 We're waiting for Nathan or we're hoping to still get Nathan and Monica on the call. But that's that that would be it for our committee members. So it's up to you, Lisa, we have a quorum if you'd like to get started or if you want to wait just a few minutes. Why don't we? Yeah, why don't we go ahead? Let's go. We just have to wait one more minute. We're just connecting to YouTube and I will let you know as soon as we are live. Great. Okay, great. Okay, you are live. Great. Okay, thank you. So we're ready to go. I call this meeting to order due to the provisions of the governor's executive orders in dash 25 dash 20 and in 29 dash 20, which has been certain requirements of the Brown Act and the order of health officers of the Sonoma County to shelter in place to minimize the spread of COVID-19 the art and public places committee will be conducting today's meeting virtual settings using zoom webinar committee members and staff are participating from a remote locations and or practicing appropriate social distancing members of the public may view and listen to the meeting as noted on the city's website and as noted on the agenda members of the public wishing to speak during this during any of the items public comment or during our public hearing items will be able to do so by raising their hand and will be given the ability to address the committee. The recording secretary will take roll call. Please let the record reflect that all committee members with the exception of Nathan as the Syrian and Monica Bryant are present. Thank you. Next up on the agenda is public comment. If you wish to make a comment via zoom please select the raise hand button. If you are dialing in via telephone please press nine to raise your hand. Each speaker has three minutes. A countdown timer will appear for the convenience of the speaker and viewers. Please make sure to mute yourself when you're invited to do so. The microphone will be muted at the end of the countdown. Do we have any comments from the public who wish to? We have no comments at this time. Okay then let's go on to the schedule items 4.1 public art programs strategic planning. Thank you Lisa. Yeah thank you Lisa. I'll just briefly introduce this item. Nice to see all of you. Thank you for making this a priority in your schedule to attend a special meeting to discuss the strategic planning for the art and public places program and committee. As you remember back last at the end of last year I believe during our annual planning discussions we talked about undertaking some strategic planning for the public art program and at that time we had identified third plateau as a consultant team we wanted to work with and brought them on board early in 2020 to start that process and we have been working with them since then through some changes to our scope and through a crisis emerging with COVID and other such challenges plus fires and anything else you want to throw in the boat but we have been continuing to work towards our main goal of producing a strategic plan for the public art program and Jeanie and the team who's on this call today will be facilitating a conversation with you about program goals as well as mission and vision outlines for the program and they're going to start with some background into what research and planning has been done to date working with various subcommittees or steering committees for different components of the project as well as what outreach they've done to the arts community and other stakeholders. So this program this project I believe is really at a good time even though it's an odd time unusual circumstances we're really trying to see this as an opportunity to look really holistically at the public art program at its place within the city of Santa Rosa and within the community of Santa Rosa itself and put everything out on the table in terms of what works and what doesn't and what can we change to see what we want in the public art program. So with that I would like to introduce Jeanie Howell she's our project manager for this project and then the rest of the Third Plateau team welcome thank you for being here today and I'll turn it over to you Jeanie. Thanks Tara. Hi everyone I'm Jeanie Howell like Tara mentioned some of those faces I are very familiar. I would like to hear it Third Plateau social impact strategy firm that's been working with Tara and the public art program and the various committees on the work that we've been doing throughout the year. I'm going to have our team introduce themselves and I'll let them do that themselves name title what your role on this project moving forward. Madeline would you like to start us off? Sure hi everyone my name is Madeline Lobosco and I'm a researcher with the Third Plateau team and my role has mainly been leading the learning phases of this project which we'll talk about a little bit in a shortly but really learning to make sure we're informing those strategic planning conversations and ultimately decision-making. Madeline. John. Hi everybody my name is Jonathan Kaufman one of the co-founders and principals here at Third Plateau and I've been a sort of a strategic advisor throughout this process and moving forward I'm going to be working very closely with Alex and Maya to really help draft these documents and get them to a final a final place for everybody so we can start to move towards implementation. I'm really excited thanks again for having us here. Thanks Jonathan Alex. Hi everyone my name is Alex Tagavian and I'm a partner with Capital Impact we are a in some ways a sister organization the Third Plateau and we have expertise in state and local government and strategies to help further promising programs and ideas so much like Jonathan my role in this project has been out of a strategic advisor and helping to shape the final deliverables for the committee. And Maya would you like to introduce yourself? Hi everyone my name is Maya Kageyama I'm a director at Third Plateau. My background is in organizational development and support to nonprofits as well as city and state government and health departments. I grew up actually in Yucaya doing a lot of arts and performing arts and my family now lives in Santa Rosa so I'm actually really excited to be working with you all on this. Thanks Maya. Great well we're all super excited to be here with you we have a lot to cover so we're going to dive right in. Essentially this meeting is about really getting you all up to speed on the work that has been done this year. I really want to listen to your insights and feedback on some of the pieces that we have been working on with the steering committee that's been working on the strategic plan and then explore some ideas and purpose and role in the future of this committee as it relates to the strategic plan and the goals that we are starting to draft for the plan. I'm going to share my screen really quick just to give you a visual of the process that we have gone through and let me just unroll my hair and so this really kind of outlines where we started and where we're at now so back at the way back in the beginning of the year we started with pre-planning, understanding that we were going through a strategic planning process and that's really about you know scoping the project, creating the committee and really just kind of putting all the nuts and bolts together with the project planning and the scheduling. Then we moved into sort of the phase one of planning which is the learning phase and Madeline's actually going to take you through quickly some of the key learning from that phase but that really encompasses all of the interviews we did, the best research surveys analysis and the assessments that we did around the needs of the community and of the program. Between the pre-planning and the phase one is what Tara mentioned was when you know COVID hit and things started to take a slightly different approach which was the we needed to come up with some different ideas around crisis management right to respond to the needs of the community and come up with some different strategies and tactics to help with that response. So we rescoped the project and we went about doing some crisis management planning with the program that increased a crisis management committee that was formed. We did some a workshop with that committee. We did a needs assessment around COVID and around the crisis and the needs in the community and we did some different scenario and contingency planning within that workshop. That produced a response plan that encompasses a couple different strategies that can be implemented within the coming six months moving into 2021. That took us all the way to the end of September which then brings us to October through December which is really focusing back on that longer term strategies which is the strategic planning piece. So we have already conducted a planning retreat with the committee and now we're kind of in that phase where we're still trying to gather additional information from the stakeholders that are going to be not only a part of this plan but implementing pieces of it which is where this committee really comes in. So we're going to be sharing some information with you today around drafting the vision the mission and some of the theory of change which Jonathan's going to take you through and also having you take a look at the two-year goals that are starting to be sort of formed from some of the conversations we've already had. And this kind of just basically breaks down the strategic plan piece that I kind of just went over but really this is where we're at right now which is the ideation phase. After that as Jonathan mentioned this is really about drafting the plan all the way to the end of the year really getting a little into the nitty gritty about implementation how all these pieces work together and continue to gain feedback on that piece as well. Madeline would you like to go over the the research overview that's in the packet for the committee and talk about that process that we went through? Sure absolutely thank you Jeannie really to kind of better understand that current reality and desired future as Jeannie mentioned we tried to answer those questions by carrying out three different levels of learning and really research and so we actually looked at both the field level the user level and the organizational level trying to make sure we were making informed decisions and really informing those conversations. So at the field level we really sought out what we could learn from the public art field conducting secondary web-based desk research on the impacts of public art public art paradigms and goals as well as common challenges with municipal art programs. We also did some research on other cities and their innovative approaches seeing what lessons we could learn and take into consideration when looking at our own approach. At the user level we really wanted to develop a better understanding of the users of public art in the city of Santa Rosa and took a quite a broad lens to that potential user base. Much of our learning was done through interviews we conducted about 19 interviews with artists, art organizations, the general public and core organizational staff within the city program. We also carried out a survey for Santa Rosa area creative specifically that received more than 100 responses and took a lot of great insights from that survey as well. Lastly at the organization level we really took a look at identifying structural and operational needs and opportunities to best support public arts from the city. So we did an additional 11 interviews with stakeholders from the city's public art network really focusing in on current strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats which as Jeannie mentioned throughout this time frame certainly evolved and we considered that evolving landscape looking forward. The packet provided gives some key takeaways but there's just a few that I'd like to mention quickly and just provide a brief overview of. One of our biggest findings was that you know city of Santa Rosa takes a pretty traditional public art or art in public places approach but other public art paradigms also present really unique opportunities to both create community identity and foster development. These can include creative placemaking, creative economies, just to name a few but often these approaches really focus on both social and economic impacts for the city as a whole to include the general public and artists and these really are successful because they're often driven by increased community engagement and we saw an opportunity for the city of Santa Rosa there to potentially really get into that engagement, get a better understanding of community needs with opportunities to really increase strategic collaboration across the board both with arts organizations and artists. Additionally through many of our conversations as well as our survey it became clear that the creative community in the area is vast and varied and that there's really an opportunity to make sure it's inclusive both of the varied art forms and of community that's really representative of that larger community. In addition to making it more inclusive there's definitely an opportunity to decrease some red tape when possible acknowledging that that's not always the case but something to be mindful of in this moment and lastly there was really an opportunity that in this moment came through many conversations of art as such a powerful connector and unifier and something so important to lean into in these tumultuous times and it was underscored the the public art programs unique positioning in the city within planning and economic development and really the great opportunity that lies there in this kind of rebuilding phase where we're responding to these multiple crises in this moment in time. The committee really engaged with this information as Jeannie mentioned both in the response workshop and our strategic retreat bringing their unique perspectives and experiences. We had dynamic conversation which really helped inform our draft mission vision and goals that we'll talk about shortly but before I turn it over to Jonathan just wanted to pause and see if there's any questions on any of those initial findings um before we jump into what kind of they led to as a result so far. Thanks Madeline. It looks like Nina you had a question. Yeah can you identify the stakeholders is this just the visual arts community or more diverse arts? Yeah thank you that's a great question. We went more broadly than visual arts we definitely acknowledged that historically a lot of the arts in the city of Santa Rosa focused on visual arts and that came up in many of the conversations we had but of the artists we spoke with a number of them were involved in other art forms and the surveys were were definitely more broad. We had a number of people in performing arts literature and and arts education as well in a broad sense so it wasn't limited to visual arts but that definitely came up as a common theme that that often is the first thing that's thought of within the community. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay well as we shift to more of a discussion that Jonathan's going to lead us through um I quickly just wanted to mention you know really how we think about strategic planning versus maybe you've done strategic planning with other organizations or um you know in your own lines of business um you know we really seek to cultivate a space um with the right people the right information um and the right environment um so that really strong ideas emerge um and you're best supported to realize that vision for the public art program here we're not here to tell you your strategy um we're here to enable you to shape your own future um so the key questions that have really driven this process have been you know what is our current reality which um Madeleine and the research team really dug into um and then we talk about what is our ideal for what's their desired future you know what is the state which we're trying to get to um and how do we bridge that gap between our current reality and our desired future and that's really what the strategic planning piece is all about um so with that I'd love to turn this over to Jonathan who's going to um talk you through some of the pieces in your packet and go through a discussion. Great thank you Jeannie um so great strategic planning um requires a very strong foundation of a couple of things um the first one is a vision and a vision statement is really about what is the um what's the reality we want to be living in not what we currently are living in and not some incremental improvement on the current reality but actually taking a step back and asking what are we trying to build in Santa Rosa what do we want to see in our community um it does not need to be perfectly unique to who uh to us we likely share that vision with lots of other organizations and some government agencies um but it it's really is our our north star of what we're trying to strive for our mission statement is incredible unique to us and that does need to be our unique contribution to creating that vision so if you think of the vision statement as the the puzzle that everybody collectively in Santa Rosa is trying to build um our mission statement represents the unique puzzle piece or puzzle pieces we're bringing to that um and so we want to make sure that that's what anchors our strategic planning efforts understanding where are we trying to go and what do we think our unique strength and value add is to that discussion and from there we can start to think about what are some goals for the next couple of years to make progress towards building that puzzle so in your packet um you've got some draft mission and vision statements i'm going to share my screen so we can make sure that we're all looking at the same thing and and together here you should be able to see my my screen now um and this is uh this is where we're going to start today um let's start with our vision statement and we've been working with the the strategic planning committee um to start to think of okay what are some options of what we can be looking at and today what we really love to do from the um from the public arts you know from the art and public places committee here is to get feedback and input about what's resonating what's not resonating um so that we can continue this iterative process of constantly drafting better and better versions um eventually landing at a final vision statement mission statement and uh an eventual strategic plan so we've got three options that we're putting in front of you today for some reaction on vision um so option one an empowered and inclusive Santa Rosa community connected through the power of art option two a Santa Rosa where creative and cultural expression is embedded into the fabric of our community and option three we envision a Santa Rosa where public art expression cultivates an inclusive sense of place and community for all to be very clear you do not need to just pick one of these and that's the end of the conversation this is trying to have a starting place for it we can mix and match these we can create option four five six and seven if you would like um but i would love to start and hear from committee members from these three options what resonates with you what when you read it or when you hear it you think to yourself yes that's the reality we're trying to build here i won't go ahead and start if no one else is i had a couple um option one i felt it was to the point and it had a solid active message this message it was present option two i just it didn't sit with me that well option three i'm just reading my notes here this option was more as if it was a possibility that we're reaching out to it although it didn't feel so concrete that's what i would love would you mind unpacking some of those comments a little bit when you said option one felt very present um can you figure out what what in there is making you react that way um because it's it's it's saying what you are rather than looking forward to the future what we're grasping for where i feel yet feel number three is more kind of we're grasping to be something but we're just you know and we're we're not there i get that we're not but it's just it's more or less telling us the obvious so i don't know if that explains or if i'm not but how else can i put this let me see what i think that's really helpful to hear i it's it's good to hear your very natural reactions to these and um but i want to make sure that we're hearing and understanding in your comments um is i want to make sure that it's uh like the language is really resonating with you and i want to make sure we're not getting too hung up on syntax of something so option three for example like the structure of it is fundamentally different right we envision a santa rosa as opposed to just a santa rosa republic art expression da da da da and so i it when it sounds like there was the language in the first one is really describing the community you want to be living in um as opposed to the other ones feel a little bit more disconnected and a little bit more removed is that is that fair yes that is i would like to uh contribute that i liked option two as a more active um idea of creativity and cultural expression that is part of the as part of our world here um so i was drawn to that one really appreciate that that reflection um there's some really um there's something uh i see a real when i read these i think i see a real difference in option one and option two of option one is talking about the um sort of the result of the art and talking about this empowered and inclusive community um option two talks a little bit more about the art itself of it's about creativity and cultural expression um obviously both of those are very desired and really great things but interesting to hear which one you're drawn to and and um that feels like there's a little bit more meat about the what on option two and i think a little bit more meat around the why and option one are you reading them the same way member brian yes that that that that makes sense uh to describe the difference that's that's really helpful it looks like melanie had a comment next i was going to say how are we doing this i'm so i'm sorry i'm a bit confused are we just normally our chair says acknowledges us are we just given our comments thanks for bringing that yeah i think in in the context of this item and to have a um a conversation where people can join in and share their ideas i would suggest it's up to you chair point us i would suggest that um that as long as you're you're raising your hand to be recognized and not everyone's talking at once that you don't necessarily have to go through the chair but that is up to the chair i was since they are asking the questions i was letting them go ahead um and i'll i can go ahead and let them go ahead just because they're the ones who are asking the questions and trying to get as much feedback as possible if that's that's okay i i don't have any objections that um i could use uh taura or someone else if you can help um help flag when hands are raised since i can't see everybody at at the same time i'm sharing my screen but um i'm i'm fine with that approach so then in that spirit um is there someone who was about to weigh in melanie yeah yep thank you um it's interesting i i actually had a very different response number three just really jumped out at me and i think it was because of a couple of words if an exclusive sense of place um which made me just think about um you know we have such a we don't really have such a diverse community but um it's important to make sure that everybody feels like they belong and that number three sort of says that to me um and it could just hear that word the inclusive sense of place and community for all um yeah so that everybody knows and what no matter what and maybe i'm reading into this no matter what kind of art they're bringing we want to see it and it's welcome that's really helpful thank you and um yeah especially calling out a specific phrase there that's really resonating with you is uh is really helpful other thoughts about what's resonating with you in these first three options i had another yeah it looks like nina had her hand up um that's okay oh absolutely so there's aspects of all three of these that appeal to me if i was to pick one i would pick option three but i would attempt to include some things from both one and two one i like the idea of empowered inclusive is also worded in option three um and option two the idea where uh creative and cultural expression is embedded into the fabric of our community the word that's not in here is identity and i think that that can be inferred possibly an option two um so we the limitation of option three it says where public art expression it cultivates and inclusive cultivates blah blah blah just the the phrase public art expression so is it possible to include um when you say creative and cultural expression is embedded into the fabric of the community i think of anybody from school children to middle age to older age everybody having a sense of identity through the art that's created here in the the individual and public and private sphere all of it together um that the public art expression is just one of them that and it evolves from the community's um identity but are we to are we to make this vision just for the public art or are we talking also about the community expression i'm happy to share my thinking but i all of your answers to that question i think will be very telling um as a strategist i would encourage us to think about the role that public art plays and the vision for what we are um like the the to what end side of public art right there's the we're here because there's value in art itself um and all of that expression and what it can do and what it what it draws out from people and how it brings people together right both of those things are really critical so i think that's the lens that i would approach this as opposed to a vision statement that is really just about the Santa Rosa in general um and could apply to any department within the the city i think is going to be a lot less meaningful for us so i would like to add then to option three a sense of belong cultivates a sense of belonging and identity like that that's really helpful thank you very much i think there was someone else who is about to jump in but i can't see which hands are raised uh this is jeff looks like jeff yeah i was hoping to jump in here um so i think it's really interesting to hear um individual um options expressed as being preferable and then nina um really appreciated your comments because i was thinking a very similar thing that there aspects of all three that i think are are on target but not none of the options actually is inclusive enough to say it all in like one uh succinct vision statement and and so i've been looking at these things well how do you mix and match these words um and one of the things that occurs to me is that um these words like inclusive uh sense of place creative and cultural expression embedded uh somehow in our in our community all of these are are i think great aspirational um uh philosophies about you know a vision is sort of an aspirational philosophy for um a strategic plan so i wanted to be active and present and now but i also think it should be aspirational for the future what are we trying to get to so i started to mix and match the language here a little bit and i'm thinking it in my mind it could be something like we envision the santa rosa where public art inspires creative and cultural expression and uh to create an inclusive sense of place in community or something you know things like something like that where we can sort of cobble together the best parts of each of these options that's really helpful um to save us all a headache uh we're not going to try to word smith this to a final version together because um i i like you all too much to try to put you through that um so that's really helpful uh to hear some specific language in here that's really resonating with you from a couple of these ones and i'm seeing lots of heads nodding as we're trying to blend some of these together um does anybody else um have an aspect of this that they want to make sure or would love to see in the final version either a specific word or phrase in these options or that's not in these options that you would really like to see in that final version christin i wanted to second nathan's comments about uh jeff's comments sorry jeff's comments uh about blending an aspirational philosophy with a call to action and that's really what i find to be most powerful in a vision statement is as a call to action as well and i think including the word inspires a community uh i think that's a really powerful way to think about it so i would encourage adding an action verb in there to bring home the the aspirational philosophy and the feel goods yeah i really like that and that using a word like inspire also helps connect the um the value of art for art's sake and also what art can then produce and what it can what it can lead to i think um a word like inspire hits on both of those notes in really exciting ways that's uh that that's definitely worth playing with um any other final thoughts on the vision statements here before we have a similar conversation about mission statements okay well let's keep moving so again the vision statement is about this um the reality we're striving towards right the reality we want for our community but it's likely several years you know if somebody's are going to be good vision statements are often a generation or two into the future right it's going to require a lot to build towards what we're trying to get to a mission statement takes um takes that big picture puzzle and says okay for that to happen a lot of things are going to have to go right from a lot of different players us as the public art here is the puzzle piece the unique piece we can contribute to making that vision a reality so it's very similar we've got three options here of just a place to start the conversation we love your input um so this is about the unique puzzle piece we bring to the table to help build that that vision statement we just discussed the option one the public art program amplifies community voice and enables diverse and culturally relevant expressions of art into community spaces option two Santa Rosa's public art program champions artistic expression through community-based strategies that infuse an array of art experiences into public spaces option three Santa Rosa's public art program fosters public art experiences that reflect the rich culture and history of its community so again we are not wed to these three we are happy to mix and match or happy to go an entirely different route but really just want your input as you read through these what resonates with you and what doesn't if you think about the unique contribution that we make towards that vision I see Monica's hand up go ahead oh you're unmuted or I should say you're muted okay thank you in this one I am drawn to option two because of the idea of championing artistic expression through community-based strategies you know I just feel like the arts really need to be um supported and advocated to to grow um it's not just a matter of recognizing creativity and works of creativity in the community and I thought that was important that it talks about that too so it's this idea of champion championing the arts you think about our unique contribution I think it's a fairly easy argument to say the public art program is best positioned to actually do that championing right that's a really easy unique contribution we can make what uh what else resonates or doesn't resonate for members Jeff and then Nina yeah so I again I think there are aspects of all of these options that um that that resonate with me but there's one fundamental question that comes to mind that none of these addresses and in my mind my experience with public art is that sometimes as much as you want public art to draw the community together to be a reflection of um uh that sort of the cultural makeup of your community that um so that people feel like uh it's it's there for them sometimes you want public art depending on its location and the purpose of the project to do something maybe a bit more to help define a place as a as a distinctly unique place that would be let's say a destination that would draw people um Santa Rosa is the kind of city that definitely has to think about its own local population and and being inclusive but it's also sitting geographically and economically in a region that hopefully post pandemic tourism the wine and hops industries and and the arts and culture and all of these things that make Sonoma County a wonderful destination that Santa Rosa can help position itself at the center of um not only Sonoma County life but maybe as a destination for visitors so I can imagine um certain locations where the public art project might do up it might do more um or it may have a different purpose than what is expressed in any one of these options and so I find myself um thinking about well what really is the mission of our committee and of the public art program is it only to um champion local artistic expression community based strategies um you know reflecting the cold culture and history of our community or or are these projects sometimes going to do to aspire to be something more in order to be maybe symbolic of as a cultural beacon to you know to beyond our particular city or or county so if we can define what our purpose is um in a way that allows for us to be both local and more expansive in what we're trying to accomplish then in at least in my mind I'd like to see whatever option we go with in the mission to allow for maybe that um creation of a sense of place or a destination as defined by public art to be part of what we're trying to accomplish and I think that's really profound and um that comment resonates with me a lot I want to make sure I'm hearing some of this accurately so I would like to sort recap some of this and you can let me know where I went off course and how to strengthen that yeah I think what I'm hearing from the top of my head so no this is great this is great so what I'm hearing here is a couple of things one is that like there's a concept of like place making that is missing from these mission statements the idea of like not just having like an art experience but genuinely having art help define what that space is and how it's used and what it does and how it inspires or connects and all of that that it's it's beyond just the expression but the expression is maybe that's where it becomes a little bit more local right it's helping local artists to express and then it's using local and broader artists to help place make and maybe that's where that dynamic actually takes them take some route where we can have different strategies for both local and for external artists that that's what I'm hearing at least in your in your description yeah I think that helps more I think it articulates what I'm trying to say more succinctly so thank you thank you I think Nina had your hand up a while back if you want to go ahead so I really like the comments both that Jeff and Jonathan just made first of all I agree also again that there's options there's aspects of all three of the options that are good I want to say this before I forget because the term cultural it was a cultural beacon that you you said Jeff it might have been destination but yeah something like that you used the word beacon and I mean overall I like option two except that it's completely composed of propositional phrases and it doesn't read right if you took option three Santa Rosa's public art program fosters public art experiences that reflect the rich culture and history of its community and if you added something about and towards the future like a cultural beacon and then adding the future into option three would be good and adding the idea of placemaking if you can put all of that together yeah I appreciate that and I think there is an angle to do this relatively seamlessly and owning where we're housed within the city right this is parts of about economic development which I think can also drive some of those aspects of placemaking and being that beacon and just taking it slightly taking the arts approach to what that can look like I think this is really interesting thank you I think Kristen you had your hand up as well I did yes I had a thought to add to the placemaking conversation I the prep preposition preposition option two aside from the grammatical structure of it I like the phrase base community based strategies for the point that jonathan was just talking about has within the city opportunities and I think placemaking has a huge hand in influencing how artistic opportunities can create sense of bold position to take with our mission statement and so I would very much encourage adding in a theme of placemaking did we just lose chris christen there a few times or is it just me yeah we did okay I was going to ask that because I'm on safari and I probably should have gone on google prime and I was wondering if it was my problem so we lost you it you were in and out the whole entire time sorry about that christen can you repeat yeah you you cut out a little bit I the things that I heard was that you liked the community based strategies being included in there but that the focus or incorporation of placemaking you would encourage that but please fill in what we missed because those were the two main things I heard sure sure so I was just echoing jonathan's statement about the public art being part of planning and economic development and how including in the statement of community based strategies opens up for flexibility and opportunity for placemaking and I think that would be a strong component to our mission statement great thank you looks like melanie yeah I just just a word of caution that we don't want to make our mission statement seem as though we're looking for particular places which can be gathering points or beacons and others that cannot because there is already a impression that there are art deserts in santa rosa and so we just need to be careful about what we're including in the mission statement so but it's not construed as further alienating some communities and building up others thank you for flagging that I really appreciate it it's actually a great segue to talk about some of the goals about where we're going so I'm going to skip the theory of change I'm sorry while you get dizzy as I scroll through here and come down to these draft goals so this is what the planning the steering sorry strategic planning committee on current ideas are of where we can focus over the next couple of years and so I wanted to share these again just to get some input about what's resonating with you and what's not so we talked about the vision being the big high level what we're striving towards these goals getting to articulate what progress can we start to make towards that vision and where do we want to focus our efforts so the committee's got four goals currently in draft form goal one prioritize diverse voices within the programming process outreach and infrastructure of the public art program so that's one of the aspects that melanie was just flagging there to some extent goal two infuse art into all city areas and recruit community leaders to champion arts programming again attacking some of the art desert goal three increase awareness and familiarity with the public art program and the arts and public places committee and goal four identify and secure bigger funding streams with more flexibility and less restrictions or fewer restrictions so we'd love just again similar to what we've done if feedback about if this is where the public art program focuses its energy for the next couple of years what do you like about this what do you not like what do you think might be missing oh jeff i see your hand up thanks um right off the bat i think what's missing is actually having a goal that has to do with the um with projects with actual public art projects um to um to approve and and um and move forward on the implementation of projects that you know that that would support the mission because it's interesting i kind of like all all of these goals but then it's like yeah but none of them actually address what i think we're here to do which is actually um put some projects out there get some proposals back and actually put some art out into public spaces to speak so i um that that's helpful to hear does goal so i think the intention behind goal one and goal two are to do exactly that um but it's clearly not coming through as you're reading it and your reactions to it you're you're seeing the absence of that right i mean like um if goal two were worded instead of infuse art into all city areas or maybe it was it would be infuse art into all city areas um by um you know through public art placement and recruit community leaders to champion or something like that but it's it i'd like to see some specific language about the the the actual process of public art placement okay thank you other reactions about what you like or don't like or what you think might be missing yeah uh the thought am i audible oh yeah then go ahead hey um one of the things that i think is most exciting about this committee is that it's um sort of on the verge of being integrated within or into the planning committee is that that's correct yeah and and that um and and uh sort of stepping out out of uh kind of neoliberal framework of art as a as a kind of way of decorating the urban fabric and into um that's an area where it is kind of more integrated into um you know how cities are conceived of and how urban planning is organized and um you know kind of really forming a um as as it kind of means to connect people with this the decisions that are being made about the spaces that they live in and i you know i don't know how to put that in a more succinct way um but that's kind of what i'm excited about being here and um i think there might be a way to uh sort of highlight that within the within this set of goals just to make sure i understand that comment fully it sounds like what excites you is that um there's a real focus on a healthy engaging process by which public art comes to be and how it takes root as opposed to um you know sort of cherry picking installations and it's just the it's the actual product itself and getting to actually focus on having a healthier more inclusive process itself is is exciting for you which is what culture is you know essentially right um i won't yeah i won't fight you on that one i agree wholeheartedly yeah so it's like like like how are um you know how is everyone who's living here sort of included in the process of um conceiving of and implementing public art projects great thank you i'm cognizant of time we've got a couple other conversations we want to have any other final comments about what you what you like or don't like about these goal draft goals um i'll just jump in really quick and just i noticed three key goals over the next three years but i see four goals good yes that's an easy that's an easy one to fix we'll credit you with that one you get a button up and everything just met just saw that um monica did you have your hand up well i did i i couldn't i don't see the the last speaker the one who was uh talking i didn't see nathan as a dairy and it doesn't look like he has a camera on but oh oh there he is okay hi nathan i you know what i did have another comment and i'm not interrupting anyone am i um okay because i can't see everybody when i'm learning my notes and stuff so when we have i know we can only we're working towards three of these goals and we have four on here my question is which goals rely on other goals like for instance number four will probably help facilitate definitely a few of those goals if not all so when we're looking at having three which ones do we have to have whatever which ones are needed make the other ones possible sorry just to clarify that's a it's a typo at the top we don't need to think of um we have to winnow this down to three um we can that's a typo at the top that we need three goals i would as a strategist i think three to five goals is about right and i really like when organizations just looking at all of the different types of organizations we work with i always think it's really really smart to have one of your strategic plan goals be entirely internally focused about how we operate better and it's clear from the conversations that a lot of it is around where our funding is coming from and what's flexible versus not and i think that was the area where the committee saw an opportunity to unlock more potential i agree with you that's going to fuel all of the other goals for absolutely yeah sorry about that type of on here okay um oh nina had her hand up yeah i just have one thought on goal one prioritize diverse voices and i would like to add and robust participation within the rest of that great thank you so i'm going to go ahead and stop screen share for a second so really really really helpful great strategic planning is iterative in nature and so thank you all for engaging in some kind of some software clay and what material here to like actually engage and help shape it about where you think it needs to go next and we'll keep working with the strategic planning committee to continually refine this language and get it closer and closer and closer to where we really want to be this input is phenomenally helpful in that effort so thank you all very much we're going to shift um in the time we've got remaining to talk about this committee and how this committee plays a role in helping advance this larger agenda so i'm going to turn it over to alex to uh to walk us through the next portion together great thank you jonathan can everybody hear me okay yeah perfect so as jonathan mentioned um what we'd like you to do now is hold up a mirror in summer guard and think about the purpose and role of this committee in relation to vision mission and strategy that we just walked you through and this can be challenging in some ways because particularly as you know a component of a city system it's hard to step out of that world and leverage this unique moment to reimagine what your role might be um so i want to push you a little bit to try to think as creatively as possible there's no wrong answers here but it's it certainly is welcome we would welcome you to test some assumptions around uh your current role and then how might that be redefined in order to advance the the goals and mission that were at least the draft that was just um articulated and there's a lot of different ways you might be thinking about this and even just scanning the goals we looked at moments ago um there is a decision-making function currently there could be a fund development uh fundraising component cultivated champions um and then there's also aspects that uh maybe outside of the purview of the committee but make might make perfect sense for staff to be the lead in driving so there's a lot of different ways you might consider this and to kick us off what i want to do is give you a minute of self-reflection hopefully you have either a patent pencil in front of you or your laptop and maybe just jot down or sketch your initial ideas that come to mind individually as it relates to the purpose and role of the appc and then i'll let you know when a minute is up and then i would invite uh you then to share and discuss um it discuss that reflection so that we can start to workshop how we as a group might envision that role remaining the same and possibly changing going forward any questions about that before i turn you loose to do some sketching all right so go ahead and take a minute and i'll let you know when the time is up so would anybody like to share your initial thoughts and kick off our conversation mena so i'd like to give a little bit of a historical perspective i think i've been on this committee for eight years um and it was a larger committee until tar you tell me how many years ago uh what since we did the public art program um the master plan and the policy changes that came out of that took place in 2016 17 16 17 when i first came on the art and public places committee it was a much larger group there were two city council members and a lot of people were recommend representing other city boards and commissions such as design review cultural heritage board board of community services and then there were some at-large members and now we've transitioned to a fewer members and not having strict representation from our cross representation from these other committee boards and commissions and we're getting even more away from that as we transition into all district appointments that are political appointments so i feel the loss of not having members from designer specifically design review and the cultural heritage board um so the statements that we make or promote regarding our composition i think should take into account where we've been and answer the question where we're going because if it's all district appointments we could see more political appointments without people have representing specific bodies or populations within our community yeah thank you for that that contact certainly helps and even about 10 minutes ago uh the comment that was made by one of your colleagues related to this this committee shifting into was it the planning commission is there a consolidation that's happening did i see that right i think they were talking about the fact that art and public places committee used to be housed in park and recs and then when it changed to be part of economic development we i it's a great move and within the arts community we talked a lot about um i've been a member of art trails for 35 years and we talked about maybe 10 years ago about trying to bring making sonoma county because it was a it's a county organization as a cultural destination and and and the potential for uh attracting you know art tours um so there's been a lot of change over the last 10 years and i think that whenever we define where we're going we should look at where we've been thank you um monica and then christin i i appreciate what nina was saying the only thing that i wrote down was and i think it reflects sort of missing a larger body of participation um in the art and public places and i was writing down invite invite more uh guests or i know we do that and people have been invited and people request to speak before us but somehow in an honorarium kind of way not not paying but honoring people by bringing their voices to our meetings by just inviting them but that's just a thought so you see that just to make sure i'm hearing correct correctly you see the role of the committee to be increasing engagement with the public by inviting them to participate in a conversation more proactively yes yes i mean i it could be burdensome and you know complicated to include more voices but taking um an initiative to invite periodically people to attend would be seems like it might add some more vitality to the process christin i think you need your hand up thank you uh some notes that i wrote down i think reflect a little bit of background about my position on the committee and why i was attracted to be part of these conversations and um i wrote down encourage creative placemaking by not by navigating the city process and something that i am really drawn to in in my line of work uh working more on the art in private developments i have been on design development teams and working in a planning component to understand the nuts and bolts of who's involved and what board needs to or or uh official needs to approve each piece before something really comes to fruition and so i really see education as part of our tenant and really understanding or engaging in a dialogue where there is uh differentiation between art and private developments and public development and that can often get misconstrued uh what is public space and what is private and not with not wanting to get too into that minutiae uh i want or that divide uh i i think it's a big uh consideration for our committee to think about how we interact with other boards and commissions as well and how we work within the framework and educating that is is something that i'm very passionate about and i also going off of that another big role of art in public places is to celebrate opportunities uh along with our education and that is those were cut in my two cents from our self-reflection just can i ask a quick clarification you mentioned the word both the words education and not and navigation it are you seeing who is who is the end user of that role for the committee are you navigating the private sector through the city processes is it it is it directed towards specific members of the community just so so that we understand what is that role relative to the the persons being served that's a great directing question i get a little confused between or blurred between the the parties that i work with on and i think that the end user is our community member who might not have the background or the knowledge of you know the city council reviews this type of project or the planning commission reviews this type of project but to have the confidence that the art and public places committee has this purview and has an understanding of what type of art and culture and celebration is meaningful is and not to define that into too narrow of a category but i think that that is a big uh that is a big rallying part of this board is to tie that process together um it looks like i saw jeff's hand up and then lisa yeah um this is really interesting conversation uh the um so the the reflection on our role maybe because i was still thinking in a vision and mission sort of context i what i wrote was i guess more aspirational in in in that vein but um what i'd say what i'm thinking about is our role is to create a vision for public art and to conceive and implement projects that inspire and engage our community and create a sense of place and um christin i think what you're talking about in terms of education and sort of my concept of engagement sort of is inclusive of that so um yeah i think and there were some comments earlier um i think uh monica and nina both um are talking about um bringing more i guess more voices to the table and so um i kind of like that idea that we would play a role of being um maybe the creating a platform through which and i think we did this for example um the uh the courthouse square project that's currently underway and i'm i mean i have the honor of being on that committee we we had a survey that got hundreds of responses and so um i think this is a really important part of the process is that we we have this role to bring people's voices um and to to understand what people are thinking about and what their responses are to um art in public places so anyway that's that's what i'm thinking about oh and one other thought i think nina um mentioned about um a cultural um sort of a cultural destination that sonoma county would be sort of you know elevated i guess in a way and and and i i certainly got a sense of that one i've only been here for three years um working as director of the museum for three years but it's definitely part of the museum's vision and when i talk to my colleagues who are directors of all of the other cultural organizations i know individual artists and the cultural organizations are all thinking about how can we work together how can we create we create an environment and um an image outside of sonoma county as well as within the county and uh in our case let's think about san rosa in in particular that there's there's really um culture here that that art the arts creativity public art culture really helped define who we are thank you lisa yeah i was actually some of what jeff was saying and what christin was saying and to educate was it's definitely a goal but um what i had written down was um to work towards help facilitating and or guiding community community leaders with empowering their community through public art and um because we are putting a lot of emphasis on placemaking and when i was looking through and kind of doing some research i came across a great resource from the um nea the national endowments of arts and it was a 220 page um how do how to do creative placemaking and um it was just it has so much information and i haven't been able to read all 220 pages yet and i know that tara has read most of it when i um discussed it with her just real briefly um and it just talks about reimagining bacon spaces through temporary art projects and it gives you a better understanding on why and how much of the of the work needs to be community driven to actually really just make a huge difference within that that within our population within our community within the neighborhood um so i still need to do a lot more reading through it but there is there's just a lot of information that i really think that will be helpful for all of us so that's my stance lisa i'm i'm familiar with that the nea creative placemaking document as well and um yeah it's pretty powerful monica i think you had your hand up yes i that article sounds really wonderful to to dig into but i was just thinking you know like uh i santa rosa there have been critiques of santa rosa not having an identity not being a distinctive place and and i feel like if we just keep making more and more art and get more and more projects going that identity will grow and emerge and you know it's it's kind of like an artist in their studio worrying about their style or whatever just make more work just do more to get uh and it'll it'll work out anyway um so i was just thinking that i wanted to share that thought any other reflections on the role or purpose of this group i i'm asked genie if she could perhaps pull the goals list back up as a reference point um because what we what we want you to do is continue to think in terms of your scope relative to this desired future and street goals that we're workshopping today and um it might be constructive too to think about it is there a is there a particular goal that is just low hanging fruit it's the most obvious in relation to the role of the committee we do that thing that is on us and conversely is there might be a goal that is outside of scope and not that it's not important but it might be a responsibility of someone outside of the committee uh or beyond the scope of um at least the the immediate group um of the appc so curious where what your reaction is to your role vis-a-vis the goals here like nathan you have your hand up you're muted though unmute yourself nathan yeah i i mostly think about my role in terms of um a kind of personal project that i'm already engaged in um that has to do with building linkages between uh regional history and cultural practices local artists and international practitioners um i feel like the mission of the apbc probably um has a lot to do with um creating opportunities for new practitioners and audiences within the communities who you know often historically marginalized or um are not provided with opportunities to engage with the resources that are that may be available um and i think the committee should be asking fundamental questions about uh what art actually is and um what it can be and do in relation to uh community and how it might model um broader and broader questions about civic engagement i second that less pretty art i also what nathan just had to say what about it specifically resonated with you too well i don't know i i feel like am i yes i'm open i was waiting but i feel like you know we're so safe and we really don't do a good job of this is not what's the good things but that we need to do a better job of bringing in more diverse art to santa rosa whether it's in and it's incumbent upon the committee members to go out and find those people and not just rely on the same people submitting proposals over and over again um um and but you know try and widen the net that we cast to see if we can bring in some of those communities that are underrepresented in santa rosa lisa yeah absolutely what um melanie just said too we need to we just can't say hi we're here we want to support you we actually have to go out there because there's so many communities don't even don't even know that we exist they don't know what we have we they don't know what we can offer and we need to find out what we can offer and how we can support these communities and how we can bring out all the things i mean because there is there's probably so much creativity there but they have never given been able to just given that door that open door to explore and to be able to create and um i just think we need to as this committee just need to go out there and guide and help and offer that's the least we can do perfect thank you any any final comments before we transition to our closing uh nina so this relates to goal number three and i don't know if it sounds crazy to put this in here but bear with me it says increase awareness and familiarity and i would like to say and excitement or i think my biggest disappointment being involved with art and public places for eight years is that we've had in eight years probably a handful of meetings where people really really come and give input and it's only been when there have been projects that have been somewhat controversial and i can name those a dragon mural coffee park railroad square and with the public art master plan when it went to the um city council there was really not so much uh participation in the community at large but i just wish more people would get involved on a regular basis when it's not because they don't like what what we might do on approving a certain project just get more people involved and get some excitement going here some real robust interaction that's a that's a great way of punctuating the conversation on what was possible so thank you genie turning it back over to you thanks alex and thank you all for all of your incredible input and insight um i'm over here taking furious notes um but um i wanted to close with a quick reflection um and please share if you're you two you'd like to um two years from now okay we're going to take out the crystal ball here and think about the public art program and the art and public places committee two years from now what do you hope is true about public art in santa rosa i'll give you a second to think about that um and then share uh a few of you would like to share um what that vision looks like for you not everybody wants here yeah so um i can't help but uh reflect on on some of the the comments um that happened in the last session right before we got to this but i would like to think in a couple of years that we are um in the process of planning or planning for or implementing projects that will have a unique presence and that will help define a sense of place for santa rosa and actually uh thinking about nathan's comments and a couple of others um that we're let's say not playing it safe and that there is a level of community engagement that perhaps is more about education and bringing people through the process so that if there's a project that is a bit more challenging and i hope we do have challenging projects that people will get behind to those projects and and i don't think we should shy away from controversy i think it's more about the process through which people can be engaged and understand why something might be of value even if it's not safe and pretty thanks jeff anyone else want to share i would like to just dovetail off of jeff's comment about going back to what is the value and really thinking about going back to these tenants and uh in the vision statement what what type of themes could we draw out from that of you know things that are of value and um hopefully keeping that in mind as we go forward with projects that may or may not be controversial or shaping of our community but i um i think back to value and um i think that's a a promising word and something to keep in mind as we're going through a strategic planning process absolutely those are great words to end on um tara did you want to quickly just close us out um maybe talk a little bit about the next steps with this committee in terms of um the adoption process yeah thank you jeannie thank you all for your great insights and thoughts on all of this um our goal is to have a plan a final strategic plan um sometime by the new year around the new year um in january uh we've been delayed many times with a variety of things including disasters and whatnot so we may um you never know what's going to happen next but that was um our our hope was to have something in january at that time we would be bringing or shortly thereafter we would be bringing um a a draft to the committee or i should say the final draft to the committee for adoption would be the ultimate um final involvement of this of this group um this is a strategic plan it's not a policy document so the city council does not need to adopt or approve it but um i would like to also recommend that we take a presentation to the city council to let them know um what this is and um what our goals and vision and mission are i think that would be helpful for the awareness level so um those would be the next things coming up for this actual document this final strategic plan um and we will uh provide you with updates um going forward if the timeline changes or there are additional steps in between that come up thank you all thank you everybody thank you here thank you so much good to see everybody