 I have to jump over you. So welcome to this morning's public hearing for the Arts and Culture team of Mayor Walsh's transition community. I want to thank everybody for taking their time out today. Thankfully, the snowstorm hasn't started yet, so we can be comfortable being there. First, I want to thank Mayor Walsh for inviting the Arts and Culture community into the transition process. We are all honored and thrilled to have our voices heard, and we hope that in the coming years we'll have a good partnership with him. Second, I want to thank members of Mayor Walsh's team and City Hall for Clean Care, Joyce Linnahan, Brendan Little, Danny Green, and Tom Johnson who've all been involved in the transition process. Do you want to just raise your hands and say hi to everybody here in the room? And we also have Sheila Dillon from the Department of Neighborhood Development. Thank you, Sheila, for joining us today. Oh, and Chris Cook. Sorry. In the arts for many. I also want to thank members of the transition team, the Arts and Culture transition team who could come with us today. They're up here on the stage, and we will be listening intently to all of your testimonies. And finally, I want to thank not least Amy Ryan and members of the Boston Public Library staff for making this happen and welcoming them with a gentle reminder that the libraries are parts of the arts and culture community as well. So we are really filled you're all here. I'm going to hand it over to Gary to give us a little bit more information about what's going to happen today. Thanks, Juan. My name's Gary Denning. I'm one of the co-chairs of the Arts and Culture transition team and also work at Celebrity Series. I'm going to take you through a bunch of logistics. So there with me, but also we're going to try to make this run as smoothly as possible. Obviously it's public testimony, speaker format. There's a limit of two minutes per person. The way we'll operate it is we will call groups of five people from the sign up list above. If those five people would please make their way to this aisle and come down and sort of just state yourself in the middle part of the aisle. The speaker will then come down in order. There's a nice little X. So it tells you exactly where to stand. And here's the microphone there. There is a camera there because we are live streaming this event through HowlRound. And many thanks to them for making this possible. Also you will see if you start to linger too long, little signs go up in front of your face that go 30 seconds, 10 seconds. Thank you. And then the hook comes out. Now in this whole transition process, I want to give you a little bit of a structure and I will ask you to think about that as you make your comments. Mayor Walsh in the very beginning gave us a simple question which you have seen on various communications, which is what does it take to make Boston a municipal arts leader? What can city government do to really, really healthy arts and culture community in a way that makes the whole city more productive in a better place to live? And the format we use and are using in our report, which is still in development, is what are the policies that currently exist that we want to keep? What do we like about what's going on now? What should we keep? What's important to us? The second category is called implement. And implement is something that city government and the mayor could do in the relatively near term could do without any sort of state legislative or a big role in law change. And that doesn't cost a great deal of money and that's a big broad definition. But let's just use the idea of a million dollars in the short term. And then the third category is kind of the obvious one of a dream. What is it that we want to have for the future? Because I think in the report that we will deliver, we're very keen to help produce what is essentially kind of an idea about an action plan. What can we do right now? What can we do in the near term? Or what can we do in the future? So we will be taking your ideas, the ones that are delivered here. If you didn't have a chance to speak, please be sure to go to the transition website and give your ideas. Also, you see here hashtag boss arts. Please feel free to tweet throughout the proceedings today. Please send your ideas. They will be collected. I promise you they will be delivered to the administration as a whole. And also, just in a few minutes, we will try something a bit new and we're pretty confident it'll work, which will be instant polling of all of you here. We have a couple of ideas and a couple of questions that we want to ask. The first ones are fairly easy. The other ones get into choices and decisions. And we'll show you the results. But again, it's just an idea of seeing for us what are the general themes that are coming out. So with that in mind, let me call the first five people to give their testimony. Ruth Mercado-Zizzo. Maranel Rosmanier. Forgive me if I mispronounce your name. Angela Monti. Eton Lerman. And Pauline Bilski. So please come down and then we will get started with Ruth Mercado-Zizzo. Thank you very much. I'll start. Excuse me. So if we're just going to, whatever gets lined up, we're going to try our first poll just to warm ourselves up and make sure that technology is working. This is going to be done through text messaging. So if you have your smartphones, please take them out. So a couple of times this evening, we're going to poll you. We'll warn you when this is happening. It should be very easy. So what you want to do is you'll see the text number there 22333. Text to that number. One of those three words, event one, event two, or event three, depending on which is the right answer for you. So the question is on average, how many arts and culture events do you attend monthly? So we're going to, I think, start the testimony and give you a chance to reply to that. Let's see the results. Oh, there you go. So. That's great. Okay, so if everybody can remember what they were, we'll just check back in a couple of minutes and see where the answers are. Because I think it's going to be too distracting to see this line go back and forth. But why don't we just switch back to the last screen so people know where what is on. Great. So let's start with Ruth and take it away. We'll have two minutes each. Good morning. My name is Ruth Mercado-Zizzo and I am the director of the BPS Arts Expansion Initiative at Atvestery. I'm also a theater artist and I have personally seen the importance of providing arts and education opportunities to all youth, especially here in Boston's vibrant and varied community. Before we implement and dream, I wanted to share with you what to keep regarding arts education in Boston Public Schools. Since 2009, the BPS Arts Expansion Initiative has focused on the goal of increasing access to quality, equitable, distributed arts education experiences for students throughout the Boston Public Schools. Our three goals are to expand direct arts education for all BPS students, build the capacity of BPS schools and the central office to support expanded arts education and to strengthen partnership coordination to better leverage cultural resources. While private philanthropy has played a role in galvanizing the Arts Expansion Initiative, increased public funding plays an even larger role in the increase of arts education in Boston and it is one of the key accomplishments of the Arts Expansion Initiative. Since 2009, BPS and the central office have increased by $5 million annually, the public funding for expanded arts construction nearly tripled the private philanthropy best each year. This increased philanthropy has added nearly 80 BPS arts teachers in our schools and we have also increased the capacity of the central and district office of BPS under the new BPS executive direction for the arts primary project graph. Local and national philanthropic support adds to this public-private partnership. At its core, this initiative is driven by increased public funding, by the vision of school leaders, by more BPS arts teachers and comfortable partners in their passion to deliver quality arts education for their students and by the desires of parents and students to have arts in their schools. The pieces are in place to build upon the progress that has been made towards quality arts education for all 57,000 Boston public school students. Thank you. To remind everybody if you can say your name again if you have an institutional affiliation you want to share in the neighborhood you live in. Good morning. My name is Marinelle Ruminier and in addition to working with Ruth Mercado-Zizzo on the BPS Arts Expansion Initiative I live in Hyde Park and I'm the parent of two BPS students who benefit from arts education each day. Before I share with you what I believe Mayor Walsh implement going forward I want to tell you why this matters. I could tell you personally but more powerfully the arts expansion initiative recently completed a poll of nearly 500 public school parents in Boston and they spoke volumes. They told us that schools that offer arts are viewed more desirably for their students. Parents value the arts when they evaluate the overall quality of the school. Parents believe arts education keeps their children engaged in school and helps improve their academic performance. A majority of parents pulled believe students who participate in the arts do better academically and are more engaged in their school. Additionally, we learned that for one in five students in Boston school is the only place where they receive any exposure to arts education. The initiative is also learning about what students want and in the coming weeks we will share with the community results of a student survey of over a thousand students that ask them not only about the importance of arts in their lives but also which forms they wish to explore. With the knowledge of the importance of arts education to school climate and student engagement for his constituents we dream that Mayor Walsh will signal that he continues to support the VPS arts expansion initiative anchoring public funds supporting arts education and encouraging further public and private investment to reach the goal of access to arts education for 100% of students in K-8. Look to arts education as part of the solution for reforming our high schools and select somebody with deep appreciation for the vital role that arts education plays as our next VPS superintendent. Thank you very much. Good morning. My name is Angela Mantai. I'm the Music Curriculum and Instruction Content Specialist for Boston Public Schools. I also am an elementary music teacher as well because I can't stay out of the classroom and go work with the little babies still. I teach music at the Devon McCormick Lower School, K-8 Lower School. I'm coming and speaking to you on behalf of the kiddos that we work with every day in Boston Public Schools. I teach at a school that's a very high need school. A lot of our kids are have emotional, academic, social issues and I can honestly say firsthand when we came in as an arts team four years ago under the expansion initiative what we're able to do in the arts especially with in my situation with music it's a perfect equalizer for the kids. They are have time in their day with me with a visual arts teacher when we had dance it's a time for them to actually feel that they are a part of schooling it meets them where they are at in terms of being a kid and making and creating and I have just seen several situations where a child that maybe is having a hard time in their class or because academically they're constantly being told that you can't do or you're not good enough or you can't get that score up but when they come to us in the arts programs they don't feel that way because it's a natural thing for them to do they always create and they're always making and with their expansion initiative and allowing the kids to be able to have arts in their school they feel like they're a part of something they feel like they they can do something and when we talk about high level thinking and preparing students for 21st century skills that is where we can do that in the arts they are constantly creating constantly making constantly working in groups creating and engaging in a way that's natural to them and where they develop confidence and they can be successful we have a great team in place and I'm really hoping and I know that because Mayor Walsh is very supportive with the arts and has said he has we just look forward to working with him again and on behalf of all the kids in Boston public school please please help us continue the programming because we need it for 100% of the kids not just some of the kids thank you good morning my name is Aiton Werman and I'm the visual and performing arts director at the English High School of Boston here in Jamaica Plain I am also serving on the Urban Music Educators Coalition as well as on the executive board of the Massachusetts Music Educators Association for the Eastern District Boston is the birthplace of music education and on the exterior of this very building are carved the names of authors whose works here were were here when the building was opened in 1888 under the name Harvard which all of you recognize is a lesser known name Pestilocy this Swiss philosopher's works were the inspiration for Loa Mason's manual for the Boston Academy of Music in 1832 just before Loa Mason himself became the first public school music teacher in the United States of America in the world in 1837 and he was a teacher right here in the Boston Public Schools the city of Boston is the first city to recognize the importance of educating our next generation of artists through our school system this Thursday at the English High School the oldest public high school in America we will be celebrating the resurgence of our visual and performing arts programs in an art gallery and performing art showcase featuring more than 20% of our student body I encourage you to come see firsthand the ways the arts and culture can change for the better our younger generations as it as the arts take the lead in pulling the English High School out of turnaround status this year I leave you with a quote from Boston's Public Schools' most well-known son President John F. Kennedy once said that the life of the arts far from being a distraction in the life of a nation is very close to the center of a nation's purpose and it is the test of the quality of a nation's civilization and with my remaining 10 seconds I would like to say that I have here a flyer for each of you to attend the Boston English High School Art Gallery this Thursday at 5.30 at 6.30 and I also have for anybody in the audience 20 free tickets if you're available this Thursday night come and support you we get free tickets today but before we have the next speaker come up start speaking I just want to call up the next five people in line and just remind people that please don't come up to the line unless your name is called and until your name is called so in the next five people are Ruth Bernberg Charlie McCabe Steven Eris Robert Umpenner and Don Harrelson and I apologize if I mispronounce anybody's name I'm Colleen Bilski and I'm the executive director of Jazz Boston but we're an eight-year-old nonprofit organization run entirely by volunteers where Boston's only jazz advocacy organization we represent the entire great Boston Jazz community connecting and promote the entire great Boston Jazz scene I'm going to try to make three suggestions of two reasons they all fall into the implement category and not terribly high cost the first two provide immediate low-cost opportunities to move towards the mayor's vision of united Boston by building community and bringing people together in positive public and celebratory way and they also support the states and the city's efforts to put Boston on the world map for cultural tourism by branding the city as a great jazz destination first one is this one is is the least expensive of all we suggest that the city rename blocks squares and places maybe even whole streets after Boston born or Boston based jazz legends living alive we've got a New York City recently renamed the block on West 77 from Miles Davis we have plenty of legends to choose from we could focus on neighborhoods targeted for renewal especially in predominantly African-American communities as a means of building pride and spurring development to create a community celebration around each naming including appearances by local leaders we could start for example with broad homes and rocksberries or for a pair of living legends we could add a woman artist like Mayor Annette who lives in Dorchester we could make the first of these designations during jazz week 14 then continuous opportunities arise jazz Boston can help with this by providing a list of musicians locations and even the appropriate music live music my other suggestion is to partner with the jazz community to create a world class public event concert for international jazz day this this is an opportunity to follow you unfortunately your time is up it's been two minutes okay thank you very much I just want to remind people if we do run out of time please just submit your testimony in writing as well and if you have not been able to get onto the list we will accept testimony in writing thank you very much Mayor Walsh I would like to begin by thanking you and your staff for taking time to listen to the community I am Ruth Bernberg I happen to live in Jamaica plain executive director of Boston Dance Alliance we are an arts service membership organization dedicated to keeping all forms of dance thriving and growing in greater Boston our members include everyone from the young professional dancer who just started on their career to the small dance studios based in neighborhoods such as Chu Ling in Chinatown to the professional dance companies and to the large presenting organizations such as Celebrity Series for my comments I want to open by talking about you and what happened during the campaign you've stated that at first you wondered why you were being sent to meet with small groups of artists instead of meeting a big crowd in Dorchester or South Boston over time you began to change and now see the artists apart of the identity of the city in addition you saw how many heads would not in agreement when you talked about arts in larger audience forums I believe that because for years the city put arts on a back burner that many are like you in the early days of the campaign and do not recognize the vitality that arts bring and how important they are for this city it is time to change this to make all arts much more visible to bring them to the front burner so that when asked what makes Boston unique arts are one of the first areas mentioned to make this vision a reality necessitates establishing an arts office that stands on the zone in addition this office must have resources it is not enough that a person, a key or she cannot actually implement any ideas I ask that in creating your first budget that you significantly increase the money going to support all arts in Boston this should include grants for artists to create teach and increase visibility my last one comment is as a representative of the dance community I think is vitally important that we work on space for dancers to rehearse and teach in Boston as this has been a significant difficult thing to achieve thank you a member of the Freedom Trail in Boston National Historical Park we attract an average of half a million people a year to Boston the Freedom Trail as a whole attracts millions of people a year we are the curators of Boston's history we provide free field trips to Boston public school students free civic space to neighborhood and community groups and we are a major driver of the tourism business we have a few simple acts one, keep doing what you have been doing those that we have collaborated with in Boston City Hall starting with Chris Cook but many departments have been very supportive of our work Old North is nine years away from our 300th birthday and we are looking for greater collaboration with the city as we gear up for that but mostly on behalf of the historic community we want to say that in a short 11 years we will be celebrating the 250th anniversary of the birth of our nation which did begin in the steeple of my church please start I didn't personally hang in there sooner rather than later it would be a very good idea to appoint a commission of leading business historic sites government leaders to begin planning for the 250th birthday thank you of Midway Artists Studios which is an 89 unit live workspace for artists in Boston and their poets, painters, musicians, dancers a lot of different disciplines represented by that building and I'm sure many of you probably already aware that the building has been put on the market for sale the residents are partnering with New Atlantic Development with Peter Roth to be able to buy the building so we can secure it as an asset for artists in perpetuity in Boston we're very very proud of it we could have worked to do before February 5th but we think that this could be a model for other residential buildings other artist buildings in Boston to be able to secure arts assets long-term that can be controlled at least in part by the artist residents themselves we've set up a website midwayfund.com and we're offering an investment vehicle to be able to raise the remaining of this where investors can put money in and also get and return on their investment in addition to supporting a really wonderful Boston Boston cause can become a permanent arts asset indefinitely for Boston artists we're very very proud of it so thank you very much thank you Charlie McCabe I'm the director of public programs for the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy we work with a number of artists in a variety of disciplines to sponsor and host over 300 programs in events every year we've especially been focusing lately on contemporary public art temporary public art a couple of good examples would be the two murals that we've had on the Greenway Wall at Dewey Square Park Rainier's Hall Station we've also been working with a number thanks we've also been working with a number of institutions and organizations to collaborate on a number of different efforts our focus really is raising funds to try and continue to expand our efforts in contemporary temporary public art we also work with some great events and with the city the one I want to mention and give a shout out to is Figment which we've been happy to host for the last three years this will be our fourth year it's essentially a participatory arts festival and the one ask I would have is at times putting together a group of artists over a weekend with a lot of large devices and contraptions can be a little challenging from a implementation and a permitting standpoint so that would be our focus in that area but again we appreciate the support that the city gives us in terms of temporary contemporary public art as well as for all the events that we do every year thanks for your time and I just want to call the next five people up Star Desmond Harry King Mina Kim Don Decker and Michael Dowell good morning my name is Don Carlson I'm with Jazz Boston the non-profit Jazz Advocacy Organization we've already submitted a list of ideas to the panel but I'd like to briefly reinforce and expand on a couple of the ideas that are imminently doable first make city-owned venues available for community arts events at no cost but there is a cost to the city for doing this but much of that cost is fixed and incurred even if nothing happens there the incremental cost for the city is not high but can't be prohibitive for most arts organizations of second make it easier and cheaper for venues to be licensed to present live music and allow dancing and indeed rethink why an entertainment license is even needed when a restaurant or bar is already licensed to do business I'll give you one example of some of the current absurd licensing requirements there's a notice in yesterday's edition of the Boston Current it gives notice that an application has been filed with the mayor's office of consumer affairs and licensing by a venue in Boston and a public hearing will be held to do what to do what quote to add the category of disc jockey to the venues already existing entertainment license which currently allows for radio widescreen television television DVD player instrumental and vocal music and dancing by patrons so this is a venue already licensed to provide live music and dancing but they have to reapply to add a disc jockey what is the city afraid of so please fix these absurd rules and we'll save money too thank you I'm from East Boston and I'm a student news mix and I just want to give a thanks to Manny Carrero who's also a student news mix who's my sound technician applause improvisation in many respects both of them have suffer and deal with the lack of space the lack of facilities there are 35 venues for jazz in the Boston in Boston there are perhaps 140 in the greater Boston area the contra jazz Boston itself deals helps to present concerts in the courtyard right here at the BPL they also come up with they also come up with and are working we're working very hard on jazz week 14 which is 2014 which is coming up and then they do two and a half months ending an international jazz day I think the one thing I would suggest and really second what Don Carlson has already said is that we work as hard as we can the city work as hard with us to both to provide increased performance opportunities and performance venues and secondly work with the permitting process I want to again I won't begin to to do what Don did and expressing that and describing it thanks very much well my name is Don Packer I am a founding board member of the mass production coalition the former president I'm also an owner of two businesses here in Boston engine room edit and brew house VFX featuring film and television so I want to talk a little bit about film and television which I think is an important cultural and economic driver for the city a recent MPAA study showed the effect on tourism across the country and especially in major cities where films were shot it was phenomenal how many dollars were driven in by films and if I just take a moment how many people in this room have been asked on the street do you know where the cheer bar is that was 30 years ago and we're still being asked that question we did a film office that is streamlined that is friendly that is resourceful and dare I say a lot like New York the benefit is huge thank you the benefit is huge to hotels and restaurants the tangential effect till even the bagel guy in the newspaper guy is unbelievable what happens in this town RIPD last year was shot here as you all know it dropped a hundred million dollars on the town it'll take that any year but it's also the brick and mortar businesses it's businesses like mine that have quadrupled in size since 2009 the union membership that has doubled since 2009 we are building a business in this city in this state that is much like the medical industry getting larger every day and the MPC is working very hard now to build mentorship programs working with mass access to train kids to do internship programs so we can build through the high schools through the universities to basically build a better educational culture that allows us to build this business but there's one thing we have to do it's cheap it's easy it won't really cost you a dime we need to change the vocabulary we need to change the dialogue we need to go from STEM to STEAM with one level please thank you morning my name is Michael Dowling I am the artistic director of medicine wheel in self-option very happy to be here thank you to the young woman from zoomx we've all been out to another cultural event and that's what it's about right so rather than explaining things we've all had an experience this morning that is profoundly wondrous great for our mental health great for yeah right great for our spirit and our soul right our soul and our bodies aligned so I um have a young person who who gave me a quote to say today it's you know he says young people uh destroy things because they're not invited to create those of the artisan community is to be that facilitator inviting people to claim their voice through cultural actions in the communities they live that you know the artist is the keeper of the traditions of the community so the investment in local artists becomes really really significant because we know the communities we live and we're the weavers often of very complicated multifaceted traditions that are in those communities and the bridge-builders between communities I would love to look at you know I'm a public artist a temporary public art and I know that Marty has talked a lot about art healing and what that means for for our city and who is the public of our city so when we think of the public garden what does that mean when we think of the public library what does that mean when we think of public housing public schools you know the the word public really changes and how do we become artists facilitators to the public to the people who claim their voice how do we solve the the problem of the inner city voicelessness by inviting people to claim through cultural action this social I just want to call up the next five people Steve Hollinger Eileen Williston Sarah Shantwan Heidi Burbridge and Ian Bridberg Good morning my name is Mina Kim I'm the assistant director at the Fenway Alliance before I begin I also want to thank Star for her wonderful performance I'm a huge fan of zoomics and I thought that was a wonderful example of the transformative power of the arts for those who aren't familiar with the Fenway Alliance we're a consortium of 22 academic cultural and civic institutions in the Fenway while we receive a lot of support from our member institutions and the greater Fenway community most of the daily operations of the office grant writing fundraising and the bulk of event planning are carried out by two people the executive director and myself as a two person office we face many challenges in terms of how to best allocate our time and limited resources in order to maximize our services to the community one of the challenges which hasn't mentioned and will probably mention more throughout today's forum is the permitting process during the 2012 opening our doors festival we worked with a noted architect Kim Paula Quinn to create a temporary art installation called Enfold on Evansway Park in addition to our office in addition to having to deal with booking all the event activities fundraising marketing had to also collect as many permits as is required for a permanent structure for the four week installation on top of collecting probably 10 plus other permits for the festival itself Enfold ended up receiving many awards and was enjoyed by the residents of the Fenway and the various college students as well as the workers and while our alliance has the great support from our member institutions such as MassArt and the Isabel Stewart Gardner Museum we without their support it would have been a much more cumbersome process and we hope that a more streamlined and equitable process is established thank you my name is Steve Hollinger I'm an artist and inventor from 4.23 a resident I'm here to talk about money in the arts beyond the arts funding that I totally support the budget a large budget like San Francisco all major cities have arts budgets that are maybe five to ten times more than Boston money the real money the real money in Boston is from economic development through the development community and the transition team needs to understand the details about the economic development arm of the BRA that is where substantial money far more than you would find from arts funding is available and I would point out in our neighborhood for example in Fort Point we've lost maybe 300 artists in 10 years and our community has been very proactive in market development we're really excited about restaurants whether they're upscale or downscale whatever we've been proactive in planning the key here is the BRA has been rewarding speculators who come in rolling tenants stating that they're going to roll tenants not developing anything rewarding them with new development rights for roof competitions infills they flip their portfolio they flip their portfolio for a profit and the artists are out so that speculator has never actually developed anything they mothball buildings for five years and are being rewarded handily for that you'll see that throughout the C port and Fort Point speculator is rewarded for development the other point I would say with regard to a performance space and activation of spaces the same thing the devil is in the details throughout the waterfront if you look up chapter 91 decision the state environmental secretary called for activation of spaces across the waterfront with the greatest of civic and cultural uses and the BRA has qualified hallways corporate lobbies observation decks on top of Roseworth as cultural civic spaces world-class the devil is in the details look at the economic development arm of the BRA thank you received national recognition for having one of the most technically and racially diverse and youngest audiences in the country over the last 15 years we've seen a beginnings of a shift of how Boston views its arts to fully realize the shift we asked the Walsh administration to fully fund arts education in every BPS school especially the high school opportunities with arts ed arts organizations through the Boston youth fund understand that arts impacts every aspect of life life in Boston from healthcare to housing to the dropout rate create separate dedicated funding streams for individual artists and organizations and understand that you are losing talent not just the professionals who can't make a living in the city and go to other places but the young people whose potentials are go unrealized initiative and it's housed at the Boston redevelopment authority there's been many great comments tonight and as someone who is a resident in Jamaica Plain I wanted to add my own personal comments and really highlight as someone who's worked with artists for many years that the most important issue that's facing them is real estate and being able to have permanent affordable space in all neighborhoods of Boston now I have worked at City Hall and so I have some experience with what is the city's planning and economic development agency there's many functions there and there's a lot of opportunity what I wanted to emphasize today because I only have a short amount of time is that there's such an opportunity to have the leadership of those functions be engaged in the cultural community somebody who's willing to work with Massachusetts cultural council somebody who's willing to advocate for the cause of mass creative and all the energy that has been created by this transition so I'm hoping that the new leadership at Boston's economic and planning agency looks at real estate issues including financing like dedicating a financing stream towards artist buildings I'd like to see a more engaged process in the arts and cultural community being involved and at the table for neighborhood planning and also I guess in the dream category I'd love to see a city-wide arts and cultural planning process that all of us here can be engaged in this is a transformative moment I think at the city of Boston and I want to thank you and thank everyone for being here and I think my time's up My name is Eve Briburg and I'm the founder and executive director of Breb Street we're one of the nation's leading independent writing centers thank you we employ about a hundred local professional writers every year and I also need to give a quick shout out because there's so many dedicated passionate arts educators here today to let you know I think it's sort of a hidden secret but Breb Street's programming for high school teens is absolutely free and we connect in very rigorous workshops so just wanted to say that before I get to my comments I am really proud to be part of the Create the Vote Coalition we're a group of over 100 cultural and arts organizations that are really ready and excited to work with this administration to help implement Walsh's very bold and brave new arts plan we're really really excited to do that work and I just wanted to mention three high level things that we think can be implemented this year as well as one dreamy thing for later one is we're really excited to see a cabinet level office with bold and dynamic leadership that connects the arts to everything else that's happening in the administration across the city we want to see direct investment that matches the state's investment of 1.7 million this year in the fiscal year 2015 budgets there's a lot more work that needs to be done to figure out dedicated funding but we think immediately we could dedicate 1.7 million we want to see a superintendent hired who can continue the great work in the arts that's already happening and then we also lastly and this is the dreamy bit really want to see a cultural planning process because just you can see alive in this room today there's so much incredible stuff happening in the city and it's sort of mind exploding to think about what would happen if we actually had common goals a common vision strategy so that together we could have the impact to make Boston the incredible place it is and could be for the arts thank you before you start I just want to call down the next five people Nancy McGee Joyce Cole-Haywick Marjorie O'Malley Maggie Pabolo and Pat Hollenback my name is Eileen Williston I'm the director of institutional advancement for Boston Lyric Opera and I am proud to be here today on behalf of our artists staff leadership and board B.L.O. is proud to be part of a vibrant arts community for almost 40 years we provide more than 400 employment opportunities annually fostering and showcasing the great talent we have in Boston to the world we together all of us are a critical part of Boston's fabric and economy but our impact could be even greater by naming an arts commissioner and committing to an ongoing conversation across all sectors of Boston we can achieve an arts renaissance here we have all the ingredients right here in this room a colleague of mine and I were talking this morning about how remarkable this gathering is and how filled with possibility and with Mayor Walsh's help we can sustain ourselves as vibrant growing organizations sustain the momentum that was begun in his campaign and continue it from what it has started here today thank you I'm just going to take a quick break to see the results of the last poll Hi everybody my name is Nancy McGee I'm a True Colors alum and I'm involved with the theater offensive and I'm going to be performing a short version of an original song that I wrote for True Colors and I performed toward it and everything I hope this works I love to bite your tongue don't accept defeat Boston, especially the contempt need to have an acute understanding or really says scholarly understanding of kind of how that works similarly I think it's important that we all or those teams have an acute understanding of the history of arts and culture in Boston there's a lot that we can learn from the cultural entrepreneurship of the Brahmins if we sort of turn it on its head and not be so exclusive I'm so worried about tonight the mayor's office should really be committed to risk taking and experimenting and providing experiences of arts and education not just for K through 12 but so on thank you with emerging artists and postgraduate trajectory arts and education last way beyond the senior year of high school I think we need to support social entrepreneur adventures that will alleviate problems within the arts community that we face but also enhancing Boston's national and global identity as an innovative cultivator of arts and education imagine the city as a college and the community is the teachers and students and collaborators quickly three ideas art school 617 I'm happy to provide a monthly session to the mayor's office that will introduce and orient you around through studio visits and lessons the arts community in Boston we should redefine public art as also public art experiences and imagine a rotating curator program for public art within our within our city thank you guys for listening I'm Joyce Calhay with child school website joysuschoices.com and I've been freelancing all over town from WGBH WBUR the Boston Globe whoever will have me ever since I lost my job on WBZ TV five years ago after being the first hired last fired arts and entertainment critic for almost 30 years on a daily primetime regular basis covering all of the arts they just suddenly decided we didn't need that anymore in Boston because you know there's nothing going on here but of course this morning we see and I am eternally dazzled by how much I see all the time it's really humbling to be in this room honestly this is some of the best theater I have ever care of the time is what I know about best and that is arts and broadcasting and I mean broadcasting in the deepest sense of that word delivering a message when I lost my job I wondered what would happen to this beat and what started to happen almost immediately was that arts institutions all over the city kept calling because they didn't know who to call to get the word out all this stuff is going on but if you give a news conference and no one shows up is there still a news conference? how where are the outlets? certainly we know newspapers have cut their staffs and their coverage nobody on TV with the exception of BUR and GBH are doing this in any kind of a regular way online folks are you kidding me 10 seconds? okay I just want to say that despite the shrinking coverage there has been an extraordinary growth but there's no point in this growth and what's going on here if we don't broadcast it we need each online in print on television everywhere wherever there's a screen and I'm talking taxicabs elevators every plane landing in Logan every convention center every smartphone with that little screen imagine an app that says do not miss these three things in Boston this week this is implementable this is doable because we are so culture rich there aren't even enough audiences to go around hence many institutions are in competition constantly for the same dollars and for the same people the world is our oyster we've got to be marketing too Hong Kong Beijing we've got a daily flight there I say load them up with tourists and bring them in Logan Boston's got it Happy Doss Loretta Anseldo Veronica Robles Steve Mailer in Monica Aldorando please go ahead Hello, I'm Pat Hollenbeck I'm president of the Boston Musicians Association and I wish I didn't have to follow somebody that spoke with that The other thing I'd like to do if it's possible Pauline from Jazz Boston so amazing she has some amazing comments I'd like to give part of the time of my time to her if it's possible you have two minutes and you can fill it however you want Pauline, come on down Well, I can't follow Julie's that's right but I want to come back to something that was a theme at the last meeting in December where the importance the importance of the jazz community uniting working together and coming together was one of the main themes and I would like to suggest that the city support collaborative projects in the arts community together one let me try something could you raise your hands in the audience if you've ever collaborated with jazz musicians well that's not bad I thought I was taking the risk and what about if you've ever just thought about collaborating with jazz musicians live jazz musicians okay so in that case jazz musicians always looking for opportunities to collaborate across disciplines we've done it very often with dancers, painters, poets jazz week is a great time for this kind of project because more people are paying attention to jazz than the other time of the year so I'd like to invite anyone who raised their hand to think about a project for jazz week, April 21st to April 30th let us know about it what resources the city might be able to make available for us so Pat would you thank you Paul thank you my name is Veronica Robles I'm a teaching artist I am from Mexico I have a mariachi band and I do educational performances in schools at the Sovers and I wish I could do more in the city but there's no funding here in the city to do that and that's very sad I've been creating programs myself financing myself to develop high quality dance and music that reach out our community to their culture to their roots because I believe when children understand who they are and where they're coming from it's a great power for them to pursue their barriers and I've been collaborating with the schools thank you so much I'm also a TV host and I'm here to I echo all that Joey said in Spanish the same thing I wanted to say but in Spanish, thank you very much and I also see the lack of identity and most of our I think the most spoken foreign language in Boston public schools is Spanish and that's why I just opened a cultural center in East Boston at the Veronica Robles Cultural Center which is open to youth adults and families to enroll in music dance and music classes multimedia training, arts exhibits and special events and music education with the power of technology and media to introduce members to the Spanish language and cultures of the Spanish language world thank you very much I also collaborate with the Boston public schools I am the co-founder of the Academy which is a beautiful program that uses literature Spanish literature to educate children and to improve their vocabulary thank you very much you can find more information about me on Veronica Robles thank you it is so important and encouraging that these conversations are taking place my name is Loreto Pasanzalo I have lived all over Boston last year I co-founded a non-profit named Poleska with my best friend and long-time collaborator Bumpy who is from Somerville the mission of Poleska is to create a sustainable community by developing multimodal programs that critically engage the arts and education for social justice from our experience so far in starting Poleska in a long-time Boston residence and also public school educators we have the following thoughts to share the city its businesses and foundations must provide more funding as we've heard so often today to novel ventures and not just for long-standing organizations a way to encourage young people to stay and innovate in Boston comparable U.S. cities offer more funding for the arts than Boston startup groups need someone to offer that initial financial support to get off the ground and realize and demonstrate the potential of their work funders must also champion work that intertwines the arts with social justice as also we've heard this morning such as focusing on diversity in our art programming increasing affordable housing and critically working to provide a high-quality education for our children congratulations Mayor Walsh thank you for making time to listen to our thoughts on arts and culture in Boston conversations like this are crucial to city building my name is Pompey and I'm a multidisciplinary community artist in Somerville I'm here representing Poleska with Loreto and also Save the Scene a greater Boston initiative spearheaded by almost 700 local artists specifically performers we are concerned about access we have professionally to local venues both public and private in the very city we work so hard to build up Boston is celebrated as a destination for its diverse cultural programs independent working artists offer a unique blend of independent cultural experiences that complements the established cultural institutions the city is home to here are our thoughts communities including local business owners the surrounding community activist groups and politicians need educational briefs particularly on zoning noise ordinances and political lobbying opportunities detailing how new social policies may affect arts and culture and neighborhoods and how we may all live together communities also need adequate time to learn about and shape proposed policies so they may form opinions and vote confidently we need more public meetings and other ways to engage over several months before policies take final shape for effective involvement with sustainable economic support independent working artists go from working and surviving to dreaming and connecting better with our neighborhoods thank you so much I'm Steve Maylaw I'm the artistic director of Commonwealth Shakespeare Company and I'm really happy I want to thank the transition team for the work that you've done it's been a hand for electing a mayor who would think to convene transition teams bring an accessibility and accessibility in all of its forms and the big one for us is financial accessibility we have an incredibly rich cultural community here in Boston but for many people that's out of price range I would encourage the community to think about and the mayor to think about how to promote the many free and low cost admission efforts that many of us do at all of our organizations to increase the cultural engagement of a broader section of the community a couple other quick things I would really like to see the mayor at arts events it's really important to me I saw former mayor Bloomberg at arts events in New York all the time and it's really an important message to me as an artist that the mayor is out seeing our work I would also obviously from the city we would understand that that's limited and has its limitations but the mayor has the capacity to leverage his power through urging corporations and foundation to support our art and culture and if we saw corporations give 10% of what they give to sponsorships for sports events and corporate boxes when we think about supporting arts and culture we not think about utilitarian usage yes the MCAS scores are going to go up yes economic development is going to go up but that's not the only parameter and finally, if we're lucky enough to have two arts organizations win Tony Awards in the Mayor of Walsh's administration please shut down Boyleston Street line up the door please Virgin, Peter, Zebler Adam, Chen and John Wang and we have one more poll most important goal for the city's new office of arts and culture is to serve as a one stop information center for arts projects and artists having the resources to fund the arts sector enhancing arts policies to support the arts sector convening the arts sector on a regular basis providing programming such as City Hall, Plaza Festivals, First Night etc and promoting Boston's arts and artists nationally and internationally this morning, my name is Monica Aldorando I'm here as a resident of JP a proud alumni of MassArt and also the creative director of Boston Arts Academy only a visual and performing arts in Boston I've gone through about four versions of what I'm going to say today but this I think is what I'm just going to say from the heart and not off the paper next week we have auditions at Boston Arts Academy as a visual arts faculty member I know that I'm going to see many volunteers that are that are notebook, paper sketches and that is all that these kids have access to in our city and in every neighborhood in Boston right now there is a child sketching in their notebooks they're not in a program they're not getting arts in school and the BPS arts expansion has worked really hard and the arts initiative has worked really hard to get all of our children access to arts but one arts class in one form of the arts is not enough once a week, once a month we need to have sequential arts education for all of our young people so that they have a good founding in the arts our future professional artists in Boston from Boston are going to come from our BPS schools because they've had that training they've been able to go on to high schools and have training in Boston Arts Academy if that's where they choose to be as a professional artist future professional artist then to go on and have support to be able to go to our arts institutions the pro-art schools here and have the financial support to do so the number one reason why our students don't finish college and arts careers is because they don't have enough money to do so so as a community we need to support and train people so that they can go on to do amazing work one of our seniors this week just opened an exhibition as he was speaking to the violence that happens in his community he gathered artists, an 18 year old kid gathered artists to talk about what is happening as our community and we need more of that in our study thank you my name is Jason Turgeon I am the past producer of Figment Boston and Bartlett events thank you both to Charlie McCabe I think the Greenway is doing more for public art than any other organization in the city and they really changed the dialogue in Boston and also to Chris Book for his support it's important to mention those two people because when I first brought Figment to Boston five years ago I was told in no uncertain terms by the arts community that I was not going to succeed in Boston and that I should not try and they were right, the city of Boston told me to go count Sam and I ended up doing my first event in Cambridge back to Boston far away and kicking and screaming and it has been like that for four years Boston fights off its artists and that's why most of the people I work with are now living in Summerville and Cambridge and so my main place is to say let's turn that around it's not that the artists want to leave Boston if they did they wouldn't go to Summerville they would go to New York or San Francisco or other places, they want to be here so let's turn that around and make Boston the best city in the country to do art we have lots of great ideas about some thing we don't have a goal let's not be a leader, let's be the leader we know New York is crumbling artists are fleeing we know that other cities are struggling let's go out and be the leader for all arts here let's take on Austin and New Orleans for live music, let's take on San Francisco for wackiness, let's take on Seattle for trolls under bridges and let's be the leader and I'm going to leave Zebler for 30 extra seconds My name is Peter Zebler Brodovsky I just want to talk just from my soul here for a second I became an artist partially because of Arlington High School where I went for the last two years and my art teacher Pauline Fenberg encouraged me to enroll at Massachusetts College of Art I've done that and I want to say I feel like at this point I'm a success story since graduating I've toured the United States as a visual artist about six times and I started my own business at Zebler Studios and all of that wouldn't have been possible without the support of the city and without the art education that I've received here so thank you all so much beyond that I just want to say I want to echo the previous speaker I think it's really challenging for small artists to get permits to do public art in the city of Boston and I think it's a really scary problem for artists we are not bureaucrats it's really hard for us to navigate the paperwork to navigate this minefield and I think this should be some kind of a way for small artists to be able to provide public service which is public art being so intimidated by the regulations beyond that since I've traveled to so many cities in the United States I want to say how much tourism is brought in by huge public art works think of the bean in Chicago it's a huge tourist attraction I think we need more larger public art pieces in the city that would be amazing and that's it thank you good afternoon my name is Aaron Williams I'm the cultural director for the city of Worcester your sister city and I'm here today on behalf of the Worcester Cultural Coalition 78 arts and cultural organizations and hundreds of artists who are applauding you we are so proud of our sister city at this point and want to thank all of you who have committed to this campaign to build a platform for the citizens of Boston but you are a model for the state the whole state is watching at this point we encourage you to extend and engage with cities across the Commonwealth and to help lead the charge for artists and creatives so that we can make this the very best city yes but also the very best creative state in the United States onward Worcester hello my name is Adam Chin and I'm part of the Chinese Youth Initiative for Chinatown we just want to ask for a library in Chinatown I'm actually I'm actually from Brookline myself but I have a lot of friends and family in Chinatown and I know that back in Brookline our library shows off a lot of the communities, artwork and culture the moment you walk into the door it's just greeted by some beautiful artwork whether it's like a sculpture or some vases or paintings but then when you get to the main library they have display cases that show off a lot of the communities' artwork and sometimes when I just walk in to take out some books or some music I can see some of my friends' artwork from school I can see their jewelry or their pottery or paintings and it's really nice and I just think that would be good for Chinatown if they had a library it would do more than just give out great resources like books and music but it would also be a good place to show off the communities' artwork and culture I just want to call down the next five people Long Lin, Karen Lee Eileen Williston William Turville and Julie Henry Chris Good morning my name is Sean Wang I attend the Boston Land School of Agriculture today I'm representing the community of Chinatown where on one street you can sample the cuisines of multiple Asian cultures hear the exquisite tones of various dialects and grandma's excited informing their friends on how fresh the vegetables were at the local market many of us enter this world to hang out and have a good time and then we leave but for others this world is their home and community this world is Chinatown where Chinatown remains without a library due to the construction of a highway and as time continues the community gradually begins to disappear providing the people of Chinatown with the library is crucial to their growth and well-being a Chinatown library can act as a cultural center where the community can stay in touch with what makes them unique while at the same time sharing it with people from all walks of life a Chinatown library would be an amazing community and gallery space where everyone can showcase their forms of expression a library is a safe place to foster the arts and creativity people, especially the youth when enriching the arts will become more open-minded and appreciative of who they are as an individual also with the library a community that is channeled in concoffinous disruptions suffers some stressful traffic and lost in highway pollution will be able to find itself simply and for the Chinatown hope that Mayor Walsh will go through with his campaign promise make it a priority to provide a library that will act as a cultural center to the neighborhood Chinatown when there are few neighborhoods without a library thank you sorry just one quick second we're just going to put up the results of this poll thanks go ahead hello my name is Long Lin and I'm also part of the Chinese Youth Initiative for the last decade my group has been pushing to regain something the Chinatown community used to have that it doesn't have anymore and that it needs a library Chinatown had used to have a library located at 130 Tyler Street that was opened on January 6, 1896 the library had several hundreds of children's literature easy English books, non-fiction books that members could use to study to help them to qualify for better jobs story hour for children and much more after only 40 years the Tyler Street branch was closed in July 1938 over 200 school students protested and the Tyler Street library was reopened on December 7, 1951 Chinatown doesn't have a library anymore because after a mere five years the Chinatown library was closed permanently to accommodate the central artery road construction ever since then Chinatown has remained one of the few neighborhoods in Boston without a library there has been community effort to reopen a library in 2009 a storefront library and a lantern reading room in 2012 but both were shut down due to the lack of funding there's widespread support for a library in Chinatown we have collected over a thousand postcards in this summer we had Mayor Marty Walsh sign of pledge and even second graders from Matapan had a march to show the support for a library a library and a cultural center would provide a quiet space for people to escape the bustling streets of Chinatown thousands of children, young adults and elderly would be able to utilize public resources such as books computers with internet access educational programs and tutoring services without having to travel to neighboring town in addition, a Chinatown library can host cultural activities and services specific to Asian American communities in the greater Boston area thank you currently and I'm also part of the Chinatown University and a high school student for youth, a library is a central part of life throughout development. Growing up I was fortunate enough to have a library where I live and I remember going to the library every week it was a big part of my life I remember taking books out on origami, admiring the pictures on display and making crafts I also remember how I used to draw a table where my dad would read Chinese newspapers and books in the library to this day I still go to the library I go for schoolwork and projects I go there to study I'm lucky to have a library in my community I'm lucky to have a library in my library Let's repeat, Chinatown is the only community in Boston without a library it is unfair because it was a big part of my life I believe that Chinatown deserves to have a library too not only does a library provide books it fosters culture and the arts picture books foster children's artistic ability by exposing them to different styles of art art has allowed me to express myself and release stress everything I know about art in different cultures is because I borrowed a lot of books from this library so hand in hand libraries have DVD tapes and books on different cultures and art library can provide arts and crafts for children and display local art exhibits libraries can also host events, concerts, recitals, serving as performance space I sincerely hope that Mayor Walsh can bring a library to Chinatown so that it can provide services that could benefit the arts and culture Thank you Mayor Walsh and the transition team for having everybody here My name is Bill Turville and this year I found myself turning up piano into an airplane for Gary and the Celebrity Series I also celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Children's Museum with an installation there there's a lot of culture in Boston, some of it's on the streets some of it's in the institutions but I'm here to advocate for permanent space for temporary art let's all remember that permanent space for temporary art that's what everybody's been talking about here that makes Harry's up there that started recommendation artists 20 years ago 25 years ago in 1999 we all stood on the steps of the Boston Public Library and we got this 1999 Year of the Artist cap I don't know whatever happened to that it seems to have died somehow or another I mean we can restart this year I'm wearing a different hat this year I'm wearing a figment hat Jason brought figments in Boston, well technically four years ago, figments in the Boston area five years ago but anyway I know that everybody has enjoyed First Night Claro Wainwright's vision luckily it got re-established this year I participated in First Night for four years in the late 90s early 2000s I did public art in Somerville under their art program there and I also built an art bike for Bikes Not Bombs in Cambridge celebrated their art bike auction in Cambridge Bikes Not Bombs here in JT so permanent space for public art is a very very important thing you don't need to do guerrilla art like reclamation artists do you need to get a very streamlined permitting process if these permanent spaces were designated they could also have a streamlined permitting process as well as that permitting process uses a model of other non-designated spaces to get an accelerated permitting process so that there was a spontaneous use of let's say Charles Gates space underneath those overpasses which is a neglected and abused park which has a beautiful open space right on Commonwealth Avenue those spaces could become public art spaces if they were designated so or if the permitting process was streamlined enough that someone could spontaneously decide to use that space or an installation Bill thank you permanent space for our art streamlined permitting just before you start the next five people Pablo Royas Mirner Bulk Luanne Wachowski Douglas Ruska and Nate Swain please thank you good morning my name is Julie Henwickis and I'm the executive director of the art service the art service organization for the theater community with a membership prize to both individuals and organizations we are proud to have our offices along with the arts and business council and mass creative in the midway studios in Fort Point there is much to celebrate in the Boston arts community just looking at the theater sector on any given night there are dozens of performances throughout the city there's a depth and a breath that raises but much of this vibrancy has been on the backs of small and fringe companies and individual artists this has to change I'm here to encourage the Walsh administration to explore dedicated funding streams for the arts and to codify them so that they are dependable for future generations other cities have created these streams upon which are built services, grants, subsidies and infrastructure this funding also supports initiatives around public arts let's explore ways to not only feed but to nourish the grass root of the arts community we know that the economic impact of the arts is great for Boston let's make sure that impact supports the people making the art and that the small organization struggling in this very difficult funding environment thank you my name is Pablo Rojas I'm the operations manager for the owner of Ministry of Theater which is a small firm that helps small independent theater companies as well as independent artists produce their works in Boston and Cambridge and I'm also the owner of Catalyst Comedy Club I have come here to ask the committee as well as the Walsh administration to view the arts not simply as a cultural need for the city that requires a larger set of funds or policies, resources but also to treat artists specifically as entrepreneurs I don't think anybody else can detect real estate industries what we do as artists or as entrepreneurs more specifically will not only contribute to the industries that already support the arts but also start to leave its way to other industries that are establishing themselves in this city so it's vital that not just for an artistic and cultural standpoint but also for an economic standpoint some of the things that I wanted to point out actually reinforce what a lot of people here have been saying already is the fact that streamlining the community process looking at all these empty storefronts that we have in what used to be the theater districts I think you guys used to call it a combat zone or something like that a long time ago there's still a lot of empty storefronts that very simple need for truth licenses for entertainment but also legal license to encourage people to come and see the performances so they can come see anywhere in the city rather than have these really public view far and allows artists to do things in spaces that they couldn't otherwise do because there is a lack of venues and rehearsed spaces and also offering landlords both corporate as well as independent landlords incentives to reduce their rents or to allow artists to come into their spaces so that whether it's long term or short term we have more accessibility for everyone to perform I'm sorry to interrupt but you are saying some very important things here tonight we want to make sure that the television audience hears it clearly so if you stand on the X your important message will be heard to you okay thank you I'm really applauding everyone who spoke and think we should all get funding my name is Myrna I'm a sculptor I'm an artist basically a sculptor I live in Jamaica Plain I'm here because of my involvement with the Jamaica Plain Library I want to applaud those students from Chinatown and I think something they said really applies to what I'm saying we have a 102 year old library that is totally out of code we have finally got funding but there's nothing in the funding to support public art I'm saying it is a high volume library one of the highest in the city and many many kids and people come for all the reasons that these young students mentioned until we get 1% 1% for art I suggest that the arts council or arts commission whatever name that place is going to have be funded by city state and private funding and offer grants that can be that can go either to public places like the library we could apply for a grant for public art for a new library or for individual artists who say I want to put something in this school or I want to have public art in the library democracy in action my name is Douglas Ruska I'm a recovering physicist and virgin artist Figment Boston I'm the outreach coordinator for that I'm a board member for Firefly Arts Collective and I'm one of four regional representatives of the Burning Man organization in the Boston area Boston also has a very important part of the city named Alston do you all know this do you all know that it's named after an artist it's one of the few in the country that it is named after Washington Alston a romantic painter who lived in Canberra but there are many important aspects of the arts in the great city such as Boston one of our important cultural institutions celebrate and implement the collection curation and history of art but just as important and direct support of art there are so many ways to do this arts festivals that are not focused on purely commercial ends but on area artists more of an exhibitionery thing as opposed to an art sale 1% for arts programs and new construction streamline and permitting processes guarantees affordable rents for artists and more importantly the preservation and development of suitable industrial space where artists can actually do things not all industrial space should become high and locked housing not an industrial space that is large enough to do large scale art like I do some stuff that's 50 feet tall it's not very easy to find a venue here and lastly city hall art galleries I curate a weekly arts event calendar in Boston and I've done this for 8 or 9 years not once going through anything in the city have ever seen one thing listed anywhere that said it was an arts event at city hall so that's something I think I'd really like to see as a start as well thank you very much thank you hello Nate Swain I'm an artist in Boston I started doing public art murals about four and a half years ago I started noticing all the blank walls around Boston there's over a thousand of them Boston is really behind the times when it comes to murals not only painted murals but printed murals we have the megatix plates photography and digital artists because we want I work with a printer that has a 16 foot ink jet from Boston building racks it's really fun I also get old billboards that they would normally throw away and spread them out on the floor and paint on them with house paint and this enables murals to be painted by anybody of any age children can now paint giant murals you don't need them on scaffolding so I want to inspire everyone here to start looking for these walls because you don't usually notice them because they're not worth looking at but they're everywhere and we can make the city amazing where you can turn corners and just be amazed by amazing art and photography and digital art thank you so before we go on I just want to first recognize two city councillors who are in the audience with us today city councillor Wu and Presley thanks again for being able to have the different branches of government represented to hear the testimony and then the next five people are Robin Bollinger Gale Zarin Reinhold Messler Donna Fohlen and George Kugies my name is Lilliana Kalski and I am a local Boston studio and environmental artist and educator I'm here today with a number of many artist organizations in Boston and throughout the state but I'm here today on behalf of the Mission Hill Artists Collective who I'm also members with we're a group of artists from Mission Hill who got together in 1999 to start finding ways to exhibit the people who live in our neighborhoods art and to also pull together with other organizations across the city to collaborate and do our projects together and find venues other than the traditional to exhibit in you know if Newbury Street or New York or whoever is picking you up then find a place to pick yourself up and we've been doing that like I said since 1999 most recently a developer came to our neighborhood and started to well actually the city of Boston offered out a plot of land that has just been kind of undeveloped for many years and the developer who won the bid on it has offered to do a piece that's that's sustainable and very green and environmental and they mentioned the word art in some of their proposals and so we took them to task and said well how about providing art space and so because they're having retail space and commercial space involved in the residential development and public park development that they're doing they actually agreed with us that they would help us to find a way to build a space within their space so what we wanted to say today to the city and to the mayor and thank you all for being here is that we think it's important and should be required that development in Boston neighborhoods should include public space at that have public space and commercial space should get support and resources from the city to help those spaces develop because the developers themselves are making a substantial contribution in physical space and then we need the resources to do the programming and make the space work and we think the city should partner with us thanks for hearing me if you're next in line come down afternoon my name is George Kouges I am the director of the Museum of Realist Art exactly two years ago my wife Kamal Siena presented to our local civic association our proposal to create in East Boston Museum of Realist Art focused on contemporary realism intend this to be a local, national and international destination and in the two years since we are avidly and actively now followed by people in every state of the country all over the city and 90 plus countries around the world waiting for this to happen one of the pillars of the proposal was to acquire the now empty East Boston branch of the library it was built on Meridian Street the building was built to be a public institution and we intend to make it a public remain a public institution for the next 100 years just have it centenary as they were emptied it out the only thing we really need from the city and is a discussion with someone involved how to proceed with acquiring the building and cost the city nothing to sit down and talk with us we have done all the other work we have preliminary architecture done cooperation we just need this one finally to push forward and see if we can get the thing finalized thank you very much thank you I want to go back to the back of the room to Donna Fohlen please go ahead my name is Donna Fohlen and I'm an artistic director in the Teal tomorrow production which has spent 20 years creating inclusive programming for young people living without disabilities and also the community at large I'm also here representing the BSA of Massachusetts who has a national reputation in creating inclusive arts for children and that's only a small moment for what we do but I only have two minutes I'm here to encourage mayor walks to expand opportunities for artists with disabilities because a lot of the time artists with disabilities are the afterthought or act physical and programmatic access is an afterthought when things are being put together a lot of people here today having accessibility buildings and different things when you're an artist with a disability you need to be able to physically get into the building and be able to use the facilities that also plays down to young people having opportunities they can't go to programs all the programs they would like because they physically can't get in the building or if they can and the bathrooms aren't accessible they really can't go somewhere for five hours and not be able to use the facilities it's really an important thing young people want to be artists current professional artists want to be able to contribute to the community like everybody else does but the opportunities aren't as many and we have a lot to contribute to the community and the broader we can make the conversation the better we can make the creativity so I would also like to say that I would like to speak on this committee and in the walls administration where it relates to creativity more artists with disabilities in the planning process thank you I'm from East Boston and I'm also on the board of the Museum of Realist Arts I want to talk about the rebranding of East Boston we're desperately in need of this because we are compared to Logan Airport in a recent survey that was printed in a national magazine the rest of Boston's areas were portrayed by wonderful cartoon characters and East Boston was a piece of luggage very disappointing I'm also a developer at East Boston and I recently developed 154 Maverick Street which was the former welfare building it is now the house of 19 small businesses which young professionals in the neighborhood have opened trying to get themselves started and built in the community it took 8 years for us to procure the building and then to refit it was a much shorter period but the process was extremely long Zoomix is also another wonderful facility that's in East Boston yes and it took them 15 years to get hold of a derelict city abandoned building that was an eyesore in the neighborhood our library just became empty in October and it's now completely empty it's now collecting trash it's looking awful we need to get that building procured and get going on renovating it so that we can have it open in the next 2 years and not wait 15 years or leave it empty for 25 years Joyce was talking about marketing none of this is going to happen we've got to bring people and awareness to our city and what we're doing and all of the wonderful things that are happening here and we can't do it as individuals we need the city to do this thank you we have the opportunity to speak with you on Gail Zarian from young audiences of Massachusetts we're an arts education organization that's been in Massachusetts for over 50 years bringing our mission is to have every child being engaged in the arts my position young audiences is director of healing arts for kids program and community outreach I really would like to speak to another aspect of what we're doing the arts are important for our own personal growth for the growth of the community we are a city that struggles a lot with violence with disparate communities with people fighting for money and looking for this and looking for that there's one pathway that brings people together and that's through the arts there's so many things about the arts that diminish differences between people gives them an opportunity to work collaboratively together to know one another to meet people of different cultures backgrounds economic levels and I think that the value of the arts and what it can do for our community I want a city that people have voices a place where people can see one another, speak together collaborate with one another get more opportunities for artists to live together for communities to come together through the arts multicultural festivals multicultural education through the arts and schools so I my passion for my life has been arts because I feel that ultimately that's a healing tool for all of us thank you before we have Robin start I'm going to call down our last group Mary Hopkins Ian Dahl Patricia Nelson it's a little bit bigger than five, Alexandra Corporal John Tibbets David Landingen Leel David Robin Bollinger I'm a graduate student at New England Conservatory where I also did my undergrad I feel like I could talk for hours about why the arts are important and the importance of arts education but instead I'll just show you I'd like to play Paganini Caprice number two