 I'm a public art manager in the city of San Antonio in the department of arts and culture. I'm not a real loud talker so let me know if I'm getting quite active. We're doing K-PASA-PASA to help plan projects and we're really excited to come out to the neighborhood and be able to talk about our process and to introduce ourselves to you. So, I appreciate you coming out. You can come to this as well as the next two workshops. They're very similar except we'll be talking about a little bit different regions at each meeting. I'm going to start by turning it over and introducing our director of the art department of arts and culture, Debbie Rockes-Sitter, and I will be writing that. Good evening everybody. How are you guys tonight? It's a little hot. I see some people that I'm familiar with so welcome. I'm Debbie Rockes-Sitter. I'm the director of the department of arts and culture for the city of San Antonio. I'm very happy that you guys came out tonight to talk about public art in this area. This is the public art meeting that we're going to talk about for city council districts one and seven. So, we're having a series of community meetings and it is in conjunction with our culture art plan. Our culture art plan has six components. We've already completed several of them including a film strategic plan, a plan for our center of the artist's gallery, which is in downtown Market Square. If you haven't gone, it's free and you should go see the exhibit of Alberto Michalcos' life's work. He's a very famous San Antonio artist. And then the next thing that we did, we worked with our agencies to look at arts funding and some equity issues. And that's ongoing and we'll be going to city council soon. And then right now we're talking about public art and we'll be talking about music to come and actually cultural districts and see what you guys think about that. So tonight we want to focus on public art and we're going to get your opinions about public art. We're going to tell you about the public art that you've already paid for as residents of San Antonio and what's already there. You're going to get to vote on something and Jimmy's going to tell you how to do that with these cards. So you get to do some interactive things and we have all these different interactive stations that you get to go to and learn and tell us what you want, where you want, public art. So I also want to introduce if you don't already know your councilwoman for District 7, Anna Sandoval. And I want to thank her very much for coming out to this event. This is the councilwoman for District 7. We're very close to it right now. We are in District 1. Just a few blocks up the way is District 7 where some of you live. I'm glad to see my neighbors out here. So I'm not exactly an artist, but this is still very meaningful to me. So I like to paint. I prefer oils to acrylics. But I keep those all very personal to myself. Nobody looks at them. Nobody sees them. They're in my own home. But I do appreciate public art. The most recent installment we've had in District 7 is the one that I would like as far as I can remember. But a lot of what we do as a council, we want to improve quality of life for our residents. And what does that mean? In many senses that means infrastructure, right? Sidewalks and making sure the streets work. But that alone doesn't create a neighborhood or a sense of place. There has to be character. That's why it's fundamental to think about how we do that. And art is absolutely one way we can do that. And I'm so glad that my predecessors on the council decided to dedicate part of every bond package to public art. But it wouldn't mean anything if you didn't have a voice in what that art looked like and where it went. If it didn't reflect the community that it was in. So that's what's important about tonight's meeting. You enjoy it and it looks great. I love the interactive setups. Yeah, it sounds like this is just about how you do it. Thank you very much. So we're going to go through some slides and I'm going to try to keep pace so that it doesn't slow things down too much. But I want to add some information and I also want to have some interaction. So I'll go through quickly and explain who is possible. So we're going to ask questions through this presentation more than we're going to do. But who are we? I've been the manager for some time. I've worked on a number of projects. And I have a great, I'm a similar to a really great team. My project managers are here tonight. Becky Johnson here to the site. Sarah Falwell just from behind her. William Serrano Franklin. Sorry. So they implement projects. They work not alone though. They work with arts commissioners. Those were appointed by a process and a lot of information that can be found on our website at Creative San Antonio Doc. I'm going to try not to make this an information heavy presentation, but there's a lot there on our website. And if there's something that you can't find, you can talk to one of us and we will tell you and we can also put more on to our website. So real quickly, there's going to be some segway slides that are kind of interactive. These paddles were lots of purposes. They may be used for cooling you down. But they also are a way to, oh, so if you like, we're going to show some artwork if you like it. Like we were at an auction house. You can hold up and we're going to take pictures and see what do you like, red? The red's happy and the blue's a little bit less happy. And there's also information to put on public art is, we're collecting these at the end of the night. And the stamps at each station cover the different dots. And that encourages you to finish each station so that we can give you a prize for cleaning everything on your way out. Two of the stations are outside. So this is the first of the slides that have public art. These are award-winning public art works that were done through the Americans for the Arts Pan Year Review. And so this one, I'm going to ask if you like or don't like. This is a Janet Echelman temporary installation in Beijing. Hold them up, dot some likes. We kind of get purple sometimes when it's a divided crowd. Another piece, this is All Powered to All People by Hank Boas Thomas. This is a series of pieces done in Philadelphia through Monument Lab in reaction to trying to understand the best way to handle some spaces that were previously installed with likes and dislikes. Books of the Feather, Dixie Friend-Pay, this was done over in the city of Houston. She also has a piece in District 10 at the Senior Center. Likes and dislikes. Okay, thank you. Next question, who makes it happen? That staff that works really hard on all of the projects works with a lot of people. The Arts Commission, 15 members. Those members break down into a smaller committee for a public art committee. These individuals work and meet to try to help us with all of our work. We do an open call annually. We pull in artists from all over at every level of experience. We also pull in vendors and businesses that such as art handlers, collaborative partners. The intent here is to represent the largest field we can so that we can get your qualifications on file. And when the project comes up and we need to work with you, we know who you are and we have a relationship. We pull artists who are in the local emerging category. We do mentorship each year. I know Ryan is with us back here and he was on our mentorship program. And we have an exhibit about our mentorship program. It's an art craft, which is really brilliant and has some interactive things if you brought in kids. I wanted to also say what we do through Debbie's introduction, we've been through a cultural planning process. We've developed a vision statement, mission statement. And the most important one in terms of the vision statement is opening up the landscape to diverse voices and narratives to create engaging public art. And what we want to do is try to think about how we can improve public art. And not just necessarily do more, but get the quantity going. But how do we reach more artists that maybe haven't had opportunities before? How do we elevate artists so that they can be made just like artists have been made in other cities? And we do that using public dollars. And so there's a public connectivity to every project we do through engagement like this too. And they get spread out through a number of ways through bond projects, which we find ways to connect to the street storage and infrastructure projects. And sometimes they're not bond projects. That could also be grants, but it also ties into a lot of improvements that are done to facilities like the airport and the convention center. This is some of what we've done just this year. So all of these projects represent through July completed projects that have been in the works for some time, and we've had a concerted effort to try to have a lot of public artworks dedicated in 2018. And some of them are out in neighborhoods that you might be familiar with. Some are downtown, some are on gateways that intersect between two neighborhoods or two districts. Major facilities like the Carbon Facility, if you haven't gone out there, please see it. Great interactive kiosks there that explains all about the mural. There's a lot of works, such as up at Elmendorf Lake and Yachty Gorda Garden, and not very far from here in District 1 on Blanker Road near Nimitz Elementary. It's some great work we've worked with students. Three more slides of voting. In Utah, this was just an award winner for convergence by Dwayne Bloomberg. Likes and dislikes. In Louisville, a metro project along the rail system upriver, downriver by Mark Regalman. In West Hollywood, it's part of a cultural arts plan. A sidewalk display created with artists and infographics. A dream cloud by Sean Noyce. So where does all this go? We place artwork throughout the city. A lot of that, of course, is going to be centralized around resources like the river and downtown. We know that, but we'd be surprised to see how much public art is really out into the neighborhoods and out into the extending neighborhoods. All of this is on an online map of Get Creative San Antonio, and you can find a lot of details about the project. And we'll see, as you look at the 2017 fund, we have cool dollars in each of these propositions that we are going through this process right now to figure out how to best divvy that out into the best possible projects. So all of our projects do get spent in the connection. That one new really centrally located project is the San Antonio Tee. And this is a project to try to connect all of the city's public art that we're doing with this bond program and also bring it to downtown. And so we have a station here, so I'm not going to go into too much detail because we can talk to you about it throughout the station, but the intent is to make this into a really signature arts anchor location, a public art anchor location right in the center of the city. When things happen, every project will have its own cycle, its own start and stop, but essentially you're seeing us at the beginning of a cycle where we're having these community workshops that are going to lead to a series of projects that will then bring in artist selection and curatorial process. Every project will have designs developed and those who have opportunities for public presentation, a rigorous approval process to make sure we have it missed and we're being allowed to do anything out. And then we begin fabricating a building. See her? This is a mural done in Boston by artist and street artist Dan Lewis. Lights and desolates. This council in Canada has a resonant progression by Royton Mills. Here's an example of maybe a little more about Rustician by Carl Unash in the City of Baltimore video where one lights tractor art. So lastly, why don't we do it? We're working with our committees and with our cultural plans to establish some good criteria for what will make a good project. We want to connect these projects to what's existing in one of those existing resources. We want to advance equity in the way we place our work and the way we hire artists. They should be transformative. They should meet our feasibility requirements. We don't want to start a project that's going to run into problems or that may over-tax our program and impede our delivery. So that's something that will be part of our rigorous project selection process. And then as artworks and artists are selected, we're going to look through curatorial criteria to understand if you really understand what these things mean, and we're not just giving these lip service. So the last of these three slides, I'm happy to say that we had some award-winning, nationally recognized projects Art Crowd through the East Point Public Artist Residencies was funded within the NEA grant. We just won a year review award just the previous few months ago. So I want to get your feedback, likes and dislikes. Before, Buster Simpson's project at Pure South Park, Midden Mounds, also won an award. There are two of these sites on mounds that were former landfills. And this was a really kind of difficult project to get. Naturally, this kind of protected area to allow for public art, but it's amazing if you haven't gone out there and views are incredible. I want the likes and dislikes. I kind of saw a little part of it. Then the last of the year before, we also won an award for Soto Lulet. This was out in the north side, Panther Springs Park. And this artist, John Isherwood, created these out of granite, and they're based on the forms of the seed pods, of the plants that you would find along Panther Springs. Likes and dislikes. So how do we get started? Tonight, that's kind of the process. We're going to be talking about artist selections and how we can get the concepts going in very short order. But first, we want to hear from you. There's a station about knowing the community, mapping arts and culture. In the back, we discuss with you art opportunities in the center of San Antonio T. Outside, you get the art craft and reaction lab experience. So I'm around, and so is all the staff. Just take your questions one on one. We'd rather have conversations with you. So that's all for us. We won't have any wrap up. We have drinks and refreshments in the back. We'll get to the music going and get you all started. If you have any questions, come up to any one of us and we'll take your questions. Thank you. So what we're doing here is part of what we've been expressing is that what we've heard is people want art. They want art in their communities. They want to participate. And so they're participating and providing input on some of the projects that they'd like to see. Some of the things that we're working on through the Department of Arts and Culture, they get to learn more about the entire city. The 500 square miles of San Antonio and how art exists in 500 square miles of the city permeates the community. How we would like to see that coming in and out of neighborhoods connect back to downtown, for example. We've got a great project like the San Antonio Street. We think it's the only one of its kind in the entire world. And I'll send a great example of how we can rotate art into neighborhoods and allow artists to be seen more closely to people's homes. And I think we've heard that loud and clear. We've heard that people really know that there's a resource here of artists themselves that are just looking to have these kind of opportunities to work with neighborhoods, to work with communities, to work with a city, to get art expressed in our community. And ultimately, again, it just improves the quality of life. It allows us to understand our community more, to express the times that we're living in, and to celebrate the diversity, to celebrate what our values are. And I think it's something that art does really well.