 Okay, and whenever you would like to begin. Great. All right. Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the October 13th special meeting of the art and public places committee. I would like to call this meeting to order. I mean, will you please let our members of the public know how to participate in today's meeting. Yes, members of the public wishing to speak. During public comment or during items listed on the agenda will be given the ability to do so by utilizing the raise hand feature in zoom or by pressing star nine on their phone. They will then be given the ability to address the committee. Great. Thank you. Next I would like to do a roll call Eileen will you please do a roll call for our committee. Absolutely. Racer Kiefer present. Vice chair Jones Carter present. Member bound Gardner is not present at the moment. Member napkinson present member point is present. Member Sayers is also not currently present. And Member Asderian is also not present. Let the record reflect that all members are present with the exception of members. Asderian, Baumgartner, Sayers, and, oh, I apologize. That is it. Those are the members that are absent today. Great. Thank you. Next, I'd like to move to item three, public comment. Do we have any public comments that are submitted in email or any raised hands? We do not. Okay, great. Thank you. Next, I'll move to item four, our scheduled items. Item 4.1 is our workshop number two, State of the Artist. Presented by the Kimson Creative Team, this is the second in a series of workshops that builds on the introductory presentation by the city's equity officer. With a more specific lens towards the arts sector, the Kimson Creative Team will lead and facilitate a discussion about the state of the artist, including a conversation with local artists. The recommended action today is for information and discussion. Thank you. And I will pass this on to Tara or Nika. Thanks, Kristen. Welcome, everyone. I will just turn it directly over to Niko. Thank you all for making time to be here today and take it over. Right, hi, everybody. Happy, what is it? Thursday, happy Thursday. We are sliding in right at the lunch hour and I kind of wanna do a quick deep dive into regulating ourselves and coming in to show up fully for this hour and a half that we have. So before we get our presentation, I encourage everyone just get a quick little piece of paper. We are gonna be visual artists for two seconds and just do a quick little drawing rendering. Can be stick figures, because that's my specialty, that's my skill, that's my art form, is how you're showing up to this meeting on this Thursday at 12 p.m. So I'll give you 30 seconds here, a quick little rendering of how you're showing up so we can know better of how to move forward. Go for it. And once you got it, don't be afraid to show it. So who's got one? Yes, yes, Vice Chair Jones, yes. Oh, I love that. Come on, Fer, yes. Yes, Chair Keeper, let me see, it's blurry, it's blurry, doesn't want it. Oh, I see, Jessica, yes, Danny, yes. Yes, Tara, yes, number point this. This is, there's a lot of faces that I see that the eyes are like very much how I'm feeling, yes, Chair Keeper, son, music, yes. I love this, amazing. Yes, never Nathanson, yes, come on. Fabulous, fabulous, fabulous. Well, my friends, I will get into our presentation here if I can screen share. Very informative, art has a great way of telling me and showing me how we are showing up today. Quickly to go over, friends, my name is Nico Kimzen, pronouns are he, him, I'm the founder of Kimzen Creative. Going into, brief over who we are, we are multi-hyphenate artists who are the synapse between art, business, education and community. Why do we do what we do? Do you create greater communities of belonging? How do we do it? We consult, we produce, we lead, we create culturally relevant arts programming and processes. What we do, we do arts education, we do arts and equity consulting, we do creative producing and we do some corporate team building, a little virtual trust fall, never heard no about it, you know what I'm saying? Moving on here is to really where we are. And I just like to take a moment here to read our kind of land acknowledgement. I am zooming in from Petaluma, California. Kimzen Creative is located on the unceded land of the Coast New York people. We acknowledge the impacts of colonization, displacement and genocide that indigenous people have experienced and continue to experience to this day. Our work as a continuation of artistic and cultural experiences that have always been a tradition on the lands in which our company operates. May our collective awareness, education and advocacy honor the original and future stewards, caretakers and arts and culture bears of this land. My friends, we are here today with incredible local arts and culture workers to continue the momentum of our past professional development where we expanded the definitions of equity, diversity, inclusion and access. And today we get to center our arts and culture workers, our tools within our community that are serving the wider collective of the city of Santa Rosa. So we have incredible collaborators, generous friends that are here today to engage with us in conversation about the state of the artist. But before we dive in there, I will pass it off to my lovely coworker and best friend and friend Nemesis, Kevin Becerra. Hello, good afternoon. What an introduction. My name is Kevin Becerra. I use him pronouns. I am calling in from Massachusetts, Wampanoag land in what is now Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. I am a producer and a dramaturg, a small place enthusiast because I'm overwhelmed by a full meal. And I am a facilitator and I have been working in the theater in the culture sector for about 12 years. I am so thrilled, as Nico said, to hear from artists today, thinking about the work that the Arts and Public Places Committee does and the privilege it is for arts to be the resource for arts to be the mechanism in which you serve the larger Santa Rosa community, the people that are there. There are many ways that we work to make the cities we live in and work in and play in better. And supporting an arts and culture scene that supports civic engagement, dialogue, representation, joy, all the things that we know art does. It's such a delight and it's important for us to check in with the artist whose work we activate to achieve those things. So I'm excited to dive in. I just wanted to think a little bit about some of the things that we went over with Lindsay last time we met, thinking about those expanded definitions, thinking about how they apply to the arts and thinking about how as we're listening today to kind of give away where we're going, as we're listening today, we're building a muscle of hearing experiences from stakeholders that we are serving from people that we are invested in and thinking about, okay, what does this look like as manifested in strategies to how we approach our work? What does this look like in communication approaches? What does this look like in mapping resources? So we'll talk about this a little at the end in the next steps, but we have pretty exciting plans over the next couple of months as we continue in these professional developments and continue into some mentoring. But today, let's just hear from some incredible artists. Fabulous, thank you, Kev. And friends, I peaked in and out, but really haven't formally introduced myself as being kind of the, I call myself the bootleg Mario Lopez as the emcee of Kims and Creative, passing it off to these incredible other collaborators that we have, like Lindsay last time, Kevin and the other arts and cultural workers we're bringing in today. My name is Nico Kimson. I'm an artist, producer, Dan Levy impersonator. I am for 10 years spent, 10 years in New York City as a musical theater performer, really centering around uplifting marginalized voices. I have been a director of education and community engagement at a theater in Sonoma where we created a culture-relevant arts programming that served over 11,000 annually. As an arts and culture consultant now, I work with clients such as Creative Sonoma, City of Santa Rosa, various arts and culture groups in order to produce culture-relevant content and processes. And that's my joy and what we get to do today in centering artists. Now, how will that be done? Through our community aspirations, and I really wanna hit on these again as we dive into the conversations, we really wanna embrace non-finality here that we are not leading here expecting to have specific outcomes, needing measurable outcomes impact that we're okay with being in process. Next one, everyone has gaps, everyone has expertise. And so we wanna make room for that here. Speak from the eyes, speaking from personal experience. And then wait, why am I talking? Why aren't I talking? And I think further investigating that for ourselves as we're offering up thoughts. And then move into the stretch zone. These are gonna be moments as we're hearing and listening to arts and culture workers' dreams about stretching ourselves, right? Into an educational, into a learning mode. And then if you have any questions, feel free to slide into my DM, slide into Kevin at NICE. We'd like to answer those questions for you as we go along here. I'm gonna pass it over to Kevin here to build upon our previous learnings. Yeah, I was so excited to build upon these previous learnings that it's pretty much what I've mentioned as part of my introduction, but good to have it here in writing so that we can see we're building on these terms, target universalism, diversity, equity, inclusion, access, belonging, and thinking about them in the frame of how they're applying directly to artists in the community. And then we are going to apply these definitions moving forward, thinking about how we kind of have real transformation in the cultural ecosystem of Santa Rosa. We're gonna hear, we're gonna listen, we're gonna think, and we're gonna act, and that's how it's gonna go today and moving forward. Fabulous. Friends, without further ado, I have the incredible honor of introducing our local arts and culture workers. I reached out to the community at large and said, I am looking for arts and cultural workers that live, work, play within the city of Santa Rosa. And now is my time to kind of welcome those folks. So what I'd love to do is I would love to welcome Danny, Farah, Kayata. I invite you to turn on your screens if you feel able to. But here I'd like to start with your name. Kayata, what's up, friends? Welcome, welcome, friends. I'd love to start with your name, your pronouns, your artistic discipline, and then your connection to Santa Rosa, whether you live, work, play, and what that kind of looks like for you. I'm gonna drop that into the chat here just so you have it to go off of, but why don't I be not fair? And since I see Kayata smiling face and that mic is off, if you wanna start us off, Kayata. Cool, greetings, everyone. My name is Kayata Patton. I'm actually a former residence of Sonoma County, but I still have a lot of roots planted in the community and also tied to a lot of social justice and activism in that area. It's very dear to my heart. My area of expertise would be education and performing arts, specifically spoken words and hip hop. And I had the pleasure of being part of a focus group this summer with Nico and Danny, and it was a fabulous experience and it's a pleasure to be here. Yes, all right, I'll pass it up to Danny. Hi, y'all, I am Danny Gorman, He-Him pronouns. I am a theater director by trade. I am the artistic director of THTR productions. We are a new production company here in Sonoma County. I live in Santa Rosa, very newly live in Santa Rosa, not soon newly, I'm here about a year, moved from New York. My husband and I came out here October of last year to start this company. And we are currently working towards building our production company with a plan of producing live theater productions with a focus in education and sort of seeing where the intersection of live theater, live performance and nightlife mix. And so that is what I bring here to Santa Rosa. Yes, not the same bias as theater, but amen Danny, very happy you're here. I'll pass it up to Farah now. Hi everyone, my name is Farah McAdam, pronouns are she, her, hers. I've been in the North Bay for about the last 10 years but recently moved to Sonoma in the last year, which has really made a difference in how I've been able to be involved with Santa Rosa, the community specifically. I'm in the dance realm, dancer, performer, director, educator. I'm adjunct faculty here at Sonoma State, which I'm calling in from, living mostly in the educational space here, doing some teaching artists collaborations with Luther Burbank Arts, as well as a little further in the Bay and some residencies coming up as well, which has been really exciting. I've just had the last year to like actually get to know the Santa Rosa Arts community through dance has been, that's been a few years longer, but the arts in general, which has been really amazing and a big thanks to Nico. Thank you. My friends at APBC, we are joined by these incredible artists. I can't even tell you how hard they are to pin down because they are so busy. So we are truly honored today to have them with us. We're gonna hop into this conversation now into a fishbowl and I kind of run down of like how it's gonna work. We are here to center these artists who work, live, play within the city of Santa Rosa. And I want us to, as the APBCs, actively listen to the hopes and dreams and how do we do that in a really authentic way? Because what we'll be going after is how we start to operationalize as we center their hopes and dreams into the committee's operations. First, what we're gonna do and how it's gonna operate my local artists in the Zoom Fishbowl, I will ask you to unmute yourselves. I like this as like a casual keel conversation as if we were in real time with each other. If it's loud and there's kids screaming behind you, then you can feel free to mute yourself and then join as you'd like. For our APBC members at the beginning, I will ask you to keep yourselves muted and simply listen. You can take notes, but please do not ask questions verbally or via the chat. We will have a time to answer those questions, but right now we're going to actively listen to our local artists here. And then I will ask our local artists a series of questions about their artistic selves and their work. I had this phrase, collaboration happens at the speed of trust. And I know that we've just hit this Zoom room altogether. And so I'm asking incredible vulnerable ragesness, vulnerability and courageousness where it meets our arts and culture workers. So I ask you and invite you into that and know that we're designing a space here from the committee to welcome you in your fullest self so that we can be a better service to you and our community at large. Then once we've answered those questions from the inner fishbowl, we're going to turn it over and reverse fishbowl to hear observations, thoughts, what you observed from the APPC and then our artists will listen. And then we'll kind of flip flop one more time so that the artists can say, yep, I think they got it right. I think there's observations. Here's what I would tweak about that. And then we'll have a chance to debrief all together. Does that sound good for everybody? Amazing, let's hop into it. Thursday at 12 to listen to artists. Let's do it, my dream. Okay, my local artists, my friends, Danny, Farrah and Kayata. This is called the state of the artists, right? So my question is, how are we? Where are we? What is your current experience as a practicing artist living, working, playing in Santa Rosa? It's a tough question at first, but I hit it hard. No, say it again, Nico. Yeah, where are you? How are you? What is your current experience as a practicing artist in the city of Santa Rosa? Yo, I'm gonna speak to it because I have some experience that's fresh in my brain. How am I? I'm great. I would say there's a tell of two cities when it comes to Sonoma County. There's mountains, there's redwoods and water and all of those things that are really great for self-care. And then on the other hand, when you're an artist, it's definitely, it's a contrast. You're out there working. I'll give you an example, for example. Let's say you go to a venue. Can I give an example? Can I give an example right now? I'm just gonna say a random venue. We booked a show, there's three of us and the guy comes and says, this is gonna be the split for you, 60, 40. All right, 60, 40, we get 60, they get 40. They also get whatever comes from the bar. And so when you do the math, you're talking about an artist that's really just trying to pour into the community but also reap some benefits from that. It's a little lopsided because if you have 12 artists that are gonna be on stage, 13 artists, and they take 40% and you have to pack the place. That's the other thing. You have to literally pack that venue in order to recoup what you need to use to pay the rest of the people that are on stage with you. Not to mention, promotions, posters, advertisements on Facebook, Instagram, and things of that nature. So for me, I think there has to be a change in that culture. There has to be a change in that dynamic or venues asking one artist to play for three hours for $300, that's not okay. Our art is very valuable but also our time is more valuable. And that has to meet somewhere in the middle and it has to be beneficial for both parties. My friend came up with a slogan that says, keep the wine, give us the money. Because sometimes they'll give you a little bit of money and be like, yo, take a few bottles of wine with you on the way out. No, we don't want the wine. We want the compensation. Yeah, keep the wine, give us the money is my new tattoo. I'm making shirts. It's gonna take eight ppc just came out with the beer. Dude, I told her, I told her, yo, let's just put that on a, it's a metaphor. You know what I mean? Let's just put that on a T-shirt. So I love Santa Rosa though. I'm not gonna sit here and tell them under the bus. I love Sonoma. There's an amazing artist community. But when we're talking about those communities that don't have a lot of spaces to feel safe and perform but also, you know, get a return on what it is they're giving, it could be exhausting. Yeah. Come on, Kay, out of starting this off with that home of rancousness. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. So it's a real story. It's a true story. That's why it feels good. Yeah. Danny Farah, how about you? Where are you? How are you? What's it like? Yeah, go. Go ahead, Danny. I feel like where I am currently in my journey is that I'm still very much getting used to calling myself an artist even though I've been dancing all my life. And that is because as soon as I finish like my undergraduate time, my time as a student, although I like to say I'm a professional student like for life, I in terms of like dance artistry stability, I'll say specifically, the best, the most stable gigs, especially up here was teaching. So I graduated while I was in undergrad, started teaching at studios, graduated like the easiest dance related things to find that provided some sort of stable income was teaching. And I kind of just threw myself into it because like, oh, well, I want to dance for my life. This is what I want. And I'm going to get the work wherever I can. So the past like eight years, I just focused on making dance my career. And that happened to be through education and I love it. And I think I'm pretty, pretty good at it. And only now have I felt like I've started to get the resources and opportunities where I am also valued, whether that's financially or in some exchange to figure out what I want to say as an artist. And that's like very, very fresh. And so when I say artist, I say it and like my throat still kind of clenches up a little bit because I am like really leaning into saying that as such and recognizing that a lot of that has been because the, yeah, like you go where the resources go if there's money in teaching and you need money and you want your artistry to be your life, like you go where it is. And then, yeah. So I feel like even also with moving to Santa Rosa this last year has really been me starting to figure out who I get to be or want to be as a dance artist and not just as a educator. And that's where I'm coming in today. Thank you. Thank you, friends. More vulnerable, let's go. Thank you. Danny, hop in if you'd like. Hey, yeah, no, I hearing both of your stories is it feels very, very personal to me as well. I come here from my entire life in New York, my family in New York, I got my undergrad and my master's degree in New York. I worked professionally in New York for my whole adult career. And my husband and I made the move out here last year with the dream of we wanted to start our company. It was always something that was in our hearts and in our minds. And we kind of took the pandemic to really reevaluate where we were as artists, what that meant for us when the world shuts down, how do you pivot your art? What is it that's really important to you and not just art wise, but personally? And so we decided, let's take a plunge that is as far of a plunge as you can. And we moved clear across the country knowing one person out here to do that and it's exciting and exhilarating and terrifying every day is a little, is a fresh sense of, oh boy, I don't know what's gonna happen. And that's great. And I think that there's also, it's a new world for me also to kind of be in the self-producing, self-producing my own work, marketing my own work, having to do the legwork. I get the hustle. The hustle is I am born on that hustle and I love it, but it's a really different world experiencing it where it is. We're a three-man band with our friend Dan Gutierrez who is our executive director of events. And it's a push at all times. And something else that was always really important to us when we came out here was we didn't wanna be just the guys who came from New York and were like, we are gonna start something new and bring something. That's not who we are. So it was really important to us to become members of the community to get to know our community. And so I feel like a lot of this year has not just been getting used to the life adjustment of living somewhere so far away, but it's also becoming active members of our community going to our local shows, our local restaurants, or like frequenting the establishments that we want to be partnering with. So there's a lot of sort of recon that we go along and that's where I am. We have an event on Saturday. So my brain is like on that as well. So it's, I guess that exciting, exhilarating, it's scary. Yes, Danny. And I'm just gonna note too that when you said do it all in that entrepreneurship, there was like a head nod moment from like, can y'all bear up myself? Everyone like. I mean, it's no joke. We gotta, you know, it's because who else is going to? And like work begets work. And you know, we all wanna put out the best versions of ourselves and we all wanna like put. And so I was kind of the kid in school who did the group project on my own and I have learned to like, love the collaboration, but doesn't change the fact that like, we've got a giant wizard head to make for a Wizard of Oz event. We're gonna be pulling it all nighter. You know, it's that's what we gotta do. Yeah. Yeah. I like what the, is it Vera, am I saying your name right? Yeah. Is it Vera? Like you were saying that your job as an educator ended up being like a source, like a source of income to actually fund the thing that you're doing. And so I could really relate to that because I'm also in education. And so a lot of times that was the biggest check I ever got. Like, I'm gonna keep it real. Like being a teacher, imagine if you could get that same like vibe and that same feeling from the art that you're producing every day, that thing that you're passionate about, like that's golden right there. And I think that that's really what the goal is, is like, how can we change this narrative? Like I shouldn't be taking the money out of here to put into this thing over here. They should just be colliding in the middle somewhere where they're just like funneling it to bigger. So that resonated with me. And I've been able to actually create some cool art but it's not because I got money from here, money from there. I'm just taking the money from this job that I'm doing which both of them are high demand, right? I'm in a classroom with 12 year olds every day, you know? Middle school. Both of those things are heavy lift being an artist, being a teacher. And I just think if there was some resources there or if there's the dynamic in the community was a little different, it would be beneficial for both parties. And a lot of times I like to check myself and be like, okay, we just came out of a two year pandemic, right? So maybe everyone is suffering. So I have to remind myself about that as well. And I mean, you say like taking the money from teaching and being able to put it into art if there is enough because the money we're teaching is like to get by let alone investing, saving your money to self-produce, to pay your dancers, to pay for the space, to pay for the rehearsal space, to pay for the time, to pay for the other things. Say that. Guest. That's the other thing you do when it's the what? Packing out the space, like you said, like, oh, we have to make sure that there are 150 people and that this place is at capacity right now so that we can maybe scrape away with a little bit of money that is not even gonna go to reimburse. And who's gonna pay to help us go to those events, to network so we can build that community for people to come to pack that house? Right. Yes. And it's exhausting. Like, we had anxiety. We were like, we're like, dude, are we in this place? Are we gonna be able to pay everybody? Like, that's my biggest thing. Like, I wanna be able to pay everybody at the end of the day when that event is over. And sometimes I walk away with nothing because I need to make sure all of those other people are getting paid. Their time is important, all right? It's kind of like what you were saying, Danny, like we gotta rehearse. Actually, Farrell was saying that we have to rehearse. So we have to drive to rehearsal. That's time. That's gas. And we gotta do it twice, three times before the show, you know, flyers. Just time, labor. What I think is really interesting, and I'll just note in this conversation here, right? It says, it's the question, right? How are you, where are you? And everybody's like, I'm marketing, I'm out here building, where's the vase costumes? But what we don't talk about is the art making. Yeah. Who has the time? I'm out here packing houses for 150. But it's just interesting in this conversation, just needling it for us is that, you know, what we're talking about is the artistic practice, but everything else that has to happen in order for you to do your thing. The final product. The final product. So which leads me into this next question that I'll kind of drop in here because Kayata already had us going off of this, this freedom dream of what it could be was really about where we are and then where we want to go, right? And I'll pose this question and this is like dropping it in for us here and just go with me. But if I were to say right here right now, what is your wildest artistic dream? Wildest. So where do you want to go? We've just talked about the elements of where we currently are. I'm booking out 150 seats. I got to do marketing for myself. I'm taking no money for myself. I'm teaching, I'm hustling, I'm grabbing here to put these two cents here into this music video that I'll be doing. So that's where we are. But if we were to really dream about where are we going? What is your wildest artistic creative dream? What does that look like? I mean, because I feel like I'm kind of in that like wildest creative dream where I picked up my life and moved it across the country with nothing. My wildest creative dream, and I can speak for my business partners as well, but our dream is to have our own space. We want to have a space where we are able to embrace what's wonderful about this area, wine tasting. So we partner with vineyards around here. So you can do a wine tasting and then you watch our production of The Wedding Singer and then you stick around afterwards for an 80s prom and we're able to teach classes on Saturdays and Sundays, like a hub, a cultural hub where we can produce the art that's important to us, produce the art that the community wants to see and be able to raise a family and have a life out here. It's in there. It's all sort of like stack on top of each other. It's like the artistic dream feeds the personal dream, feeds all of the above. And that's like what our forward brain is for. It kind of like helps that the day is where it's like we're scraping to get by to say, but what if one day like we can keep going this way? Yes, yes. And I love Danny what you just said about involving like it's not just a creative dream. The creative dream is also my full life dream. Yeah. To have a family, right? To be complex, to be multifaceted. Yeah, love that. I also like did like where, what's that show? I don't watch it, but there's the show that like it can turn off like their work selves, so like their work self succession, or not succession, something along those lines. I don't know. You know what I'm talking about. Tara knows, Tara knows. It's severance. It's severance, that's what it is. Where you like sever the work life and the personal life. Like that's, I feel like it's so much of our being artists and being like artists who have to self promote and do what we're doing now is like, it is our work life. It is our personal life. It is all of the above. And but like there has to be a balance of where that is artistically fulfilling as well as, you know, personally fulfilling. Yes. Thank you, Sarah, Kiana, what you got? What's your wildness stream? Where are you going? That's a loaded question, dude. Yeah, I was like, I don't know where to start. 1230 on a Thursday. I should have sent a coffee gift card your way. Let me tell you. Oh my gosh. You wanna go here? Sure, I'll start with the thought I have and maybe it'll take me somewhere. I think the place where my brain is going is like, I just, because I'm very multi-hyphenated and I love living in the multi-hyphenated space. Like I don't wanna just do one thing. I love performing. I love directing. I love teaching. I love maybe getting opportunities to produce and like bring community, like be the curator of events. That's directing, right? Producing. Yeah. All the things. And I think like the wildest dream is just to have, not just, is to have the resources, meaning like the time and the rest and the freedom to pick one or two and really get to be fully invested in that one or two projects at the time while not working 16 hours a day and while having that life balance and not having, and let me say being able to delegate and practice it. Just like the wildest dream is to have the resources to choose and to rest in between the choosing that covers it for me. That's dope. Here. To rest in between the choosing is the other tattoo I'm getting. Okay. The other shirt I'm making. Thank you. Yes. Beautiful. Absolutely. I wrote down time, rest and freedom. That's what Farrah said. I think my wildest dream is like an onion. Like it's many layers to what my wildest dream is. You know, for our queer communities, for our black communities in Sonoma County, for our LGBTQI communities, I would like for there to be a space and a time for those marginalized communities to get everything they deserve, be it money, be it a safe place to actually create their art. And that thing is something that is a staple. I would like that. I would like to be able, like what you said Farrah to freely do what it is I love, but also at the same time, continue to point to my community, through academics, through social justice, and through the music that we're creating. I can't even answer this question though. It's like my wildest dream is to be able to do what I love and not feel tired and not feel pulled in a hundred different directions and be able to pay rent in California and be able to travel and eat really good food and hang out with my friends and not grade a hundred papers in a week's time again. I hate great papers. This is the whole idea. Never to have to grade another essay. That's chaotic, Ted talk, that's right. I'll grade papers for you, send them my way. Yes, dude. And to be able to own a house in California, like I can't, I feel like I'm not gonna be able to do that on my salary and what it is I'm doing. That's my wildest dreams because Cali is a go place to live. Like it's just expensive as hell. Right, right. Yeah. Amazing, amazing. That question of where are you going? What's your wildest dream, right? And what we keep hearing is these multifaceted human beings that it's not one thing, right? Then I'm gonna kind of slide us in here Farah, you were kind of already hinting at which is the next question, right? Is what do you need to get there? What tools, resources, education, training, funding, health and healing, what do we, what do you need to get there? I think everybody, the elephant in the room is money. Like nobody wants to be driven by money, but at the end of the day, that's truly what you need for a lot of these wildest dreams to actually come to life and reality. Time and space for self-care and healthcare, all right? Why supremacy being abolished? Because I feel like part of the reasons we don't have spaces to create is definitely rooted in that. I had a situation where I performed in Petaluma this summer and a lady was like, I was afraid to book you. And I was like, why? Because it's hip-hop, that's racist. So we need spaces who come in without their biases as well, and we need to come together as a community. And I'm gonna stop talking and let the other two people give their feedback. Thank you, thank you, Kayata, yes. What do we need friends? What tools, what training, what health resources, community resources, connections? Well, Kayata, I hear the like, with a lot of opportunities that you have to choose if you wanna like sacrifice or compromise your beliefs and morals or something which affects your art anyway or not do it. And I don't know what the answer is in terms of like the specific question, but like a lot of the, I've said no to a lot of opportunities because it's not that the opportunity wasn't there, it's that it didn't, either the opportunity wasn't valuing what was happening fully or the people in the community did not or are not valuing the same things that I'm looking for in my spaces. And I'm still like struggling with what the answer to that is, if that's education, if that's more dialogue, if that's maybe just like bigger, bigger lakes and pools to swim in, because I think Santa Rosa is big, but also small. And especially in the dance world here, it's like, it's pretty small and there's not a lot of wiggle room for people to try new things or be in spaces with different people. Variety, more option, yeah, maybe more options. I'm not sure what the answer is, like, cause I've been sitting on it, but I hear you on the like, sometimes there's opportunity, but it's at a cost. That's not worth it anymore. Yeah. Yeah, there's no reason to compromise who you truly are. Like every day we walk into a room, we bring our identity with us and everything that created that thing. And if, I mean, as a black woman, right? As a queer black woman, I'm already looked at like a weapon in regards to just my skin, you know, and it's gonna take people to actually receive me as I am and be anywhere I am to actually reap the benefits of the art that I'm bringing to the table. So that part. Kayata, and what I hear you and Farrah saying too, what I think is really interesting, right? I ask you, what do you need to get there? And what I love is that it moves the onus from, you're like, I'm doing it, I'm bringing it. I'm working as hard as I can to use the tools and resources, but it's the people receiving me. It's these venues, it's the environments, it's the culture that needs to see me in my fullness and value my worth. Yeah, that part, that's real. I love that. How about you, Danny? What do you need? Well, I mean, I think that just in a vague term, this conversation with community members, with people who are in a very similar field and in a very similar boat, but on their own, being able to engage with people who have different experiences, who have different means for access, this is more of this, because I think that that art, everyone says always like art can be a very isolating, lonely thing regardless of when you're surrounded by people at all times, like your art and your artistry is so ingrained in who you are and what you do. So it does get like you feel like you're in a box sometimes. No one understands. So to be able to share experiences, share great things, share terrible things, to be able to engage in community is I think like, for me personally, that it's something that is, that I've always been in search of and could always use more of, because I think that it hits all of those things, it hits tools and education and mental health, you know, like, because it just opens, it opens the pool to, you don't know. Yeah, yes, yes. Amen, community. Okay, my friends, we just hit it real hard and dirty real quick with this vulnerable ragesness. Y'all hopped in and I'm so incredibly grateful and I know I speak on behalf of the committee of you showing up in your full yourselves with these incredible answers, thoughts that are in progress and developing, right? What I'm going to do now, is we're gonna take a deep breath as a collective, taking that beautiful vulnerable ragesness energy from these artists and let it out. And now what I'd love to do is transition us and do the reverse fishbowl. So my artists, if I could have you on mute, my artists, if we can hold any questions, any comments, anything that we have, we'll get you another chance here. But now I'd like to open it up to the committee and I'd encourage you to take yourself off of mute, join us into the conversation. We just heard these gradable where we are, where we're going, what tools, resources we might need to get there from our arts and cultural workers here for a slice of it. I just kind of wanna check in with you is, how are you feeling? How are these emotions manifesting for you? Yeah, I remember point this. Yeah, everything that Kayaida, did I say that right? I think I did. What she had to say, especially at the Petaluma Music Fest is what she said, it did make me angry, but unfortunately I'm not surprised. I did see her at the Red World Music Festival. That's the first time I've heard of her and I was hooked. I'm a complete fan and I wanted to go see her again. I think she was playing at the Hot Monk but I was unable to in September. When she was performing there, my feelings towards her being there were just, I was in awe, I was just, it gave me, I was content. I was also relieved. We needed her there. She, you know, the audience, Santa Rosa, we needed her, we wanted her. Everything that she had to give that day was just so comforting, her music and what she had to say and even the content of her music. And I'm so glad, I was surprised to see her on here and I was just like, it really, I'm like, yes, I'm so glad that she had her and she's here and she's expressing her needs and she needs that value because she is, for many, valued. But like she said, there is definitely, there's the money thing, there's a lot that goes along to it. So, you know, I just wanna know that I'm listening and this is something that we really need to take into account and definitely when we move forward is take all of this and take this information and use it to what decisions that we make in the future. Yeah, yeah, awesome. Thank you, thank you. Who else? Our committee, how are you feeling? What did you hear? What themes came up? What observations did you know this? Member Nathanson. Hi, my name is Jeff and nice to meet. Those of you I haven't met before and it's really great for me to hear artists speaking directly and honestly. I know a lot of artists, but I'm actually the director of the Museum of Sonoma County. So we're one of the larger cultural institutions in the area and we employ quite a few artists as teaching artists and we also exhibit artists in our galleries. So one of the things we've been trying to do is compensate artists having trouble with my earbuds today. I don't know what's going on. Anyway, so our current exhibition in our contemporary gallery is Collective Rising. The insistence of black Bay Area artists and we paid to co-curators who one of whom is from Oakland. The other one is moved from Berkeley to Philadelphia recently, but black women who are really plugged in to the community and we applied for grant funds. We made sure that we could pay each artist an honorarium. It was a stretch for our museum. We're a smaller museum, but we really believe that that's important. And I think this is something I'm hearing through the museum world and I'm sure it's true in performing arts organizations as well. A lot has been, a lot of the burden for making content available to the public has been put on the artists on the performers. And I think it's really a, the whole system has actually been set up to primarily support those artists and performers who are at the top of the field and to exploit everybody else. And so we're very aware of this trying to in our own small way do a better job as an institution. And I get a lot of feedback. It's like sometimes we fall short but we have budget concerns. And so it's a push and pull but we have a set of core values. We really, we value diversity and inclusion and we try to do everything we can to move our organization in a progressive direction and to be responsive to the community at large and in particular the creative community. Yeah, thanks. And I'll kind of bring it back to our other committee members here tailoring it to being responsive to our community and listening to these arts and cultural workers that are currently within our Zoom room. What came up within these conversations appearing in your dreams for you? Last year, Jones, yeah. The financial piece didn't surprise me because I think that's, you know, every artist that I know struggles. Sorry, I have a call trying to perfect their craft and they have to have another paying job of some kind to support their art. And I know it doesn't always balance. It doesn't balance out. Not it doesn't always. It doesn't balance out. The thing that really struck me was where do you wanna go? Cause I was thinking everybody would have a stock answer. I mean, you would know exactly what you wanted to do and where you wanted to be in 10, 15 years. You know, that wasn't how you phrased it but that's what I was thinking. Cause I was thinking in my professional life I always thought I knew I wanted to do this and then I want to do this and then I want to do this. So I was a little bit surprised by that, that the responses. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Check you for a minute. Hi, I wanna thank you guys so much for organizing this today and for offering a space for honest and vulnerable communication. I very much value this. And I think some takeaways that I got was understanding a bit more about this perspective. And we've all made choices about where we need to be to elevate ourselves in our craft. And this is an ongoing conversation and I would love to hear more from about this and how to make this more of a conversation not just like a one-sided battle of that's the way things are. And I want this to be collaborative that has been a big driving force for me to be part of this committee. And I'm such an advocate for more creative spaces. And so I'm so glad that that got brought up as a where do we want to go? I want to see more creative spaces and more open opportunities for persons of color and persons identifying with underrepresented groups historically and how do we change this narrative? I see so much opportunity but really glad that it was stated that more communication and more collaborations are necessary. And I think that there's a big pendulum shift that's kind of in the works as we see different projects opportunities and opportunity for grant funding. And I think that those are great ways to make more spaces. And how we can give opportunity for and my experience is that we I would like to see more varied types of art expressions. And I'm so glad that we don't have one type of artist but we have multiple represented here today. So thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Jessica, how about you? Any thoughts, observations, themes that popped up for you? Yeah. Listening to these artists, I felt totally utterly heartbroken because it's just like such an uphill battle. Even though we're making progress in our communities and stuff, it's so slow going and it just feels unfair to the artists. And each time you were asking questions about their hopes and stuff and where they wanna go, they're talking about how to uplift their entire communities. And it's just like those, these are the people I would just wish were in charge. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Well, Tara, do you have some thoughts? You'd like to, yeah. Well, thank you all for being a part of this today and especially the artists who made the time out of your very busy, busy days. I mean, I think that I identify as an artist and as an arts administrator, which sometimes feel like I'm fighting myself. But I don't know, I feel like I hold both energies at the same time and hope that I express that through the work that I do for the city of Santa Rosa because it's very, very important to me to, within the system that I am working in, which is a challenge, uplift the needs and to fulfill those wildest dreams of the artists as best that I can. But it's not easy. And I think that it's a clear reflection of the world we live in, the systems that we operate under the government structure, the funding structure, the racism, the inequities. There's so many institutionalized structures that fight against the ability to fulfill an artist's dream and to allow an artist to work and do the work that they want to do. So I feel that every day that's a part of my daily work is to hold both of those realities at the same time, but to try to focus on what we can do within our programs and within our abilities to meet those needs and to do that uplifting. But I always want to learn more on what's needed and what would be most helpful. So hearing directly from artists is really important to me. We've done it in a variety of ways over the years, most recently when we did our strategic plan, but I would love there to be a better and ongoing way of inviting artists' voices into our process so that we can be creating programs and using the small amount of funds we have within the system that we're operating and to meet the needs that are most important. Yeah, thanks, Mark. And I think what you said is really beautifully right, is that I think we want to get out of this practice of extracting information from arts and cultural workers and going about our day. It's like, how do we move from these transactional relationships to these relationships that are ongoing, right? That are overflowing from one to the other constantly as opposed to let me extract, create a report and then create strategic funding goals for the next three years, right? It's how do we continue to be in relationship and that they are embedded with the committee and the committee is embedded with the community and how do we create this ecosystem that sees each other and can move together to better serve? What I'd love to do now is reverse, reverse fishbowl and I'm going to invite our local artists to take themselves off of mute, our community members to put themselves on mute and to just for kind of a final wrap up of what did, as the committee members were reflecting on their observations from the conversations what they took away in short forms that they shared. So anything that you said that you would think like, oh, I'd like to adjust this or I'd like to offer this up or I'd like to really hit home this that they walk away with. Anything that struck you my little bit over again. Is it on us or the? It's you, it's you my friend, local artist. Okay, hold on, okay, hold on. I wrote down my heck of staff, hold on. How about you Farrah, any thoughts? Anything that came up for you, honestly? Yeah, okay, I was putting the thoughts together. I think I just, now I have, I'm very curious about the organizations that can offer these funding opportunities or grants or honorariums or all those things. I'm realizing that I know less about how that process is, cause it's a whole nother process and system of like approving the money and who like, you know, dispersing and all those things. And on the artist side we apply for them, but I realize I don't know much about how that gets to happen in the first place for them to offer. And I'm curious to know more. Yeah, amen, right? There's always artists that are like, come on, city, why does it take you so long to give me my money? And then the city's here like, we have to do paperwork for nine months in order to even get any money, right? And so the transparency between the two and maybe further communication of how that actually works so that we can be in relationship with understanding. Absolutely, love that. What else, Danny, what else can? On that topic, I mean, to demystifying that process is enormous, you know, would be an enormous help because I mean, even as we're filing nonprofits, like there's so much, there's so much stuff to know, there's so much to, and then it's kind of like, goes silent for a while and then it's like, oh my God, did I write my name wrong? And is it not? You know, it's a daunting process to even consider and then it's an even more daunting process when you're kind of doing it by yourself and it's even more daunting process when you're trying to do it by yourself and you're also, like we've been talking about doing all of the work of every other thing. So it's having members of the community, having members of whoever is available to sort of help artists through that, I think would be an enormous help. And then just something else I wanna say, like there's enormous joy that I have with everything that I do and everything that we do, I don't think that we would do this, we wouldn't slog through it if there wasn't that enormous joy and it is so worthwhile, it makes taking the risks, it makes it worthwhile. So there are a lot of ways in which, you know, we as artists need support and we'll continue to need support and by finding that support is a way for like our joy to not just be like an internal joy that's expressed through what we create but it's an actual personal joy that like we can live and breathe happily and satisfied and fulfilled and bring to the community, bring to the people who are trying to bring our art to something to take away with them. So that was just sort of my wrap up. Yes, come on Joy, come on Vanny, yes, love that thing. Joy is a revolutionary act, just so y'all know. Yeah. I wrote down, I wrote, I wrote down some stuff. So shout out to, is it member pointage? Well, what's your name? I don't know. Well, whatever. It's Lisa. Okay, okay. Thank you. I almost started crying. Thank you for giving me my flowers. That specific event, I needed an ally. Okay, so I think we need that as well. It reminded me that I had to have somebody in the room, the room where everybody was making decisions to say, no, we want this young lady on the bill. All right, I had somebody literally fighting to get me on the bill. There was another person saying, nah, we don't want that here. So I'm glad you pointed that out. So I would say we do need those type of people in the room to speak for us as well. Vice Chair Jones said that a lot of artists go through these things, absolutely. We're gonna continue to do it because I think by what Dan, Danny said, is that there is a joy that comes along with us creating this art. And I think for me, I looked at it like it's an assignment. Once I decided it was an assignment, I stopped tripping off the money, but for me, the money like you were saying, it always goes back to community. How can we build? How can we build it up? I'm gonna be okay, regardless. Last but not least, I do have a vision. I do, I know, I told you it was like an onion. It was like an onion. But if you ask me what I really want, I want a festival in Sonoma County that highlights black folks, specifically black women, and I don't want us to be a side dish. I want us to be the main dish. And what else do I want to say? I wrote down heck of stuff. I got notes everywhere. Okay, that's it for right now. That's it for right now. And yeah, joy, a revolutionary act. Amen. My friends, what a special moment that we have in this hour and a half to be together to really listen to where you are, where you're going in the tools and some of the tools and resources in order to get there. And what I love is that it's about personal professional joy, but not just for ourselves, but for our community, right? And what's been throughout all of this is not only just for self, it's for our community. And I think when we look at how we best serve the city of Santa Rosa for coming from the committee's lens, right? Is that through investments, through the relationship with our arts and culture workers that are helping us get there. And so I just want to say a huge thank you to Farah, Teyada and Danny for your vulnerable righteousness for the work that you were doing from the work that you've done and the work you will continue to do. And to say that I believe this committee is here to organize around how we best help support you getting there. And so if this is your first introduction to the committee, welcome. If it is a continuation, welcome again, but we hope that this is an ever-evolving relationship. And so I encourage you to go to their website, check out what they're doing, and I'll pass off some contact information over here to the committee as well if they have any follow-up questions, if they would like. But what we're gonna do now is I'm gonna just have the committee say goodbye for a while to our local artists for joining us because we're gonna pop off then and have a separate conversation about how we operationalize this. But I'll leave about a minute or two for some thanks and some goodbyes here with our local artists before we move on the conversation with the committee. Thank you so much. Thank you. I'm glad you had a drink. You have a drink. And I hope one day that a drink comes to fruition. Yes, yes. Yes, thank you for your time. And being so vulnerable too. And just letting us know and just dishing it out. And I definitely want to see you as a main digger. I'm at work. I'm at work. Amazing. Great, Professor. Yes, artists, thank you. Feel free to hop off. I will follow up with you. Thank you. And I will send those checks. Love you. Thank you so much. Yes, thank you so much. I'll show you. Amazing, amazing. All right, my committee friends, how we doing? I'm gonna pass this off to Kevin here who is a really beautifully skilled to walk us through a deep beef process and how this might apply to the ins and outs of what this committee has set out to do. So I'll pass it out to Kevin. Thank you. Thank you, Nico, for holding that space. That's a pleasure to see you do so. And thank you all for your listening and for being so attentive as the artists were sharing. Yeah, I wrote so many notes as I'm sure. I saw some pens working as well. I saw wheels turning. And just in the reflection that you all were sharing, something that really stood out to me is what the artists were sharing is indicative of the structural realities we all face. And also these barriers and these questions and these challenges, we can assume that if artists are reflecting society, they're reflecting similar challenges and barriers that the constituents of the city center are feeling as well, right? So that as we seek and search ways to work more equitably, to create a more equitable environment, it'll be easier for the artists. It'll be easier for the people to receive the art, to engage with the art, to create their own art in response. So I just felt that we were getting such a specific microcosm of this larger picture that we are here to serve. So yes, so I'm wondering what, in the specifics of what we are here to do as the APPC, what did you hear of like, oh, we need to, we can activate that this way or we can need to ask questions around how we approach this. I have an idea about, I have a question about how we might, were there any kind of immediate things that came up? I will say not at all for me, like no ways to figure stuff out. I was just so blown away by the like intense and personal experiences that like my brain has not made it to the constructive section yet. Totally. Yeah, thank you very much. Initially something that I was thinking about very similar to Jessica, there was a lot of feelings and emotions and needing to wade through that, but something that I honed in on was the need for advanced advocacy and how to create a space for that. And I think about, I participate in a local YIMBY group called guests in my backyard and how there's really a need to get people to stand up and speak at either planning commission or city council meetings to say that they are in support of a project. And I see that as being a very impactful way for us to stand up for our local arts. And whether we are supporting an arts initiative or an artist team, this is not really pledged yet, but I'm seeing kind of a grassroots advocacy saying, yes, I want this artist in my community. I love that. I love applying YIMBY principles to artist advocacy. That's brilliant. Remember, Nathanson, Jeff. Yeah, I appreciated that comment too. I didn't hear anything I was surprised at, but I think the honesty, the vulnerability was really, I was almost going to say refreshing. I think a lot of the meetings in which I'm involved in training workshops and I just got back from a conference where a lot of information about treatment to artists and museum workers in particular, as I'm sure most of you have heard or read nationwide, there's museum workers who are, they're striking, they're unionizing. They're talking about this unfair rigged system that is, you know, the power structure is built on a system of white supremacy. And there are these wealthy, wealthy museum trustees and then all of these underpaid, overworked, highly educated, highly creative museum staff and artists and preparators and all these people. So I think it was important to hear from these artists and I do worry about how we put this knowledge and for some of these revelations into some kind of change because I think the whole system really needs to be reworked. One thing I know from my experience is that a lot of museums and other cultural institutions underpay even their teaching artists and there are some payment standards that have been set by the California Arts Council and other agencies, our museum follows those guidelines and we do pay teaching artists well. We pay them the recommended wage, but I've talked to museum colleagues at other museums or institutions around the Bay Area that pay half what we pay to teaching artists. They basically pay minimum wage and you just look at that and go, man, that's just not right. People need to get paid for their work. So anyway, I'm glad we're having this discussion. I'm glad to be part of it. Hopefully be somebody who can contribute to solutions. Thank you. Yes, Vice Chair Jones. One of the things, I think it was Farrah, correct? Mentioned about getting grants and how things work and she doesn't know much about our community and it just reinforced to me our need to continually get out there and talk to the community about how it works, how our community works and what's available to them. And I know we have that on our tasks, but it was good to hear that comment to me. Yeah, you know, we talk... Oh, sorry, go ahead. I was just gonna say quickly, there's we talk a lot in my work about accessibility and transparency is great and information is great, but it's a constant effort to make sure that it's accessible so that people know where to find it, how to find it multiple times, how to be constantly reminded where these resources are. Sorry, Tara, you were saying. That's okay. Well, I just wanted to chime in with the thing that I come away with the most, which I am literally now Googling how to do. So I'm ready to make it happen. Is it just really makes me... And I know we've heard this before, this isn't like new. This was a very, very refreshing, very honest, very vulnerable way to hear the information and I really appreciate them sharing that way. And all the other data we've collected has pointed in a similar direction, but through a much less personal collection method, right? So I guess this was really impactful for me because it was so personal and it was so intimate. But anyway, the idea is, and I think now it's even a stronger idea because we're doing it in other ways as a result of COVID and ARPA funds that have come in, and San Francisco did this, I think, in 2021. I would really like us to reconsider perhaps the whole public art program shifting our way of operating and using our funds to essentially provide guaranteed income for artists because what does that do? It allows them to do what we want them to do in the first place. Why put strings attached to the funds for artists? That's not the point of our program. I mean, anyway, I'm just kind of sitting here having a revelation like, oh, okay, I could do this. So I think it really could completely change how we support artists by saying, no, no, no, we want to actually support artists at Santa Rosa. And yes, we'd love to see the work that you create, but here's your money, go live, do all the things you wanna do to make your dream happen, and then tell us how you're doing in a while. Like, to me, that seems pretty cool. Anyway, that's what I'm excited about. Come on, Tara, yes! Yo, full body chill, come on. And we just said, and so Kiata was a part of a focus group we did earlier with the Hewlett Foundation, and it was, that was the thing that came out of it is these arts and cultural workers from Sonoma County said, we're here doing the work. We're here in our brilliance. We so just fund us to continue doing that. Yeah. Right, not for new projects, not for new, yeah. Yeah, I've heard so many stories from across so many arts disciplines of artists. Like, I mean, their stories are, of course, unique and personal, and we're beautiful to hear. And there's so many more that are similar or different, but different challenges. But along the same lines of, I have to have these many jobs to do, barely even do the work that I do. I have to fight to get my work out there. I have to prove over and over. I mean, we can't solve all of the systems, but I think that we can address the funding issue and the support structure that helps enable the work that comes after that. And I think that then there's a way to hopefully avoid a lot of the situations that I hear artists getting into where there's always conflict, there's always a fight to get something or to feel like you're seen and heard or valued. And it's, I mean, like, I know we can't fix all of that, but it just, it feels like at least this is a step in the right direction. Remember, does anything you wanna share before we start to close out? You know, I'm just, I'm still absorbing all the emotions right now too, but you know, I heard everybody and Tara, I'm 100% behind you and I wanna, you know, work or see it on these details. And I'm just, I'm definitely, I'm motivated and I'm motivated to support, help and advocate. Thank you. That's for sure. One thing I wanted to uplift is Danny's comment of wanting more of this, of that, I suppose. And I wanna always remind us of the power of convening and that so many of us in the boards that we're on or the committees we serve on or as parts of the city or in our lives, we actually have resources or we have convening power. If you've got a dining room table on a sofa, you've got convening power. If you've got access to a free Zoom account that doesn't have a 45 minute cutoff, you've got convening power. And so these are tools that we can continually go back to and activate. I cannot tell you, in 12 years of working with artists, every time you get two artists in a room that don't know each other and they get to hear each other, their minds are blown and their arc gets better and their service to community gets more nuanced. And it's never a thing that we think to prioritize and it really doesn't take much. It's literally just, you know, turning the Zoom on, putting the kettle on. So I wanted just to underline that. And I know that, you know, we were talking about, Tara was mentioning how we continued it to hear from folks, how we are in deep relationship, just the magic of getting folks in a room and letting them share their story, I think is a resource we don't wanna undersell. So we are near our time. We have our close up moment in a second. I just wanted to say so, we are working with Tara to get the dates for the final two professional developments on the calendar, very exciting. And then, so that next conversation will be at the end of November. It will be with Daniela, whose last name escapes me, Nico. Dominguez. Thank you, Daniela Dominguez from On the Margins. And so basically Daniela's work is going to take this muscle that we exercised today, listening to a focus group, thinking about how we operationalize, and her work is really rooted in how we listen to a whole community, how we engage the city of Santa Rosa, how we track their dreams and how we operationalize from there. So we've done it in a kind of smaller focus weight today. I know that you all've done it in the forming of your strategic plan. Daniela is like doing it all the time. It's her life's work. And so really, really looking forward that it's a hearing from her and kind of doing that deep dive. This will of course then inform our fourth session, which will be, okay, we've learned all these things. What are we doing? What are the action steps looking like? How are we prioritizing and strategizing? In the meantime, you'll be hearing from Nico and I about setting up the mentorship groups for the DEIA task force and the engagement task force. Our goal is to meet for the first time the week of October 31st in those kind of smaller task force conversations. And then we've got a plan to kind of track where we've been and how that can inform the deeper work that we're gonna do moving forward, specifically in the areas of DEIA and engagement. Nico will be leading the work with DEIA and I'll be working with the engagement task force. So really looking forward to diving in with you all there more specifically. Nico, anything else before we hand it back to Tara and recording secretary Cleary? I think that's all I currently have. I just expressed heart full leaving today and just thankful to be in the Zoom room with you and excited to see how this informs the committee moving forward, yeah. So thank you, Tara over you. Great, thank you so much, Nico and Kevin and thanks committee members for being here today. And yeah, we will be communicating what our next meeting dates are soon and then our next regular scheduled meeting is the 7th of November. And I don't believe we have any members of the public but Christian just before we officially end this item would you please just check with Eileen for public comments, thank you. Good thing, great. Eileen would you let us know if there's any public comments that have come in or any notification for public comments on this item for discussion today? We do not and there are no hands raised at this time. Okay, thanks for that little bit of follow-up and Tara for the housekeeping. Yes, our next regular meeting is Monday, November 7th. At this time, unless there's any other business I will be closing our meeting. Seeing none, thank you all for your work today and this great open and honest and vulnerable communication, thank you, bye. Thank you all.