 Good afternoon everyone. Thanks for being here. We're so excited as we announce some additional art to our public scene here. As we launch Columbia Streamart, a multifaceted art program designed to engage Columbia's creative community by inviting local artists and students to express their imaginations through unique projects to display throughout our city. The program aims to celebrate Columbia's unique access to our three rivers, but also captures student local arts creativity by bringing together our diverse communities. There are multiple streams coming together to make up public art initiative. The first are our leaping trout sculptures. We have the first fish here today that was painted by our Columbia Art Studio here for the announcement and is housed at City Hall. There'll be approximately 12 painted fish decorated by Columbia High School and college students to be included in the auction, but we are coordinating with Richland One, high schools and metropolitan areas of the institution of higher learning, and there are students to take part in decorating, painting, or creating whatever they want out of these trout sculptures. The remaining 20 fish will be painted by local artists. They will be available for local artists to paint, decorate, or create on their own who will also receive a stipend of $1,500 towards the project. Artists can submit their interest and proposals through the online submission form located through the strategic initiatives tab on our Columbia City homepage. The completed trout sculptures will then be available for public view and then will be auctioned online with the proceeds going into a public arts fund so that not only can we leverage that as matching dollars for future grants, but creating more opportunities throughout our community. The next stream expansion is the urban canvas around the city. One of the 15 by 20 canvas is already completed. That closely mirrors the canvas that's hanging outside the art and is on display here, which hopefully will futurally be displayed at our convention center proudly. This canvas features images placed by Columbia artists as well known as streamed include from our sister city, Kaiser slot. And so this is a great project of bringing two arts communities together. Additionally, we'll be working with coordinating with stormwater studios, Stephen Chesley to create more and potentially at least one more by the end of 23. And these will be placed around our community. The idea is to hopefully have five to six of these canvases spread around our city traveling. So it becomes part of looking where is the art today and exposing each one of our districts in our neighborhoods throughout the city with great art from local artists, international arts, and so excited to partner with this was Steven's idea. And when he explained it to me, I was like, Why aren't we doing this all over the city? So now we are. And then the final stream project is our many libraries for our communities. We have 24 reproduced news vending boxes that are going to be repurposed as many libraries. We've had three painted by the Bellefield Community Center here with us today. And the remainder boxes will be painted by community centers over the next couple months. And then we'll have Reverend McDowell, pick out sites in District two, we will have Council woman, Herbert pick out sites in District one. And then remaining will work with our staff to place around the community, not only to create a little public art in our neighborhoods, but open up doors to have some free libraries in those neighborhoods so that kids, parents and friends alike can enjoy having books and a little art to brighten their day. We're excited. This is only the beginning. As you know, we've invested $100,000 this year into grant writing opportunities into one Columbia as part of our initiatives to put that money in there so that we can go after grants. The one thing that we notice in our arts community that we haven't done is take advantage of the multiple grants out there for public art and art itself across the nation. Working with Bloomberg philanthropies through a class that I was taking, I learned more and more about how much money was available and that we as a community hadn't taken advantage of that. So now we are so that we can bolster and continue to invest in our arts community. We are also opening up an office in our parking deck and putting artists in there to allow them to have free workspace working with several of our developers in town to open up space that is now not least and could be used for temporary art studios for artists to be spread around our downtown and create some vibe about investing in our arts community and exposing people to art on a daily basis. But we're so excited to take these initiatives and a lot of these have stemmed out of our community for people reaching out and wanting to take part and create more of a cultural experience here in our downtown Columbia. With this, I'm excited, you know, as we open up this initiative with our leaping trail, but also like to turn it over to Columbia's art museum executive director, Della Watkins. Della, thank you for being here. Thank you, Mayor. And the mayor has inspired us to think very art forward today. At the heart of this program are the artists. They will make and transform meaning. Whether it's intentional or not, every creative act, every moment of imagination and expression in art contributes to the space where it's in ends up being placed. Public art serves multiple purposes. It can beautify an area, it can educate, it can commemorate. It also is a tool to convey message. But in every case, it does activate space and activating spaces, we will be promoting tourism. We will and can improve area safety. It creates jobs and it also becomes community fingerprints where artists and residents feel represented. You're on Boyd Plaza today, a park that offers outdoor space for people to meet and interact with one another. The Columbia Museum of Art is your community hub. It's a place to spark imagination, to be inspired and connect people. Every time you visit the museum, you will engage with art from around the corner and around the world. Public art matters. It provides interactions between the past, the present and the future. It interacts between disciplines and ideas. Public art matters because our communities gain cultural, social and economic value through public art. I look forward to continuing our role as the areas and cities, community anchor and cultural opportunity and partner. And I look forward to seeing how this partnership is going to unfold. And with that, I introduce Steven Chesley. I like to mention first off that this is a national debut of this concept, the urban canvas. You're probably saying what is urban canvas? But I can define it by saying what it's not. It's not a mural and it's not a banner. It's a reproduction of art from artists through our community, not only restricted to visual, but it could be dancers, it could be musicians, it could be writers. The idea is this, these images to move about the city in various places in a temporary basis. As Ken Burns said, we are all elements. And we stand strong as elements, but we're stronger as an alloy. And this is testament to that concept. Our sister city and during the worst epidemic since 1918, we had to come up with an idea to work together to create something. And this is testament to that. It shows that cooperation and a unifying spirit is possible under the worst conditions. So with that, we're launching this entire idea of cultural awareness and development for all citizens to increase the quality of life. Thank you. Thanks everybody for being here. We look forward to unveiling and continuing this journey from our trout to our traveling urban canvases to our little libraries and many, many more projects, hopefully to come down the line through collaborating together and making sure that we continue to grow the arts community here in our community. Thank you.