 I'll start talking about what we need, so we are the Boulder County Arts Alliance and we are a 501c3 non-profit arts service agency. We were established in 1966, thanks to the neodata endowment fund and have continued to provide leadership resources and advocacy for the arts. Now I'm curious, show of hands here, who has ever been to a Boulder County Arts Alliance workshop? Anyone want to shout out what that workshop was? Social media? AI? Oh is that one with Robert Reich? Cool. Alright, well our visits to the arts and workshops are designed to empower artists with the professional skills that they need to thrive in today's current world. So these tend to cover three core competencies or three core subjects. Now my background is in early childhood education, thanks to Front Range Community College, who I'm very excited to see here today. They are such an amazing resource for people and I feel like what I learned at Front Range Community College was informative for so many other things, besides we're just early childhood education, our professors are amazing. So I can't help but piece things into curriculum pieces. So our curriculum with our Business of the Arts workshop, we have business strategy that might be things like marketing, grant writing, social media, marketing, as well as how to prepare your taxes as an artist. We also have workshops that focus on climate justice. So we recently had a panel interconnected, which was presented by Amy Hoagland and Kathy Zierchio, who had met aboard the Antarctic ship for residency and they talked about our current climate and seeing it in person, traveling around the Arctic, seeing the guys melting in the work that they were doing with that to reflect this data. We also have programs that are focused on social justice as well. Cool, all right, cool, all right. So there we go, Business of the Arts workshops and as well as our BCAA membership and a few perks of our BCAA membership is that you get discounted rates on the Business of the Arts workshops, as well as you get a flag on our member directory, which is a directory where you can go to connect with other artists around the area and we also have a BIPOC artist directory that is currently in the work to empower BIPOC artists with exposure and connection so that someone has in the work by the request of the BIPOC community conducts science and arts partnerships most frequently with CU's Department of Outreach and Engagement. In the past two years we've worked on Colorado, Coloradans and our shared environment in times of challenge and change, which was a partnership between which paired artists and scientists to take the scientists research and data and then communicate this data on climate change through their artistic expression and that exhibit was on display at the Capitol and it is now currently on display at the CU Boulder Seek campus. As well as our connect events, which are designed for the BIPOC community to again increase exposure as well as allow everyone to connect with more artists of color. And then the next one is going to be on April 16th, so if you would like to attend the next connect event, this is an event in partnership with BMOGA as well and a few other organizations and we would love to have you there. It's going to be on April 16th. Alright, so now we're going to get into some of our funding resources. One of the primary resources we offer for artists is our grant funding program and we offer four grants. One is our signature grant, the BCAA Endowment Fund and this grant is often the first grant that many organizations receive. My initial connection with the Boulder County Arts Alliance was that I was attending and now directing a poetry organization based out of the Boulder Public Library on academia free school and we offer free to the public performance and poetic art education and we were basically sponsored by the BCAA Endowment Fund and that was a really great thing because it allowed us to pay teachers to come in and do something that previously they were all doing on a volunteer basis. So I've experienced kind of on both ends of this spectrum here how the BCAA Endowment Fund has really empowered artists in the community. It's a hardship grant for artists. Martin K. Thomas understood the struggles of professional artists and how they often are under-resourced as well as working a full-time job in addition to doing their art. The artists are exhausted and often times under-resourced and she wanted to ensure that artists wouldn't have to choose between paying their rent or buying the art supply they needed to keep creating. So this grant is open to anyone experiencing hardship as well as those who have historically experienced hardship. And then we have our running grant so that one is open year round. The BCAA Endowment grant is going to be opening up in the spring. This two jazz grant is for jazz musicians and is designed to empower them to create an album or CD. And jazz is a very open concept so however you find jazz I think might work. If you have any questions we have the email form that that is our donor advice fund. A few of these are donor advice funds which means we need to make the decisions but they make the decisions. So they're the ones we'll send you to if you have any questions regarding whether or not your application will qualify. And then the expectation with that is that you can create a CD. And then that one is also a running application. Actually no, that one is not a running application. That one is going to open up in the spring as well. And then our Arts for All Children is probably our cutest grant because it's the one where we open music teachers to bring music education to under-resourced children. One of our grant funded projects right now is the Boulder Muse. And that one is our running grant for musicians. And fiscal sponsorship. So fiscal sponsorship means that if you are not a non-profit organization or artist however you would like to apply for non-profit funded grants you can do so with the support of fiscal sponsor. So we have fiscal sponsors who do that. You can also solicit tax deductible donations as well through the fiscal sponsorship program. So it's a really great stepping stone program if you would like to accelerate your organizational or artistic mission. Alright, and now our community resources which are really designed to connect the community. Well, most of our programming for is really to help be a webweaver because we all benefit when we're all connected. One way we do so is through our arts calendar. It's a community arts calendar and it's one of the largest arts calendars in Boulder County. And it was I'm just looking at the data chart the other day. I think in the past 10 years it's represented over 100,000 events on it. And every day we're receiving and coming. You can submit to it for free and then your event will go out to a mailing list of over 5,000 people every week we send this out. So it's just a calendar with this week's events. So we encourage people to use it. It's a great exposure. And then our opportunities bulletin. So that's slightly different from our arts calendar because the opportunities bulletin is kind of like Craigslist for artists where you might post job opportunities or if you're seeking an artist for something or if you are seeking an artistic job or if there are other grant funds that are out there in the community there's a variety of opportunities on the bulletin as well. Our member directory, we've talked about that a bit. Our public art map super great if you want to go on a little adventure and then keep an eye out we're hoping to do a public art map sort of scavenger print for Boulder Arts Week. And our art spaces another place where you can list your art space if you have a studio that's current. That's a place where you can advertise it. And our arts advocacy opportunities most recently 2A was a big push that was happening so we were more of that and yeah you can also sign up for arts advocacy but I think the most important thing that we would like to communicate today is that please sign up for yourself. We want to make sure that you have as much exposure as possible. So you can go on there, use so many of it other cool events or if you're looking for something to do it's a great place to go too. Some really interesting things coming up. Alright so here is what our community opportunity bulletin page looks like and our website. So if you want to see the arts calendar you're going to go on to the blue tab at the top and you're going to go arts calendar. And here's the thing that is that it says today's events and this weekend's events when you click the drop-down menu. If you click either one of those you can also see all of the events. So if you're looking for everything happening click either one of them. And then as you can see it has by category by city. So if you're a long line event or you have a long long opportunity you can put it in. Click long line and that becomes searchable. There's a lot of different filters on there so you can really customize your search as well as make your submission really customizable in how you can search for it. We also have art resources which you would find on the green and art resources is a bit different. It's like a running list of different website resources that we have, different other grant funds and maybe are not local opportunities and the art resources. Again if you click it it's going to say COVID-19 next to it but you can just click art resources and it's going to bring you it also has a running list of local arts calendars. So more discipline organizations specific and so this is just a sample of what the Boulder County Arts Calendar looks like. So yeah it looks like just in this weekend we're going to be having 24 events at least and this was a community project and you know I'm still learning the history of what's gone into BCAA. It's been in organizations since 1966 so there's a lot of history to learn but what I do know is that the community arts calendar was designed to meet and meet when it was created in the community and now creating arts calendars is so easy. We're doing it all the time and our hope is really to make sure that we can be that common thread with everyone so that if you need to go and learn about the arts that are happening in the community you can come to us and you will have a direct link before it will appear. So also if you have a calendar for your organization send it our way and we'll link it up there. And here is our done. Let's stay in touch we have Facebook, we have Instagram and we like to chat really we are there and you can call us we'll talk to you if you have any questions about our programming. You can also sign up for the BCAA newsletter so I didn't mention that our weekly calendar goes out every week and so that's just representative of the community events that have been submitted to us and it will communicate what's happening that week. But we do have a monthly newsletter as well that talks a little bit more about our specific programming, our business of the arts workshops that we have going on we actually are in the midst of a series right now which is transform your passion into a profession and it is being led by Kathy Beekman at the collective in Lafayette our first one does happen this week, the first part of the series you are welcome to drop in or register in advance for either of the upcoming two workshops that we have. The most recent one was how to become confident in your creative expression and our next one will be making the transition to full-time artists and our third one will be how to grow a creative business that feeds your soul. So we are getting a little bit of our own personal reflection and that first one we really dove deep into the mindset skills that make a resilient artist in the face of setbacks that artists often will experience and the next one will be definitely more business oriented as well as the third one I think is going to be kind of the emerging of the two. Alright, so anyway you can find us at BoulderCountyArts.org and you can email us at info at BoulderCountyArts.org. Thank you to our sponsors the city of Lafayette, our political resources at CFD, Boulder Arts Commission Office for Outreach and Engagement, CCI and Community Foundation Boulder County and thank you for having us here today. I think you creatives for being here today I feel like the world is in this transitionary period right now where the artists are having kind of like, they're on the renaissance and we're saying we're here, we're going to be art and I think people are pushing back on this desk quote about maybe I want to start shifting away from my 9 to 5 that I really don't like and I want to be an artist as much as possible it is. Alright, thank you very much. She even has a book and it's all about our opportunity. Can you hear me? Alright, it's a commission, our opportunity is a partnership for the Boulder Chamber who runs that Boulder Star and it is a $1000 commission opportunity to design the image of the Boulder Star card, which also what I now have as the Boulder wine logo, the Boulder Star wine logo. So a great job working opportunity for us as well. And submit to the Boulder County Arts Alliance portal and then we'll forward it and move on to the community effort. Just to let you guys know we are going to have a Q&A session after all the panelists have spoken today, just because we're around a little bit of a time crunch and I just want to make sure that we're on time because we're going to get to lunch soon so we want to just keep on moving through and then we'll get to a Q&A and you guys can ask all the questions you want. Alright, who's ready for lunch? It's a really great resource for Boulder County and I'm always impressed by the, I'm on the email list to make it all the events and I'm so impressed by the professional development programs that you guys put on and worked with BCA for a long time. I'm Christy with Colorado Creative Industries and we are the official state arts agency of Colorado located within the Office of Economic Development so our physical office is in Denver but we work all over the state and been around since 1967, we used to be called Colorado Council on the Arts and we have a series of grants, programs and resources that help support artists, arts and culture organizations and all creative businesses and our mission is to support, promote and expand the creative industries to drive Colorado's economy pro-jobs and enhance our quality of life. This is, we do a lot so this is, and I'm going to try and be quick and just hit the high points but hopefully this can give you a quick overview of all the different things we do so we work in the community and economic development space and some of the programs we run in that area are Creative District Certification Program or here in a state certified Creative District long-run has been certified for almost 10 years actually and we have a program called Call Yourself Creative that helps communities form creative districts on their own and they can eventually become certified if they like to and we also have a couple of programs that help with affordable housing for the creative sector in rural areas and capital improvements that have a benefit from the creative sector we do a bunch of things to promote arts education in the state, we have grants and awards and then we do a lot of professional development for the field and we run the statutory percent for public art program too so any state building that has its new construction or renovation, 1% of the budget goes into public art and we manage those projects and a lot of them you maybe haven't seen they're in a lot of like colleges and universities and one of our big projects that's more visible is the Federal Judicial Center down in Denver in the Ralph Carr Judicial Center in History, Colorado filled a little bit about some of our major grants Colorado creates, I'm sure some of you here if you are with an organization are familiar with this program it's been around for a long time and it's just general operating support for arts nonprofits and it is based on your annual operating budget it's a flat amount, it's a two year funding cycle and it's opening soon in March, it'll be open for a couple of months, you have to have been doing public programming for two years to be eligible and just have to be an arts nonprofit, that's the major eligibility and we have a really cool program, it's one of my favorites called Arts in Society and this program is administered by Redline it has multiple funders and it funds projects that are at the intersection of arts in society and so our arts and social issues so we fund projects that use the arts to impact health outcomes or are integrated in the transportation, there's so many, this is so broad and there's so much you can apply for, I really encourage this collaboration between artists and non-arts entities and these are pretty large grants up to $35,000 it's pretty competitive and we fund about 20 to 25 projects annually, we expect that to open in July and this is our newest program, we started receiving some federal funding for folk and traditional arts we used to have a pretty robust program here in Colorado and then there was not really funding available so we're rebuilding that program and we have this small grant that's open right now from February 29th, that's leap day the grants are up to $3,000 and they can support two different funding opportunities, this can be used for creation, presentation or teaching of folk and traditional arts projects, festivals that promote folk and traditional arts and or funding and documentation of folk and traditional arts or cultural heritage, so we've had some really exciting applicants so far and a ton of interest in this program, we just got asked to translate the application into some Ethiopian language that I haven't heard of so that was really exciting that we're reaching different communities in Colorado, this is also a new program we're running called Equity in Arts Learning and this is in partnership with St. 360 Arts and it's focused on increasing arts education access for historically marginalized youth, it's open to nonprofits and schools in Colorado and funds any kind of project that brings arts education to kids in and out of school and these are $10,000 to $25,000 we just closed this grant but we expect to offer it again next year and it should have been around September, we have as many of you have been to our annual conference, we do an annual conference in a different creative district every year, we have one person, okay, thanks for coming, but this year it's May 9th and 10th in the Pueblo creative corridor, maybe haven't been to Pueblo in a while, it's pretty awesome, so you should come and see it, we have professional development and networking for arts creative businesses and also arts administrators, we do a lot of fun performances and you really get a chance to see the community in the creative district and experience it, registration isn't open yet for this but it will be opening sometime in the next month or so and you can see more in how an agenda is on our website I just wanted to mention quickly a couple of other things we do the creative district program, we have a clause on new certification right now because we're looking for additional funding but we do have 30 state certified creative districts all over the state and then another thing that we've been working on lately is the affordable housing for the creative sector and capital improvements, we also are awaiting additional funding for these programs so we don't have active funding available but we hope to offer some in 2025, these are just some key upcoming dates that we have going on, so we've got an info session I guess this is in two weeks, right? January 29th no, next week December 29th is the deadline for the folk and traditional arts grant and then in March for Colorado Creates, if you want to learn more about what we do you can join our newsletter and contact me for more information there's a couple things I forgot to put in here one is we do a lot of professional development and technical support for artists and creative businesses we do that in a few different ways, one is there a partnership with the SBDC we will be hearing from soon and then we partner with the Colorado business committee for the arts to put on series called advancing creatives that provides professional development to artists and there's one happening here in northern Colorado soon so hopefully some of you applied to be a part of that if not we'll be continuing that series, it's a six week professional development series and then you have the opportunity to apply for many grants to help implement some improvements to your business and I want to say to you that Colorado business committee for the arts is a really important statewide partner of ours in the arts advocacy space so they do advocacy for the arts and creative industry sector and they have a Colorado Arts Action Network that you can join on their website where you'll get notified of any kind of issues that are happening that you can help advocate for and we have a few funding requests in the governor's budget proposal this year which is very exciting so we get additional funding in our budget, additional funding for the creative district program and more funding to do the affordable housing and capital improvements in the state so we encourage you to join the arts action network and help pick up funds so that we can get back out to all of you through our programs and services That's all I have. My name is Susie Bonson and I am the lead consultant for Longmont with Boulder SPDC so we work within the economic development landscape in a few different ways I don't have any slides and I said it when I said that you wouldn't block your slides before. I learned so much from TV taking pictures I was like oh my god that's really cool I had no idea So the Small Business Development Center the network started in the 80's I think Colorado in 1987 there are 15 small business development centers in the state of Colorado there are 1,000 in the country so we work closely with the city of Longmont I'm just learning about all of the stuff that you do I want to work more with you We work with the city of Longmont City of Longmont actually gives money City of Longmont gives money to do specific programs for Longmont so that you don't have to go into Boulder We work with Kimberley at Downtown Longmont We work with the chamber We really try to help stay in touch with what's happening so that we can help small businesses to start growing scale. So these are the 3 things that the Boulder SPDC and other SPDC networks do. One we provide consulting. So I think that the programs that these we're talking about sound amazing for creators like totally cool stuff We have about 30 to 40 consultants that are certified. We all sign confidentiality agreements. We're all specialized. I would say that 95% of the consultants with the Boulder SPDC have their own business and whatever we're consulting on is usually reflective of that skill set. So we're not generalized if you went to an SPDC in a different area it might be a generalist. Here it's we really try to pair you up with somebody that has that background in finance, in HR in marketing, sales all of those things. So I hope for some of you who have been to the SPDC that I always say I'm kind of like a fairy god mother. So 95% of the people that or even maybe 98% of Longmont residents will come to me first and I'll do an initial meeting with you to find out what you need help with and then I'll connect you to resources whether that's a consultant or it could be like somebody like Kimberly if you want a space downtown or maybe you want to buy a commercial property and it might be let's talk to the economic development group to see what connections can be made. So consulting is step one again at no cost to you. The second thing is connections to resources which I was just kind of talking about and the third thing is workshops. So in September for example there's a business planning class it's called Leading Edge. It usually is at the Longmont Chamber they've been remodeling for some of you that are chamber members but it's usually held there so 15 businesses are accepted with a scholarship for the from the city of Longmont so I think it might be like 125 dollars they can weave in fees for all the classes and things since the pandemic so I'm like I don't know what things cost anymore but it's a really great program it's an eight week business planning course and you know it's a cohort so you get to work with other people. Not all are creative but it gives a little bit of flavor. I actually wanted to teach that program. It's the first thing that I did with the SPDC when I started my business 20 years ago and then began consulting with them and giving my time as a program developer and things like that. So there are also marketing classes there's one coming up that I will be running it's panels of marketers that talk about you know they're from around the country so they're going to talk a little bit about what's happening today so we might be talking about AI we might be talking about TikTok now that it's hot it changes each time and it's just different panels. I take 20 businesses there is a rubric if you want to apply for that the applications are open. All you need to do is go to olderspdc.com and go into programming and I don't know if this is set up for internet or you can always find me because I'm going to be on a panel at one. So I ask me if you're interested in it because like I said it's pretty popular there's over a hundred and some companies that apply each time and I have to whip it down and I usually take at least a couple of artists because I love you. So that's really what the SPDC does kind of in a nutshell. I know that if you have questions I'll back it off and we'll open that up to keep it short. So thank you.