces, and I think this is taking good shape. Any reports I forgot to ask everyone if there were any events that you had attended or anything that you wanted to announce regarding art events in the area. Nathan. There's a local artist named Catherine see it, who just finished a three year book project and there'll be a release for that on the 18th. Where will that be. Escalar. Okay. It will be fun. Interesting. Nathan, if you'd like to send the information to that. To me I can distribute it to. Thanks. Jeff please thank you. Yeah thanks. Just really briefly, we do have a new exhibition that opened that I think will be of interest everybody it's our annual artistry and wood exhibition. It's by the Sonoma County Woodworks Association. And we have, because we really weren't able to do the show last year we. We had a small sampling last year but it was only viewable virtually. We decided that we would go bigger and bolder this year so it's a pretty, pretty impressive exhibition and whether you are a fan of fine wood, woodcraft or not. I think it's just an absolutely stunning show. And so I love for everybody that have a have a look. We do have continuing exhibitions. And we do have a series of events planned but being that it's coded we're still being cautious about how much we do in person. All available on the museum's website museum sc.org. Thank you. Thank you Jeff. And I've been to the woodworking ones before, and I'm a huge fan of woodworking and they have just, oh my God, some of the furnishings there is amazing just beautiful pristine, perfectly done. And it looks like it has obviously they put a lot of work into each and every piece. Even, even better this year. And actually the inventiveness is something that really strikes me because it's not just fine tables and chairs. There's some really gorgeous and quite impressive sculptural pieces and some small gems of like the bowls and then and you know, just these items that you just, you know, it's like you want to touch and handle everything you do. Yes, and everybody needs to check out to use the joint the joinery on how that is done and what they do to make that that is one of the most impressive items I remember seeing. Thank you for those comments. Thanks. If there are no other reports to give out. We'll move on to our next our future agenda items. We have our ongoing list of sorry. I think it was just feedback for whatever reason, everyone's had more feedback than normal this day. Continue. Thanks. And a few are ongoing items that we continue to think about our private partnerships, commercial real estate and local artists, how the art and public places committee can support community programs and events. There's some great conversation about that today. And then commemoration or memorial pieces for the fires from a couple of years. Lastly, budget for visiting artists or lecture program. Great to hear about your Nathan your your program in March coming forward. So look forward to hearing about that. Thanks. So that this is also the time that anyone, if anyone has any other thoughts on items you'd like to put on the list, you can offer those up now. Maybe this is a place to put that that idea I had which would be especially for those of us that aren't. We haven't been here very long and definitely it's mostly been during the pandemic. If we could get an interior list of things going on that we might want to be presented and show up at or collaborate on showing up together at or just maybe the promotion or how we could maybe we could have to make this as an agenda item. We could discuss a way to develop community amongst ourselves in terms of promoting and art in a personal level. And when I may say personal, I mean like showing up, rather than just your own research. So is there any, is that appropriate, or is that, you know, meaning in terms of, I know we can gather but I don't even know what I'm saying but what I mean is, could we pursue the idea of more collaborative discussion and sharing of resources amongst this group. Yeah, it sounds like, I think, like if I'm hearing, you know, I think having that be a future agenda item. Yeah, is that's the last thing you said is appropriate. Exactly I was forming it was that I don't have fully formed thought on this. Sure. Okay, well I also think that there are lots of ways that individuals could find out all the events that are around town. And, and so I mean, there's a lot of information already out there, there might be a desire for the committee to discuss how there could be some component of perhaps the engagement task force that helps compile that list to share to the committee members or directs the committee to certain websites to check. And then maybe if there's an identified list of events that you collectively feel the APPC should have a presence at coming up with like a sign up sheet some members know that they're supposed to go to that event I mean there's a whole bunch of things that the event component of how your question started off could could work. But again I guess that type of discussion could be put on a future agenda item to have to have more of a brainstorm about that if that would be helpful. Yeah exactly for me that would be helpful. I second putting that on an upcoming agenda. Okay. Great. There's no other future agenda items. I'd like to move us on to item eight department reports. Hi, great. So I just have a brief report here to share that David Ward, who has been our project manager for the last two years. He was hired to be a part of the courthouse square project and then the fifth street parking garage project. This is his last week with us here in Santa Rosa. He is moving on to work full time for the planning consultants that support the pedal remote public art committee. So he'll be continuing to do work I'm sure that we will work together at some point. And he couldn't be here today to personally wish everyone a farewell, but I wanted to send along his regards to all of you, and, and I will take back well wishes to him that we're sad to see him go but best of luck in his future endeavors. And that leads me to introduce Jessica Rasmussen who's worked for the public art program for many years now and has been an amazing, wonderful colleague in all of all of the things that we do. She's specifically been involved with the rotating art exhibits that the program traditionally hosted in all of our rec facilities, the National Arts Program live at Juilliard, our concert series. She was incredibly helpful and last year's open and out. She was one of the artists featured in open and out as well as project managing some of the other projects. So she will be taking over some assigned projects from David as he's leaving so we'll be working more with her on some of our public art projects, while we are developing a longer term solution for our staffing needs so I just wanted to say hi to Jessica, and goodbye to David. Hi Jessica. Thank you, Jessica. Yes. Hi everyone. This is actually my first APPC meeting I've ever sat in on it was great. Thank you for all your work you're doing. It's great. Those are my project updates that's it happy to answer any questions but that's, that's all I have for today. I'm wishing bet the best for David, he'll be missed, but I'm really happy to see Jessica's face right now so yeah. I'm looking forward to working with you all more to you. Great. Great. Thanks Jessica good to meet you and be looking forward to working with you more. Great. At this time, that is all of the items we have on our agenda. So I will be adjourning our meeting. Thank you all, and our next scheduled meeting will be on January 3 of 2022. Actually, actually it won't is canceled. We, one of the agenda I think they revised agenda has the correct language on it that unfortunately is canceled due to that's the observed New Year's Day holiday for some city staff and so we will not be holding the meeting that day. I suspect that we will have a special meeting called sometime in January though because we're hoping that the unum engineering and all of the rest of that is ready by that time so please check your email and you'll you'll get a notice of that potential meeting then. Well, we'll stay tuned for our next special meeting. Until then everyone have a safe and happy holidays. Best wishes and happy New Year.