 So we just put the last session participants on the spot on purpose. So thank you, Eva Menti for that. The next session, give it up one more time for Eva Menti. Thank you. So this next session is the collaborators. So we have some funders and some institutional leaders that'll be joining us moderately, but we're gonna begin first with someone who I've known for a really long time. I think I've grown up professionally a little bit with this person, it's safe to say that. She's definitely punked me a whole bunch of times in a bunch of different ways, and I'm thankful to you for helping me grow in that regard. But this is my card league and friend, Judy Lee Reed from the William Penn Foundation in Philadelphia, give it up for Judy Lee. Clyde and I have known each other since we were 12. So we're going on our 20th year in our friendship. Oh boy, everything I'm about to say has already been said, and I'm so grateful for that. So nothing I'm gonna say is new. It's not gonna be said as sexually as this group has delivered it. The artists today have been truly inspiring and I think have given us all the key messages we need to go about our work. But let's see if I can do this. So I am Judy Lee Reed. I'm representing the William Penn Foundation in Philadelphia. We were founded in 1945 with a mission to improve the quality of life in the greater Philadelphia region. Through our mission and the foundation overall, we improve education for low income children. We ensure a sustainable environment and we foster creative communities that enhance civic life. I've been with the foundation's program staff since about 2018 and I direct a program called Creative Communities, which makes about $35 million in, I'm already messing up, I'm supposed to be showing you guys these great slides that I did not do, so. Here we go, apologies. The portfolio I direct makes about $35 million in grants each year around two main areas, arts and culture and public space. I joined the foundation following a tenure in New York City directing a portfolio of grant making for a different foundation where we work nationally and focused on social justice. That history along with a decade of work exploring and developing systems of support for independent working artists has allowed me to consistently engage in today's topic of community investment, arts and culture and to consider it from a variety of different vantage points. I don't know if there's a single, I don't know if there's a single act of true community investment or true community investment is actually the complex interplay of many, many acts, but I think it's an important question that we ask and it's certainly one that I would love to guide our work. It's an important lens through which we can evaluate the success of our work. If at the William Penn Foundation we're dedicated to improving the quality of life for Philadelphians, then we are inherently investing in numerous community types in myriad ways. And as we do that work, we have research, we have historic and emerging data, we have past and current experience that helps us get at that question. And I'm gonna offer some things from the foundation's perspective around what we're learning, what's challenging us. As my response to this central question, and I have to admit that it's an answer that's still unfolding within our philanthropic practice and it is by necessity, quite incomplete, still in formation and it might not be completely satisfying. So arts, culture and public space, these again are the main grant making areas under the program I direct. And they're the topics that obviously occupy the discussions that we engage in at the foundation. For William Penn, again, they exist under a single program strategy, but we have found very much that developing an understanding of how the two sectors work independently is important in order to develop a true equitable plan for community investment. And if in the end, we believe we're successful if our strategies recognize both the distinct challenges and the opportunities for intersection, cross-pollination and multiple benefit. So we're gonna get started with arts and culture. This is a sentiment. I love this quote. This is literally what people would say to me when I first got to the foundation. It was quite a welcome. And it's the sentiment I encountered numerous times. Again, where city rich in arts and cultural activities, but at the same time, were burdened by struggling organizations and these organizations were perceived to be financially unstable and to be losing audiences. But as we dug into the data and explored the arts and cultural landscape in Philadelphia, some interesting trends really emerged that complicated the statement. In Philadelphia, we've spent, the foundation has spent enormous resources building and supporting and at times sustaining arts organizations without a deep analysis or consideration of who the actual participants in those organizations were and what the relevance of these organizations would be to the people of the city as the city evolved. As a consequence of that disconnect, 97% of foundation giving, and this is aggregate foundation giving including William Penn, but not solely. In Philadelphia, it goes to benchmark or mainstream organizations. Most of these organizations are situated in our downtown corridor and most serve a predominantly white audience. And just to put a little bit sharper detail on that, we just recently finished a study where we found that in a study group of 10 performing arts institutions, audiences were across the board around 80% white. And I'll just go on to say that in sharing some of this data with our friends at the Wallace Foundation which works nationally on audience development, they were not surprised. They see that around the country. And really, this is for us in Philly in stark contrast to the actual demographics of Philadelphia where people of color represent 66% of the total population. That points to directly at one of the key reasons for the disconnect between giving trends, cultural offerings, and community engagement activities. And notably, we've under resourced the field of culturally specific organizations. While over half of the population is comprised of people of color, only 13% of the total number of arts and cultural organizations are culturally specific. And by that I mean really serving people of color, serving diverse ethnicities, et cetera. If our communities can't see themselves and their experience within these institutions, it's difficult for them to see the relevance of those organizations in their lives. We have to ask ourselves how the organizations can change to meet these challenges and how we as a philanthropy can adjust our grant making to support cultural production, both for profit, not for profit, and all the hybrids in between, outside of institutions and inside of institutions where cultural production is happening. The second point I would like to draw attention to within our arts and culture work is that we've been following the conventional wisdom that suggests investing in legacy cultural institutions is a low risk proposition. These are the pillars of our society and they represent some of the signature institutions of our city. They carry deep links to the sense of civic history and tradition. That conventional wisdom also suggests that investing in small to mid-sized organizations is high risk. And yet our recent evaluation of our portfolio has painted a different picture. The small and mid-sized organizations have in fact grown their unrestricted net assets, which is a key data point in their financial reporting. They've also diversified their income sources and they've increased their earned revenues. These are the hallmark of stable, even vibrant investment vehicles. The large institutions on the other hand, haven't quite fared so well. Large for our purposes are 10 million and above in operating revenue. Large institutions have continued to grow their annual operating budgets, but they've decreased their unrestricted net assets. And notably, much of the coverage of that budgetary growth has been covered through income from endowments. So we really need to think and reevaluate the conventional wisdom I mentioned earlier. If we look at the data objectively and follow its lead, we can increase the efficacy of our giving and in turn find ways to improve the relationship between our institutions, organizations, and communities. In many ways, funding strategies and the rigor with which they're implemented can act as a guide to many institutions and organizations, helping indicate progressive approaches to connecting these operations at all scales and to the communities they seek to serve. Institutions must better meet the needs and expectations of their current and future audiences. And this really echoes the first takeaway about audiences and communities needing to see themselves in the institutions and organizations seeking to connect them. But it also points to something else. While the demographics of our cities have changed, so have the specific ways people interact with culture and with institutions and with organizations. So this doesn't mean that all these entities need to turn into these Instagrammable experiences that we're seeing proliferate around the country to quite amazement in my family. It means that we need to think more carefully and critically about the accessibility and the relevance of programming. We need to ask ourselves how welcoming are these spaces to people of color and to others whom they have yet to serve. It's also important to note that these, while these takeaways are objectively critical of their trajectories of both our investments and the organizations and institutions themselves, they don't suggest there's no place for both in our communities. Instead, and in particular, when we take a step back and look at these takeaways holistically, we can start to imagine possibilities and solutions. So while I'm describing the potentially diminishing value of our philanthropy, that our philanthropy has had through our investments in arts and culture, to me, everything we've heard about this afternoon underscores these trends and offers promising counterpoints and ways forward. So I'm gonna shift over to public space. And again, it was really kind of this strange kismet or whatever that expression is where Clyde asked me to speak and I said, oh, did you know I also work in public space? And so I'm gonna share a little bit about what we're learning on that side of the shop. Public space, by definition, is place-based and specific to local contexts. As a result, there aren't universal truths that apply to all public spaces. Instead, we have to consider numerous and finer-grained inputs, the environment of an area, its history, its culture, its local economics, and the intentions of residents, visitors, neighbors, and more, and all of that at a neighborhood level. And as we do that work, we need to be clear on our priorities. As we navigate these many contexts, the methodologies we build and implement will be an important reflection of our intentions, our understanding, or our lack thereof. In distribution this week, and literally, I just signed a letter for this report to go out to numerous folks. It's a new research, a body of research that's literally hot off the press at the foundation. We conducted this research with Temple University and to review the existing body of evidence on the benefits of public space. And I've excerpted some of these findings that we think are central to our work as we consider these questions of authentic true community investment. So the research paints a stark picture of the widespread inequality in urban public spaces. Study after study found that the benefits of public space are available disproportionately to wealthier, whiter neighborhoods, while the harms of poorly maintained public spaces among them, depressed property values, fear of crime, poor air quality, and more litter, accrue to communities of color and to low income neighborhoods. In higher income neighborhoods, even correcting for the higher tax base, a virtuous cycle supports these public spaces. Residents volunteer their time and personal income to support local friends of groups, neighbors solicit neighbors for additional support, and the quality of public spaces is sustained or even improved. In lower income neighborhoods, the opposite is sometimes true, often true. Members of the community have less time and financial resources to contribute to maintenance and improvement of public space, and without these crucial elements of support and sustained civic and philanthropic investment, the public spaces deliver few of their intended benefits. This dynamic probably doesn't surprise most of you. It didn't surprise us, but we certainly feel we can leverage this data to the benefit of our communities. By recognizing the inequity of public support and the inherent imbalance between high and low income communities ability to contribute, we can make smarter decisions about where funding might produce the most benefit. Many of our public space efforts aim to help our city's bridge social divides, and the concept of bringing people together to stimulate connection is probably not one new to anyone in this room. Certainly was something that we always held as one of our goals for public space investments. But the research actually found that there's little evidence that public spaces alone can create connections across differences. The interactions that these spaces foster in some cases result in a superficial civility, but there's no current evidence that suggests public spaces meaningfully reduce or eliminate societal divides and prejudices. And then finally, public space investment that catalyzes economic development is often associated with displacement. That's both an objective takeaway from our data and a perception that is shared by members of certainly diverse communities. Major investments in public spaces that are guided by business interests and that focus on economic development for instance, flagship arts institutions and urban parks may risk contributing to residential and commercial displacement. And investments of many sizes and intentions that exclude robust community engagement from the start often produce changes in the social and cultural tone of local communities. So together, these learnings about public space highlight really three essential considerations for us at the foundation. And it's something that we're now in very robust conversations with all of our stakeholders about. The first is that we need to support community engagement that recognizes potential barriers and that prioritizes residents' challenges to participation and that responds directly to their interests. Second, we need to invest in maintenance as well as stewardship activities in low income neighborhoods. This can help us mediate the inherent disadvantages that I was speaking of earlier and can improve the value of these public spaces. And third, we should consider programming that can build those social connections. This requires us to recognize that in most cases the space alone won't accomplish this goal but in thinking longer term, we can support pathways for diverse community members to build that social capital. And I think many of the examples we heard about today really resonate with that idea. So as we plan our funding strategies and work with local institutions and organizations, one of our responsibilities should be to prioritize the goals of communities that we seek to support. The context we work in are diverse and complex by their nature and earlier I noted there's no one size fits all approach to public space and that's because there's no singular definition of a community. We have to work both at the highest level of a broad objective strategic perspective and also at a more intimate level of the communities in which we hope to foster positive change. If we're able to do that, we might achieve true community investment. And so while the observations and findings I've shared today put quite a number of challenges for our work in both arts and culture and in public space into sharp relief, I wanna end by sharing some optimism. I think it's really important and so here it goes. We believe we have an opportunity to follow this evidence and we truly do. We're gonna put our money where our mouth is and we've already started. So after decades of capital investment in kind of regionally significant public spaces and in public space as an economic driver, we're now paying much more attention to close in neighborhood investments. Through the widely publicized rebuild program which is the city of Philadelphia's largest single civic infrastructure project, we're investing up to a hundred million dollars in the renovation and deferred maintenance of libraries, parks, and recreation centers across the city and that matches the city's own capital budget to the tune of about half a billion dollars over the next 10 years. Many of these crucial community centers really, they host an incredibly diverse set of activities and residents and through this program we also are addressing a workforce development component where we have minority women, business, enterprise goals in the contracting and we hope that this model's better approaches to equity in the city and we also believe it creates a dynamic cycle of empowerment and investment in these areas. Again, we're really trying to look at investments as complex tools. The second project is we made a pilot grant to our local LISC office and to a small CDC called Strawberry Mansion Community Development Corporation to support the implementation of a home repair program in a predominantly black neighborhood adjacent to a key public space investment in a historic park. This parallel initiative hedges against real estate speculation and potential development by supporting critical repairs to historic homes, providing household financial training and tangled title services that sends a clear signal to residents that the park improvements are for current residents. And then we're also supporting arts and culture projects and programs across the city and I don't have time to talk a lot about them but we were really happy to see we did a mapping exercise, we have money going into every neighborhood of the city, we wanna do more of it, we were glad to see that there's an enormous amount of activity we're already supporting. That activity is beginning to shift in important ways. It has always been inspiring and joyful. We're now looking at relevance and we're keenly interested in those projects that are of residence conception and design. And ultimately, this weaving of public space and arts and culture investing helps us make connections between community wealth building, arts and culture activities and resident engagement. We are, all of this work really began several decades ago but we really feel like this is a new beginning and we're so excited about it and we hope that we can continue to be in a lively conversation with you all as we go forward. Thank you. So now, should I do this? Brent Brown from the Trinity Park Conservancy, Terry Loftus from TACA and Deborah Cullinan from Yobro Buena Center for the Arts are going to join me and we're gonna have a conversation. Doing multiple things. Hello, hello. Hi. That was our mic test. You like that? Okay, so our charge is to have a conversation as collaborators, collaborators that have a commitment and interest and commitment to arts and culture and community engagement, community development. And I guess let's just get right into it. I think my first question is, we'll start with you, Terry, if that's okay. Okay. If folks were to look at your work currently, what would be inspiring to them as acts of equitable community investment? That's an interesting question for us because we are, as most of you know, a funder of the cultural arts in Dallas. So where we have been over the last 50 years or so has been a conduit of providing funds across the board. Where we are today and moving forward is how do we affect change within the organizations that we provide funding to to move their programming and services into community. So that's an initiative that we have, we play in right now around capacity building and thought leadership, but we're hoping to do a lot more up. So it's the donors who support us are, we're hearing it from all front. So the people who support us financially, the grantees that we fund, there is this synergy that's taking place in the cultural arts in Dallas today that I think is more vibrant than it's been ever. So it's allowing for collaboration in ways that we haven't seen before. And Brent, same question. Okay. So I think at first, a lot of people, especially when it comes to the Trinity would say, I'm not so sure about that. And I think that's fair. I think there's been a real loss of public trust in the opportunity of a promise that the Trinity could be a unifier versus the wedge and divider that it historically has been. And then in the creation of kind of a gathering place, a park, Simmons Park near downtown, West Alice and Oak Cliff. But then I would hope that they would look at the work we've been doing since 2017, engaging with communities near the park as well as the kind of in-depth looking at what's been talked about in the past. There's over 115 studies that have been done or plans, whether by the city or by institutions in and around that space and sort of the detailed analysis that we did to try to amplify voices that have participated in the past and not just think we're starting anew. And then coming forward to the development of what we've done in what's an equitable development toolkit, which is looking at two things. How can we develop Simmons Park equitably? And how can in the creation of a great park, can we help to have Dallas be a more equitable place? And those are things we're struggling with and that we wanna build an accord and a partnership with the communities around the park and a synergistic, and I'll just say, it's spatial, it's functional, but it's also financial, so. Can you say more about that? We had a fun, yeah. So we're trying to build this park that's like $175 million investment that's a public park owned by the city. It'll create over $6 billion in economic impact. Who does that value accrue to? And who benefits and who doesn't? West Dallas gentrification is already set in due to the construction of a public bridge. Private investment is there, it's happening. Neighborhoods are seeing increased property taxes, so I think it requires, in this case, as you're building a park, to advocate and be partners with others and to step forward and say we need to bring anti-displacement policies to place before the park breaks ground. We need to put in place financial capture, value capture, something that, the park's gonna create an immense amount of value. So how do you not only have an accord between a public park that's gonna build great value in the city but also have value accrue or be captured in a way that helps to steward the public goods, right? In new neighborhoods that will be developed. So there's a lot of vacant land as well and stewarding businesses, et cetera. And so it's, parks like this are infrastructure projects. And only building the project and not considering the greater contextual impacts and sort of an essence, the project is to build a better Dallas or a better place and then we could get into a whole language of well for whom and who access. And in our efforts here, it should be done in a very equitable way. And we could get into a discussion of that. And we've used the GAIR definition as kind of our standard right now. What is, just for folks who don't. Oh, I always get the acronym wrong, I'm so sorry. But, you know. We can Google it. Yeah, yeah. It is one really where, you know, who you are and where you've lived does not stand as the definition of your opportunity in sort of my kind of, and removing institutional barriers and practices that exist and being cognizant and calling them out by name is an important part of this work. And so we're working at it. I don't think we have all the answers. I don't, as you said, and I so appreciated you. The park can't do all this. It requires municipal government. It requires active engaged citizens, communities, nonprofit organizations, philanthropists, foundations, et cetera, an entire network, so. And there's something interesting about the necessity for alignment, right? Right. And I just wanna, and we're gonna get to Deborah Cullinan, but I have a feeling it's gonna take her a minute to introduce herself since she's from out of town. I'm happy. And she's happy sitting here in between our, but Terry, this alignment of goals, can you talk a little bit about that as you're having these really dynamic conversations with both grantees, constituents, and your investors? It's interesting to follow up on that because one of the key components is, you know, when you, Sarah kind of went on this when she was up here earlier. So when you think of projects like The Trinity, when you think of the cultural arts, you know, Sarah made the point that, you know, we should be funded and vetted like, you know, technology, engineers. And the cultural arts and anything that involves community engagement around parks where it directly positively impacts the constituents and citizens of a city, those are already proven. So no one can dispute that being accessed or exposed to the cultural arts. It's not an educational component that will benefit someone's life from childhood through adulthood. So one of the things that Clyde heard me preach about, I think one afternoon in my office was, I did not, even though I studied performing arts, I didn't make a career of it because I didn't think I'd make any money. So I spent the bulk of my career in advertising. But I had years of education and exposure to the cultural arts, playing trumpet, French horn, and grade school, high school and college. So even though I didn't make a career of it, by being exposed to it, it made me a better person, spirit, individual, don't wanna get into the weeds on this, but it may be a better person. So there are public spaces, access to the arts that are economic, to me, economic drivers for the city of Dallas that I don't know outside of Jennifer's office, and I hope I don't get in trouble for saying this. Outside of Jennifer's office, I'm not sure that the city has completely embraced, but that's where the growth potential is. And to the point here is, you don't build these public spaces, you don't take cultural arts into the communities to where residents and citizens have an opportunity to access it on a level that is best for them without that benefiting them. So from an economic development perspective, you don't build something like the Trinity Park project and not make it available to the people who are affected and would benefit from that. Housing, Dallas has no other place to grow, but South and West in some degrees East. So how do we collectively, from the city as a partner to various 501C3s who are around public spaces, cultural arts, workforce development, coming together to make all of this happen. So then that's a better selling point from my perspective to our donors. It's a better selling point to the people that we grant funds to in Taka's case in the cultural arts to where it's a holistic approach as opposed to looking at it in silos. Thank you, thank you. And Debra, from your perspective, can you can go all the way back to the first question or you can jump into where we just... Please. Well, let me set the context. And before I even do that, just thank you for your generosity. It's been a really rich afternoon. So just to set the context, I am the director of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. YBCA is widely understood to be presenting an exhibiting organization. We're a contemporary arts center. But what we really are trying to do is transform that paradigm completely. And what we want to be and are striving to be is a forum for art and social change. We also are a think tank or an institute that's working on national projects that have the potential to transform our field. And a lot of what we are trying to do is help build awareness about the essential role that artists and art play in any social change effort. And we have lots of examples of how we've done that from working with the San Francisco Planning Department to really shift the culture of planning in our city to the project that is headed up by Penelope Douglas called Culture Bank. And that project is the reason that we're here. And thank you, Clyde, for your vision and for bringing us here so that we could understand and be inspired by the work that's happening in Dallas. With Culture Bank, as you may have seen if you were watching some of the content in a transitional moment before we heard from those amazing artists, Culture Bank really understands and positions artists as essential early stage investors in their communities. And we think that artists are uniquely situated to see and lift and develop assets that matter to people. And you heard it today from all of the artists that we have the great honor of working with. These are things like language skills, green spaces in our community, intergenerational knowledge, the things that make us alive and rich. And what we see is that people read that signal wrong and invest on top of it. So that is the opposite of the true act of community development investment. And what we're striving for is the kind of investment that is driven by artists in communities where the community is empowered to develop assets that matter to them, and that is what we invest in. So, time's going by very quickly. Okay, I wanna make sure because everything that folks have shared, it's incredibly compelling it's going to be amazing to see all of this unfold, but what are the challenges that you're addressing right now in the near term as you're trying to manage through planning and implementation across a number of different contexts? Brent, you sort of smiled first, so can you take the question? I don't know, there's some pain in that smile. So, this is a physical project, right? So, in my work, I'm an architect and I've employed really the public interest as the primary driver and influencer in my work historically. And I think I've tried to bring that to this. You know, we are in a series of activities, right? We're trying to complete a $200 million capital campaign and we're well on our way with that and having success with it. And simultaneously with that, we're trying to work through technical challenges of actually building a public space on a river, right? And making sure that it is accessible and way before that, you know, building the kind of coalitions and relationships that are very personal with, you know, leaders but, you know, business owners and individuals all around this sort of kind of geography, literally about a three mile diameter in the middle of the city, so it's big. And, you know, a rewarding thing of that is like last night I get a phone call from a neighborhood leader, right? That has a question about a zoning case that is about three quarters of a mile from the park. And they're just asking a question about it and they don't know the language. So we're trying to work on, and in many ways I think it's building and the biggest challenge is having the capacity within the neighborhoods around the park and to be frank in downtown, there's plenty of capacity there in West Dallas, the understanding of these systems. And so trying to take the time through all that technical engineering and the stuff that everybody wishes would move faster and trying to take the time to attend to helping to build that capacity at the same time as a partner, not by a kind of teller, if I can say that right. I don't know if that's the right word, you know, just. So I'm trying to let that be in service to what those priorities are as those priorities become identified or change often. And on top of that, I've already mentioned it, is how do we build this financial relationship between the construction and the value creation out of a public space that takes care of it, but also brings about what we've not seen in this city and in Frank, most major public projects like this don't realize which is the whole suite of public goods in the communities that get developed or get a level of protection so that affordable housing exists, small incubation spaces, space for the arts, space for education that otherwise will not be realized because the market will not necessarily prioritize them. So this is where I think the public-private partnership is unique in having a two-party relationship now which is official in a contract between the city and the conservancy. What we don't have is that third party, I'm gonna call it a community benefits agreement or a community contractual relationship that begins to quantify and hold another level of accountability. And unfortunately, I know there's a hesitancy and I think you're right, Jennifer gets the value of the arts and public space and not every other department in the city does. I'll emphasize it further. Even though they've done economic studies, I don't know that we're qualifying it in the same way, but we can't rely on our elected officials to represent the communities and it's a real reality. So how do you build capacity and power in neighborhoods and I think that comes about through these relationships that need to be formalized and so how and who? And that's, it's very difficult. So one of the biggest challenges is who could the party to that community benefits agreement from the community that has the capacity over a 30, 50 year period of time to work at the scale of a city. Thank you, Harry. From my perspective, it's gonna be funding and access. So one of my objectives since I have been at talk for a relatively brief period of time is from a fundraising perspective is to raise more money for the beneficiaries that we fund. The second part of that around accessibility is not only funding these organizations but based on the constituents and the demographics that they serve within the arts district in Dallas, but more importantly, those, they're probably a lot more cultural arts organizations that are not in the arts district. So how do we collectively help all of them in addition to the funding that we provide, reach and build partnerships, relationships with the residents and the demographics that they're serving. And that's where I think the bulk of capacity building is more effective because there's not the expectation that to see a play, to see a concert, that these individuals and families must come from wherever they are in the city to the arts district as opposed to us taking the arts out to them. But I think to Brent's point, it's also when you look at collaboration and coalition building, all of these touch points, all of us are in the same sandbox and these touch points very much connect. So if you look at exposing kids to the cultural arts and what we might want to call, I hate labels, but what we might call low income neighborhoods, there are different priorities if you're not touching the family as a unit as opposed to just trying to expose the arts to children because if you were me back when I was in school shortly after the Titanic sank, then you are, my thing was music. My mom came from a cultural arts background so it was very important to her even though she was raising us on her own. She had two kids in music and one in dance so that costs money. So you've got music lessons, instruments, dance lessons, what have you. Not all parents see that value even though their kids may have an interest in that, their priorities might be different. It may be rent, mortgage, car payment, bills, what have you. So if we're looking at this holistically from community spaces, public spaces, cultural arts, education, how are we reaching out and capturing the entire family unit as a whole with partnering with organizations that may also provide workforce development for the parents so that collectively we're hitting the entire unit. I think that's an exciting component from a funder's perspective as well. So when I look at my donors moving forward, I can say not only are we providing general operating grants funding for arts organizations to do what they do better but we're also helping them reach these unique demographics across the city that they need to engage with and educate. So that's a long way of saying that it's all connected but for me it's funding and accessibility. And just to go back to kind of where you started with the question of challenge, you talked a little bit about, you first talked about the funding issue which of course is in some ways can be seen as a first step but it seemed like it was as much about kind of navigating out of the arts district and thinking about what, I wonder if you can just say maybe two or three more sentences about that. What do you need to build that understanding or to build the capacity within your agency to think about how that extension of resources and investment takes place? I think the sell to, for example, to my donors is not a big leap. I think they would easily comprehend that. I think the greater challenge is taking advantage of the synergy that I mentioned earlier as it relates to the cultural arts in Dallas because if you look at the landscape today compared to five, 10, 15, 20 years ago, Dallas has come huge strides in the cultural arts that's due in part not only to arts organizations but also to Sarah's point earlier, there are more diverse organizations that have come online that are now being supported not only by their own efforts but by individual donors, corporate partners, and foundations. So when you look at funders who get it and where we need to be, the Embry Foundation, for example, which I think Lauren's still here out there somewhere. It's partnering with the cultural arts organizations to make sure that we are assisting them in moving content and programming into these communities. So for example, if I had the time and effort to go out tomorrow to raise money for this one initiative, it might be something along the lines of partnering with Jennifer in the city of Dallas and assisting our cultural arts organizations into taking program into neighborhoods using the public library systems. So most, I think most if not all, Jennifer will correct me if I'm wrong, most of, nearly all or most of the public library system, public libraries in Dallas, excuse me, have black box theaters. Most of them go largely unused because they're just not well known. So between rec centers, public library systems, assisting the grantees and taking programming into these institutions that the assets of the city already owns, I think helps move the needle. So it's partnering with our, the arts organizations that are in our portfolio and helping them do more outreach to where they're exposing more people to the arts or to public spaces, so. Great, Deborah, I'm gonna just switch that question up a little bit. No, I'm not. Go ahead, give it a whirl and we'll see what happens. Well, we could, okay. Well, I just thought because we are running short on time and I wanna, I'm feeling self-conscious because I feel like there was such great conversation after the artist panels and I know folks are really dying to kind of dig in and exchange among the group and probably in reference to a lot of the stuff that's come up in this panel. So I'm wondering if you will close us out and tell us what, from your perspective, as you're looking at Culture Bank as a network of activity that could potentially touch multiple types of communities both measured by the city or even within a city in a neighborhood, what are some things that you think we should be thinking about? Yeah. You know, I'm going to start with a response to that because I have to. You know, I've learned from lots of people who are smarter than me that sometimes the best thing that we can do is make a problem bigger. And I think in the arts. You said the best thing? Better, it's a better thing to do. So and in the arts, I think a lot of times when we are asked the question, what's your major challenge? We do tend to think about funding and resources and audiences and things like this. In my mind, I want to make the problem bigger. What is the issue? And to me, the reason that Culture Bank came into being is largely due to the fact that we lack imagination and as a society, we cannot get out of the boxes we are in. And it is really up to us, right? And when I think of the arts sector and all of these extraordinary public benefit institutions, large, medium, small across this country and all of the resources that go into the work that we do. And I just want to a call to action to say, what can we do to imagine ourselves as a system that would fuel the public imagination so that we can move beyond the systems that we are in today? And so Culture Bank, and this maybe is my way of trying to help close, but the reason Culture Bank came into being is because at YBCA we want to be that place. We want to be a place that develops the conditions for all kinds of people from across sector to come together to think bigger and to imagine new paradigms and new systems. And what better place than an art center to do that? So what happened was Penelope Douglas, who is also an artist, but many of you may not know, is considered to be a true pioneer and hero in community development investment and social impact investment in this country. She's a mentor of mine, someone I've learned a great deal from. When I went to YBCA, I asked her if she would come and facilitate a cohort of YBCA fellows. They were asking questions around equity and labor and why we work at the same. And I'm done. At the same time, yeah, at the same time, that's fine, at the same time, Penelope Douglas is at YBCA doing her artist thing and facilitating this extraordinarily large conversation about equity and about labor. She is also simultaneously because of who she is doing a residency at the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank. So just hold that for a moment. The artists and the bankers, the conditions are swirling. We start to talk about the fact that community development investment is largely not working. Billions of dollars in investment and look at what has happened to our communities. In fact, some would argue it's done more damage than good. Social impact investment, some would argue is not social impact investment. It still is about return. And it still positions those with wealth as the most powerful people in the room, right? And that combined with the fact that we all know that there are artists like the ones we heard from today who are working across this country and having transformative impact. One classroom, one block, one neighborhood at a time. And this is a huge, largely under-realized, under-capitalized ecosystem that if it was just understood and invested in, we would have better outcomes. And so that is what I would say that we should be thinking about. Artists are essential. Arts organizations can transform themselves to be key players in more equitable development. And we're seeing it more and more year over year. Thank you very much. And please, before Clyde comes up, would you join me in thanking our panel? Thank you again. Please give them a warm round of applause with Tauzy at the end of the evening. But I'd be remiss. Thank you not to mention the fact that we've been live streaming this whole time via Howround TV. So thank you Howround for supporting us and spreading the word nationally. We are also, as a result of the live stream, documenting each session. And we'll release those to the RSVPs. Feel free to forward them and share them with others. And the report in Judy Lee's presentation will include in that as well. And again, feel free to forward with others. So the last little exercise, and I'm gonna need some shout outs here, don't be shy. I'm looking for five words. Just five words, words that have resonated with you, words that come to mind as a result of you sitting here the last three hours with us. And I don't need you to raise your hand, I just need you to shout out a word. Strange. Strange, hold on, strange? Exchange. Imagine. Imagine. Belonging. Belonging. Aliveness. Aliveness. Asperation. Aspiration. So help me remember those. Exchange. Belonging. Aspiration. Imagine. And alive. Can we say alive? All right. Rob, what's up, you good? Let's do it. Ooh, this is my city. This is my city. This is our city. The mic is good, the mic is checked, it's a little strange, but I'm joining y'all for this cultural exchange just so you can understand. This is my nation, my city, and let's melt with imagination and still getting down just so you know that I survive. I always stay alive and I can count one to five doing it like this and I get very vicious. A city like Dallas, you know we stay ambitious. Gotta understand and I respect them all. We'll be the talk of the town more than a tiny wrecking ball. Let me see what's next. Let me spit just like this. Grab the mic with a nice grip and still coming through and it's a legend I am living. I'm known to imagine kind of like John Lennon, but we're still getting down. Shout out to the people doing it for the love and not really for the evil. You gotta understand it's for community development. We know to work together, disregard malevolence and still getting down. Come on, somebody tell me. Dallas's ecosystem is getting real healthy. We got strides and let's make the exchange. Let's have a conversation. Let's go through the pain and doing it like this and respect all of it. Let's talk about it at happy hour with skin politic. Ah! Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. We appreciate you. My name's Rafael Tamayo, please. Let's go have a nice little chatted happy hour. Thank you to all of the panelists. Thank you to everybody involved. Give yourselves a round of applause. And let's go have some bites and some drinks with DJ Skin Politics. Thank you.