 Good morning. Good morning. I've been working large on the executive director of the Museum of African American History in Boston and in Tuckett, and I want to welcome you to the African Meeting House. This is a wonderful event to have here for several reasons, not the least of which is the cultural community coming together to help our leadership understand the importance of this sector and the work that we do within it and beyond. Amen. Yes. The significance of our creative impact, of our impact in preserving the past and moving forward into an incredible future depends upon the work that we do. When I look at the space that we are in, I can only think of the meetings that occurred here that were firsts. It is where the New England Anti-Slavery Society was formed by Lloyd Boyd Garrison and his anti-slavery friends. Because it is an African Meeting House, you might imagine that they were black and we think they were. The first 12 who formed that society here created a space in which they determined that they would end slavery in the nation. I think that they could end slavery in the nation. We can certainly have Boston live up to its cultural history and history. A place of worship, but gathering places and meeting houses were places for all kinds of activities. A school existed here that began in 1798. This building was built in 1806 after an organizing black community determined that they needed their own place to gather, not only for that church work and educational work, but I don't know to present Mozart, set to be the best concert of the year in Boston, held here with an all-black group of musicians and voices to go a long way. It also was a place in which several musical groups, colleges, women's activist groups came here together to be able to work together for a shared goal. As we know, we have come together over many years with a shared goal, and that is to have leaders who share our interests and will look after our institutions, artists, the children who need those institutions so much. So we welcome Mass Creative here today. We welcome Canada while here today and hope that you will return often. We love to partner. And now it is my pleasure to introduce to you the executive director of the Celebrity Series, Gary Dunnett. I just want to take a few moments to talk a little bit about Mass Creative. I'm very proud of the Celebrity Series, the Department of Mass Creative, and create the vote. I think it's an incredibly exciting time to be in the art scene in Boston. I think it creates a vote, and it's just one of the reasons. Celebrity Series is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, and we kicked that off with the first project of Street Canals in Boston. So, frankly, we showed in Boston, and frankly, we showed ourselves what can be accomplished when people work together and when groups work together. It took over 75 individual visual artists and over 80 different cultural arts and community visual organizations to make Street Canals a reality. Now, over the course of the festival, I was powerfully reminded of how much the arts matter in Boston. From all neighborhoods, from all backgrounds, of all ages. Over a half million people stopped at one of our 75 pianos to play, to listen, and to share music with their fellow citizens. Now, one of the things in preparing for that festival, obviously, there were a lot of meetings and a lot of permits that we went through. And the refrain I kept hearing was very much concerned about the panel. What about the animals? What about the animals? And in another side of how much Bostonians value art, we documented three cases of animals. All three were taking a breaking box on the keyboard so they could spend more time playing music. We showed off their connection between the network Street Canals in Boston and this gathering here today. Mass Creative is a statewide data civilization that exists to generate support for the creative, cultural, and arts community across our country. We do so because we believe, in fact, we know that cultural prowess is essential for a vibrant economy, an effective education system, and a healthy community. And we also believe that collective action and genuine collaboration, like the climate we sell off Street Canals, is essential for creating a stronger cultural sector. Now, Creative the Goat was established to ensure that arts and culture, its people, its institutions, and its issues are not ignored in the coming elections. In this case, the elections for the mayor of Boston. It's clearly a unique opportunity and a long-awaited one to engage candidates to listen and learn and assess their position. Creative the Goat sent around a questionnaire called the candidates and received thoughtful responses across a wide range of issues. We then met individually with each candidate with over 20 of our colleagues from various institutions representing individuals and organizations across the city. So I think at this point that the candidates weren't certain that we were deeply interested in building a working collaborative relationship with the next mayor of Boston. Well, Creative the Goat's mayoral candidate arts forum certainly made the point. We had over 700 people in packed apparently, and we left a hundred at the door trying to get in because we had no other space. I think it was a great opportunity to listen to all the candidates and hear their positions and hear their case from why we should be the next mayor. So now, we progress, and we're down to the final two candidates. Congratulations to the candidates. I'd like to turn the podium over to Joyce Goldhaven, an arts and media award-winning arts and entertainment critic, president of the Boston Theatre Critics Association, and founder of Joyce's Choices. Oh, you know, I easily can breathe the arts as you all do in this room. So, oh, what a beautiful morning this is. We are all so thrilled that we have two candidates for mayor, Marty Walsh and John Connolly, who have already raised the bar, what we can expect in this city in terms of its commitment to arts, culture, and creativity and this community. Today, the work of the Great Brook Coalition has earned unprecedented commitments from these candidates to do the following. Appoint a cabinet-level position for the city of Boston dedicated to arts and culture. To integrate arts and cultural policy plans into city planning and city development. To invest in arts and cultural institutions. To develop a city-wide strategic cultural policy. To lead, by example, by convening community leaders and attending events. And we are having this forum here so that we can dig a little deeper into the pit, talk specifics, and we can find out more of the candidates about how they plan to turn their ideas into concrete reality. And there can be a huge gap there. So, we're going to try to find out what some of the bridge work is. We want to thank Marty Walsh so much for being here today. Our state representative and candidate for mayor of Boston. We know this must be the first of the 20 events you've got today. So, we're very grateful that you've taken time. Isn't that right? Amazing. Thanks for taking the time. It takes incredible determination and tenacity to pursue elected office in this town. Thank you to the folks of the Rockworth the African Meeting House for making this historic and their beautiful space a bit older to the arts and cultural. And then we're going to open this up for conversation. Don't hold back. If Marty has an answer, just grill it. He's ready. He's ready to go. Marty. Thank you very much. I'm sorry to be too delicious for a minute. So, you have a few notes here that I want on that one. Not that one, but just let me say something. Oh, this is great. This building is magnificent. I was here earlier in the campaign. And the history and everything of this building is just incredible. I'm fortunate enough and blessed to work up the street with the Golden Dawn in this whole area, the history of this area. It's just unbelievable. First of all, I want to thank National Creative and the forum that you had is incredible. The amount of people, I actually stuck a few people in it. They were walking up the stairs, and they said, well, I can't get in. And I said, well, you're with me. And they weren't even from Boston. And they walked in with me into the forum. And it was really incredible, the amount of people. So I want to thank you for that. I also want to thank National Creative. The first time that we had a meeting, and I've said it a couple of times, I went into the meeting and we talked about some of the issues of where I stand on my policy. That's what I call my policy for now. And, you know, I said it's a work of progress for learning. And as the campaign has gone on, really I've had the chance to, every discussion that I have in this campaign, when I talk about acts, heads nod. When I'm in the meeting talking about youth violence, we talk about bringing acts back and working with it to take care of violence, heads nod. When I'm talking to senior citizens, I've had a coffee out and talking about bringing acts back to the schools, heads nod. When I'm talking to the business community about creating a building in Boston and talking about having public art and more acts facing, heads nod. Wherever I go on this campaign, when I talk about the acts, it's the only issue that you get a reaction out of somebody in the room when you bring up a different issue. It's the only issue. And it was incredible. And that says a lot to where we are. Under my administration, I want to make sure we have an actual innocence to the Boston. It's extremely important now. Justal Haywood, who I just love being a watch on TV forever, I love when you're doing this stuff, it's unbelievable. You know, I know what Justal Haywood does today. And she mentioned today a few things about, in my campaign, we were the first candidate to talk about creating a capital-level position for the exhibition. And when I said that, it was the right thing to say. And I had a lot of people pushing me that way. When I say that today, it has a whole different meaning to me. It has a whole different meaning to me. Because yesterday, we had to build a Boston Economic Development Plan for the future of our city. And when I decided that this campaign could talk, I talked about arts and tourism. You know, we're going to create it. It's straight from the arts and tourism, arts and tourism, arts and tourism. And then as we wanted this campaign, I understood there's a huge difference. You know, I can't say that I intend to save you, you know, five months ago that I understood everything about the arts community. And I can't stand up here today and tell you the same thing. But I certainly do recognize there's a big difference. And what we did yesterday, as we're creating this new Economic Development Office, we're putting tourism in there. Tourism belongs in there because it's an economic engine for the city of Boston. And we're going to partner the arts commissioner with this capital-level Economic Development so they can work together. And we can be able to tell a story to the arts through developments. We can tell a story to the arts through my kids commissioner and clan, how do we deal with crime on the street? How do we deal with the addiction industry? How do we deal with the issue of our senior tech programs? How do we deal to make sure that our wonderful institutions in the city are able to thrive and move on? How are we going to be able to access our institutions that we have in the city to make sure that it's free for young people to get into those museums? You know, I understand that in Boston, in every major city in the world, for every young investor, we get six back. So when I was asked the question three or four months ago, when we sat down in the office and said, you're willing to invest in putting the arts in the line item in the budget, I said, well, we ought to look at it. And when you're looking at this now, and you're saying, we're getting six dollars back for every job, the commitment is there for me. I am going to make sure that there is a line item in the city budget for the arts in the city of Boston. We also want to make sure that arts are accessible in all communities and in the neighborhood. When I started this campaign, the very first place that I took my campaign office was the Strand Theater. And I believe it was open three or four days a week maybe. We need to open that building more and we need to take our institutions like that and open it up so we can really allow young people and elderly people and middle-aged people to express themselves. So my commitment is when I become like, when I go out to the United States, Boston, you know, I know we have the program in the Strand now, but I want to utilize the Strand and try and make that building open 18 hours a day. And you're not just a Strand for other babies in our neighborhoods. I want to look at schools. I want to open a school space at night to make sure that we can use the schools for our programs. And some of those, some of the schools we do have theaters, but we have a plan in my campaign to build new schools in the city of Boston and use the meals tax and use the school building authority in the state to be able to create new schools in Boston. And as we create those new schools in Boston, design them so we can design theaters in those schools. So when we talk about having a true program in our schools for the kids and for the community, there's those programs are there. And those are things that we, as we're moving forward here in the Washington administration, we're going to start to begin to focus and make sure that's part of that. I also think it's important when we talk about arts in schools, we talk about dancing. Bringing dancing into our schools. Because it's physical education. It's an opportunity, it's an opportunity for us to make sure that our kids can get physical education while they're also trusting themselves while they're also learning things about their culture and arts and things like that. It's an important piece of that. The arts is an economic engine for Boston. They're one of the big three. Billion dollar industry here in Boston. And one of the candidates who was running for mayor who is supporting me, John Byros, in his restaurant, he is live music in his restaurant. And when you look around the city of Boston, I believe there are maybe three venues today, maybe four, that have live music. We should look at that and bring that back to our neighborhoods. Again, another way for the young artists to inspire people to express themselves. Housing co-ops. We have a plan on the housing. That is, the four-point channel residents that met with them. We went down and talked about years ago how we all knew this. There was not a plan, but there was a pretty decent amount of our space in our city, as far as housing. We don't have that today. We have to be creative. We have to be creative on how we're going to be able to do this. So we have a plan about co-ops and housing co-ops and being able to turn some of our buildings in Boston that are empty now that are sitting there, how can we turn to living space and work space. And actually, we expanded that into start-up incubator space for venture capital companies. We talk about that, how do we create, taking that idea that the arts community has and turn it into using the individual's community. And that's what we want to do, share the ideas. Mass cultural grants. The thing that I knew about the most as far as why I started this campaign, I know about it the most because the Mass Cultural Society would come into my office all the time and say, you have to file a amendment to get more money, so I knew that. I knew how that works. But we need to make sure that only how it works, we're going to make sure that the city is stepping up to the plate to match the grants and the more money that we can get in, we've got to try to push mass cultural. That's a different issue for a different day and we have to fight it up in the snow. And we will as the economy turns around, we will fight that. I want to meet you. Just a couple of things that I don't need to read off and I just want to tell you a couple of things that we're talking about in our office. We're going to create an office of cultural affairs headed by a commissioner. The office is going to provide services for artists and art institutions in many forms. The office is going to work closely with the City of Boston economic development authority which will house tourism, creative economy in Boston's film office. So that's what we talked about yesterday created. The new PRA will go on creating. We're going to change the structure of it. The arts community is going to be working with that office to be able to enhance the arts in our city of Boston. And when they say the arts, they're talking in all forms. We will hire a chief development officer to seek, support brands and sponsorship opportunities. We want to be able to create an opportunity in the City of Boston where right now they're working sidewalls where people are going for brands. Each 80's if the police goes to their own brands and different folks go to their own brands we want to be able to put a centralized office in it so we can continue to go for brands and also provide assistance for nonprofits that need help with getting grants because some nonprofits don't have grant writers. And that's how you get your money and that's the way we're able to do that. The Ken Manchin Center Authority of Boston gives away small brands. $5,000 sometimes. Some programs take advantage of it. I know medicine will take advantage of it. Some other churches like programs take advantage of it. That's small money, but it's big money. $5,000 grant for some programs is huge money. So we want to be able to assist the different programs around the City of Boston. We also want either to mention necessarily we want to make sure there are robust visa programs in the city, in schools. That's an important piece. I talk about medicine all the time because of the kids. That's my connection to medicine. I know Michael as well, Michael's here. But it's the kids. I'm in recovery. Oftentimes, when these young people are in recovery and they go to medicine well and they're doing different things they made a book for me about their feelings, expressed themselves about when they first got sober they did it specifically for me because they knew I was in the program and when they were doing it they talked about the feelings they had when they entered the program desperation, sadness thoughts that aren't normal thoughts and as they went to a book the book was talking about recovery and they talked about forgiveness and understanding and duality and then at the end of the book they talked about happiness being able to achieve whatever they want and this is pride. That's telling a story. That's what I know about the arts community the most is what I watch those young people go through that when you put a needle in their eye or shoot a camera in their eye and then after they get into the program get into recovery, get into the program that needle thought is not there anymore and if it is there they think about accomplishments they've made and when I started this campaign that was my thought process as far as knowing the arts completely and learning to open up and that's why we're pushing I think such a great plan together we're going to support the Washington Youth Fund and arts and cultural organizations to offer teens some employment during this campaign I got a chance to go to the Wayne Theater and tour the land and went downstairs and I saw the kids downstairs at the Wayne Theater, kids from Georgia from Roxbury that part not a pan it was about 35 or 40 kids in the program and you know what they were doing they were expressing themselves that might have been the only time some of those kids have ever walked into the Wayne Theater I told the story of walking into the Wayne Theater at the mass creative meeting and I think people thought I was crazy I went to the theater, it was great I went to see Jersey Boys and I went to see Lion King, they were nice people it was great, you really are a good out guy I found out afterwards but I went downstairs and I saw the kids expressing themselves being able to dance, they can't dance in the street corner I couldn't dance in the street corner I grew up in Georgia but we didn't dance in the street corner we didn't sing, you know we didn't express ourselves we were paying on the corner and it's important for us to be able to allow those opportunities I'll be done in a second so anyone can answer your questions we want to create an artist person issue to address artist occupational health needs professional development affordable artist space fair trade in case you haven't heard every now and then references the fact that I might have been part of the union or point ok so so I'm going away on my own in here I'm going to ensure that the city abides by fair labor standards that artists receive fair compensation for the work and services when engaging the city all the papers that can train me is a person fighting for benefits for work class people there's one I'm sorry about that a couple more quick things elder affairs we need to make sure we collaborate with elder affairs we need to make sure that particularly for folks in mid and late life careers in the arts we need to be able to add that construction to that program I know that elder affairs does date today we need to continue that the new office that we're going to create we're going to partner with the cultural affairs to prioritize the role of the Boston film sector one area in the city of Boston there's a federal legislature that allowed to bring more films into Boston and in the film industry coming into my office the state are saying this is great but we can't get a primary to close the street down and blow up power so if something was to blow up power we'd be in another movie let's do it but we've got to be more open simply having it is fine but we need to make sure we push back that's the way of selling our city we're going to conduct a needs assessment of cultural assets and that's very important because that doesn't happen enough in Boston we're going to support dynamic public arts in the around program in the parks we're going to take parks and recreation we're going to put recreation back in the parks that's where it belongs and now the city has a program called Arts in the Park and I believe it's a traveling truck that goes to different parks and that's the arts so they're going to have a park for a night I want to be able to say how can we make sure we have arts in every park in our city some of you better than others but we need to make sure we promote that and push that because that tells the story of my neighborhoods I don't want to say a couple of things give me one more second I want to establish strong relationships with our sister cities and I think that's extremely important you know at the farm they ask you give me a city in the country give me a city that you would look at to possibly sell some ideas and Mike Ross was sitting to my right and Mike actually said he felt bad for me so he was going to use both of his things to me and give me something I swear to God and I said Montreal and he looked at me and he says what the hell did you come up with that and I said build my home run and you know the other important is that we have great people like Mike Ross in this race who truly understand that it was a champion for a lot of people and that's important as well but we're able to work on it and take each other's ideas of work and talk about how we move our city forward and make sure I get it all I'm sure I'll be asked one thing that I think Mike knows about one other thing that I just want to mention here for a minute is in this race when it started there's a lot of discussion about the opportunities in the city of Boston and certain neighborhoods get more opportunity than other neighborhoods but we need to make sure when we talk about our policy and talk about future artists that we include the entire city of Boston not just some parts of Boston we need to make sure that in the communities of color that the opportunities are the same as everywhere else whether you want to say that is because as this campaign has gone on we understand that the disparity between people between neighborhoods and yesterday I was at the Chamber of Commerce breakfast and I was asked the question about what's the diversity of my office going to look like what's the diversity of my office going on and of course the answer is my cabinet is going to be made out of 50% people of color because that's the city of Boston and then we talk about what's my administration underneath in the city of Boston we have 64 positions right now of management 4 people of color in those 64 positions so we are going to make changes I don't know how to achieve diversity in the city of Boston to force me to push me not force me to make sure that we make those changes but yesterday I'm at the Chamber of Commerce and somebody asked me a question they were really concerned about the diversity of the city so they said what are you going to do with diversity in the workforce in the city and I said well not only am I going to change the diversity of the workforce in the city I'm going to change the diversity of the workforce in the business community and there was a lot of people and he said I've seen a lot I've joked some people might have been there and I don't want to but you know truly we have to make sure that this city is open for business because the arts are open to culture I'm getting the opportunity right here we're going to take some questions and I know you'll be happy for a short time just to begin you mentioned creating an office of arts and culture a commission for arts and culture can you be more specific about the timeline you had in mind when that happened within the first six months how do you see some of these specifics rolling out the way this is going to happen is I'm intending on getting elected Mayor of Boston on the 5th November 6 after the day after the primary I was at the station at 5.30 in the morning because they wanted to film me for TV so that was the day after the election this day I'm going to get elected hopefully November 5th the next day I will not be at the station at 5.30 in the morning I'll be there later on but I intend on after I get elected putting together my transition team timeline within the first 30 days of taking over this mayor's office particularly the cabinet having people in place so we can keep the ground running through the transition we'll talk about how we're going to move into different areas and how we're going to merge different departments but that will be done from the 6th of November through the January 6th and then we'll be working on getting the ground running day one and do the cabinet position for arts and culture to work questions Ron if you could be a little more specific about this commissioner and let's say what would be the top 3 tasks that the commissioner would be having to undertake as soon as he or she gets involved and where is that specifically to get and I understand well the commissioner would be at the cabinet level so we're going to have cabinet meetings every week they're going to be sitting in the mayor's office talking about other people meaning the police commissioner, fight commissioner whatever the cabinet looks like so they're going to be sitting on the meeting specifically the first thing that the commissioner is going to be responsible for doing is beginning and working on the budget the budget is going to be in April so we're going to be able to have to create the new budget as we're putting this budget together whatever the number is going to be for the arts I added in the budget we're going to begin working on that on a small scale as far as how we're going to the city is going to set up a partnership with the community and how that can work meaning access to the mayor's office creating some type of council where the arts community in Boston will have a meeting with the commissioner to build that relationship so that there's a direct line into the mayor's office that's the second piece as far as specifically who's going to be on it it's going to be opened up one of the things that people are concerned about here is how to process and not having to see the table this is going to actually make the see the table so there's discussions on putting the budget together and how we're going to implement some of the programming in the high schools in the schools and how we're going to carry that stuff out and the third piece is the commissioner is going to be an ambassador to Boston so that person I'm expecting that person to tour around the country to work and take best practices and take some ideas on how we can best capitalize and work our arts community together so that person is actually going to have real concrete this isn't a figurehead this is a capital level position just like mayor and art development the officer is going to be responsible for going on and attracting new businesses to Boston this person is going to be going on to work on our program bringing arts, different arts programs to Boston, different cultures and everything that we want to do next question I'm reporter for second director Boston I'd like to know if you can keep Boston thriving and growing in the area of Boston I represent a lot of independent artists in small companies and there's been a concern amongst them about joining that search for the smallest amount of money thank you, yesterday we had a new plan for the we know the BRA so we have the BRA in Boston we're going to change that BRA we're going to call the Boston Economic Development Authority we are going to take D&D and put it under this agency we're going to take the BRA and the EVIC merged it together into one agency they're going to all be under this director so all of our development and planning in the city of Boston any type of construction is going to be housed under this project we're going to put arts tourism is going to be under this so any development any type of economic engine for Boston is going to be put under this department arts and culture is one second it's an own separate independent agency the only relationship between the two is the capital level positions so the cabinet we're going to have the same type of authority the capital level folks are going to be sitting in rooms together talking about how they can work off each other how they can feed off each other as we're doing developments in the city of Boston we'll just use public art for a second as we're doing developments the Economic Development Agency director with the staff on it will be talking about arts how do we allow more space for public art but they're going to be working with the arts they're very different, they're separate they're not together and in order to do what we want to accomplish what you have to do is down it won't happen as quickly as the capital level position is going to happen immediately it won't happen as quickly because we have to go to a legislative process to change we're also going to put tournaments on the boards of the Economic Development two or five year tournaments that's it and then we bring in new people it's a clean break, it's a good break it's the right break he's a great man but it's like he's in a situation he's in a situation for three more months he won't be in a situation you know, I think one of the we're not really creating the whole agency we have the agency there we're looking at and the discussion has been preliminary before I actually take over the manager the figure that people have been asking is one percent of the budget so we're going to look at that one percent of the budget depending on the number we have to, I can't tell you that today I think the budget this year was $2.4 billion, $2.5 billion so one percent of that or depending on assuming revenue is going to go up so it can be a little higher than that we're looking at actually really creating that I know that the office today can't do anything because they have to depend upon grants and people paying for things and I understand that today it has to be different than that that money that they'll get will allow the office commission to actually build an office and that's what we're talking about going back and reaching out to people today because you only want for a simple two people you're able to do that with satisfaction and you're able to bring people in to really impact what you're saying so we're going to look at that also there's going to be ways in which we'll leverage other money in the city whether it's through linkage or partnerships I think when I mentioned this I made a mistake I think the day that the cultural when I talked about you know what's happened to our museums here in Boston there are plenty of philanthropists in city of Boston who want to invest in the arts and I think when people see that Boston is truly investing in the arts we say our partnerships for the project one of the things we'd love to see is how all the candidates started to feed on each other's ideas and that sort of really exciting arts vision started to come out but now I'm wondering how do you differentiate yourself from John Connolly because what you're both saying is very exciting and interesting I don't know what John's saying I mean when I'm out on the game nature wherever I go I talk about that I don't always hear something he's out there talking I guess about it I really don't know how it's different I certainly know that when I talk about what I've talked about today I haven't heard any other candidate talk about on the campaign trail maybe when you're in a room more than me saying some of the similar things but it's going to be about the human being I know on my campaign John Barros supported my campaign to say John is very involved in making sure I'm talking about the art community that they've joined the campaign because they believe in the mission what we're talking about I really can't comment on what John is doing all I know is that I'm making my commitment I'm a person who keeps his word somebody backs up what he does and you know I do talk about this record of accomplishment my record of accomplishment in the art community is fighting for mass control but it's a sort of an ass to do as a mass city Boston understanding what the art community is about I'm talking about taking Boston into the 21st century I know what in the 21st century but I'm talking about taking Boston into the 21st century there's a lot of ways to do it so I'm sorry my words are so inspiring see that's the difference right there we're going to take one more yeah sure so that art can transform communities now the key is specifically how are you going to create an expanded vision for the arts and how arts can be present in the community so art isn't just about the other thing it's about the African community the art just isn't about I mean in case at this point we lost our community clearly it is and I've stated that by the capital level position I mean I'm going to depend upon my capital level position person who I hope I know who it is who's going to take that those ideas that work with the community to be able to expand I mean when I talk about vision I'm going to appoint a police commissioner I don't know how to be a police officer so I'm going to allow that person and be the police commissioner superintendent of schools I'm not a teacher I'm going to make sure that superintendent of schools is taking my vision and what the vision of improving every school in the city of Austin and take that I'm not a developer so my economic development officer the capital level position is going to take that the same for the arts that the vision is big