November 19, 2025 — Boulder Arts Commission Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:00] Okay, we are recording all the older artists, which I'm gonna be here. It is Wednesday, November… excuse me, November 19th. 3.25, then I will hold rolls. Theraportisone? is not here yet? Korea goal? Here. Jeffrey Catch? Resent. Here. Joe Katzenberger? Here. Caroline Kurt? Here. Gary Vinay is not here. The outlet? Good to meet you. Alright, I will, hand the meeting over to Commissioner, Champser for, particular items. Great! I'll read the land acknowledgement first. The City of Boulder acknowledges the City is on the ancestral homelands and unceded territory of Indigenous peoples who have traversed, lived in, and stored in lands in the Boulder Valley since time immemorial.

[1:02] Those Indigenous nations include the Apache, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, Pawnee. Shoshone, Sioux, and Ute. The City of Boulder recognizes that those now living and working on these ancestral lands have a responsibility to acknowledge and address the past, and must work to build a more just future. So, with that, I'd like to call us to order for the November 19th meeting of the Boulder Arts Commission. And we'll start with the approval of the agenda. Homo fit group. Second. We'll take it. Great. All in favor? Agenda, great, unanimous. Moving to the approval of last month's retreat minutes, which were in the packet. Anybody like to make a motion to move, or any changes to those minutes?

[2:02] Thank you, bro. Second. I'll second it. All in favor? Unanimous, thank you. Do we have anybody online for public participation? If anyone online would like to join public participation and make a comment, please raise your hand now. I see no hands on mine. Great, thank you. We did have one person signed up for public comments, and I know that she was going to give an update on a grant that some of us were interested in hearing, so we'll move back to that if… if they show up. All right, is… do we have everybody that we're anticipating for the… Yeah, perfect. We're ready for the Boulder Arts Blueprint. We have a half an hour for you guys. Thanks for having us! Yeah. Hi, welcome! Sure, yeah, Phil and Abby, are here from Fabazios Projects.

[3:05] You saw them online last time, and now it's, like, reversed for you, Jeffrey, that you were in person. So we've invited them back to talk a little bit more about, the vision in particular, since you gave some excellent input, thank you, at the retreat. And, just in case you wanted to talk with them about anything before the Bootman Town Hall tomorrow, too, I know, the line's traveling, or if you have any other thoughts or input, this is a good time to give it to them now that we are all together. Please, welcome. Hey, thanks! Last time we were all together, we did a little bit of call writing. everybody was here for that, right? There was a lot of ideas, and sticky notes, and words, and in the past couple weeks, along with Lauren and her team, we tried to Synthesize that into some kind of a statement.

[4:04] It's hard work. Partly because, as I think we talked about last time. At a certain level of abstraction, it all starts sounding the same. I sent Lauren a sample, vision statement from Cook County, Illinois, which just did a vision statement. And man, it was like playing word bingo, like, they checked each one. equitable, sustainable, vibrant, inclusive, live, learn, work, play, leverage, advance, economic, physical, social. Know what I mean? So, we tried to make it a little bit more meaningful. There were a few ideas that you shared with us that felt really… special to Boulder. unusual, and we wanted to capture that as well. So, in the coming few minutes, we hope to share with you that high-level synthesis, and then I invite you all to do another round of goal creation.

[5:09] We'll doodle, we'll put some sticky notes, Abby's going to guide us through that exercise. That sound okay, then? maybe first, I'll do a… I'll do a kind of a… dramatic reading. Maybe I'll ask someone, it doesn't be that dramatic reading. Of some of the top lines that came out for our conversation last time. I'll just mention that what… the one thing that really, really stuck with us that you told us last time, y'all, was, the idea of confidence. Creative confidence. Do you remember that thread? We should walk with confidence kind of thing. Believe in ourselves. That's not something that comes up in every conversation. It felt really important, really special, so we also tried to privilege that in the copied speaking statement. And the other thing that we heard very clearly from you and from your colleagues around Boulder was that

[6:05] The arts are… Central to the identity of the city. Which, say, you know, it's not like, it's not just one of the many things, it's not a sideshow, it's not a nice-to-have. Boulder is, because it was published. Remember that? Yeah. Okay, just making sure it all tracks. And it was also very funny that that discussion came on the heels of another presenter last time, who, of course, told us that cultural activity generates as much, if not more, revenue than snow sports. That feels important, just highlight. It's not exactly a vision statement kind of a thing to say. Okay, so… I mean, should we ask for a volunteer? Yeah. Quick reading? We should. And what are they reading, exactly? Is this… is it that line?

[7:02] So, if we can have… yeah, let's start there. So, if we could have, a brave volunteer… read our draft vision statement as dramatically or undramatically as you would like. It's up to you. Wow, don't all go and watch. I would do that teacher thing where I'm like, if no one volunteers, I'm gonna have to pick someone. Someone who's taking improv classes. All right, Commissioners. All right, I'll do it. I'll be here. Culture is central to Boulder's identity. Here, creativity is valued, celebrated. and comfortable with risk. Here, culture bearers find supports and investment, and residents encounter creativity in their daily lives. The creative… the creative ecosystem is confident in its value and its future.

[8:02] Okay, thank you. White culture bearers. Culture bearers. I know, did you notice how we don't do, like, a whole lot of, like, We don't say arts and culture as a formulation, we say creative ecosystem. That also came through pretty clearly in our conversations here. Great. So, Carolyn, thank you so much. Melissa, if you can actually, like, move over to the right. Yeah, great, thank you. So, we… now that we've taken a high-level look at the vision statement, let's break down a little bit where it came from. So, we have identified five main themes that keep coming up over and over again for what community members look for the future of Boulder to be. So, welcoming, accessible, open to all. Great. Confident in its own value, and comfortable with risk. So, again, that risk-taking, that creative confidence.

[9:02] Where art and culture is central to Boulder's identity. Where there is cooperation, collaboration across the sectors, they all pull in the same direction. And then, finally, artists and culture makers are seen and supported. Awesome. All right, Melissa, you can go back to the vision statement, please. So the way that we started to attack this was, we initially came up with a sentence, maybe a sentence and a half-ish, but roughly about a sentence for each of those different beats. Then we included a summary theme, or excuse me, a summary sentence at the end to tie everything up. Then we realized, okay, that vision statement was not written at a 6th to 8th grade reading level. So, we used lovely tools on the internet to help us simplify the language so that way it's more accessible and more approachable, which is generally what you see in front of you. Our goal here today is, knowing that this is still a little bit long than the city may like, we're trying to prioritize what people really, really want to come forward.

[10:12] And so, of these themes, which are access, cooperation. this idea of the arts being central to identity, broad support, creative competence, again, these things we've talked about over and over again. Either what are the most important to you that really should come through, or what are additional elements of those themes that aren't coming out right now in the current vision? That is the high-level question, the high-level activity. Just to… Just to save a few trees, we didn't want to print multiple boards, since we're going to be using this tomorrow, so I am more than happy to capture people's ideas here on post-it notes. Then we can take those post-it notes down, I can put them in a baggie and, like, keep them as, like, this team. And then for anyone who's online, you are more than welcome to put your thoughts into the chat. My computer is logged into the chat, so I can copy and save all

[11:09] All of those thoughts and all of those ideas. And I think… That's all I really want to say. Yeah. So I guess the first question is, initially, how does this draft vision statement hit us? What do we like? What do we love? And then we can start, or find, what do we not love so much? And then, if we want to start getting into those themes again, identifying which ones are bold, underline, underscore, we definitely want to have, and any other additional… Yes, Sarah. Does culture bearers include visitors? Like, I see it seeing our residents, but I don't know if those are being mentioned. We can call that out specifically. Why'd you ask? What do you want to say to them?

[12:00] I mean, just the themes that, like, they would be welcomed here, and also, I'd be surprised at, like, the quality of the talent. Well, maybe that puts it down too much foot, anyway. We are proud to show visitors the talent. The thing that's striking me right now, that keeps tickling my mind, is… Leading with culture is central, and then my brain keeps going, yeah, but who's culture? And maybe there's something to be teased out in there, that it's, like. You know, invites a little cultural perspectives, in a way. The question is, whose culture? If we leave that off, what does it suggest? In my mind, it, like… Done. there's a piece of me that thinks… that feels like maybe this could be read as, like, oh yeah, the ingrained white culture. That's central. We'll keep that as our identity. Great, cool.

[13:02] We don't have the greatest history with that. This is kind of related. I was trying to think about how it would feel to read this as somebody outside of any kind of city involvement, and it would… I don't know, I have a feeling it might be like, cool, great. But there's no accountability. Like… because of city support, the creative ecosystem is confident, or something like that, that might… that… places, like. a degree of accountability on… Yeah, action-oriented. It's stating, like, this is how it is without, like, anything about, like, how we got here or where we want to go in the future. Or, like, how we want to become this. I see your hand up, Jeffrey. Yeah, and I kind of echo… echo that in the sense that I'm not seeing…

[14:01] you know, not necessarily the word impact, but even the implication of impact. And I guess you could say it's confident in its value and its future, but what does it currently bring, and what can it bring To the community based on the investment that's put in it, and what does it give back to the community as far as economic vitality and just being a better society. So maybe… maybe it's something as simple as taking the word value and putting in a buzzword and adding value, and putting value add, or something like that, but it's… the impact seems to be… Not there. Just so I'm clear, you're suggesting that… that would clarify what kind of value it brings, like economic value, like, I don't know, quality of life value, is that… is that kind of where you're going with this? Well, I think then that gets too lengthy, but I think there needs to be a spotlight on… on that, that…

[15:04] There is impact, and… and that it is, Recognized. Yeah, it's one thing to note, of course, the division is, you know, it's meant to describe a future state, so it's not… it's not about, like. the steps that we get there, because that's actually what the blueprint is. Vision goes as a kind of a headline on that. So the blueprint's job is to tell you exactly how to get there, but this is a description Of how we can feel, how the arts cultural ecosystem feels, and 10 years. Just as a reminder. My favorite part is definitely the encounter creativity in their daily lives. Yeah. I love that that's highlighted. I love that sentence, too, to be honest. Yeah. It feels really good, so… yeah. And then, this is just… this is a nitpick, but in here, creativity is valued, celebrated, and comfort risk. Valued and celebrated are things that are happening to it, comforted risk is something it's doing.

[16:07] Grab our check. Yeah, sorry. Who confronts a subordinate clause? So, do you have a suggestion? A reader, sorry, of how you would like to rewrite that section? I will ponder that. I'll get back to you every time. Yeah. I'm struggling with this, so hopefully struggling too, it's comfortable at risk, feels like. isn't risk… I mean, risk is supposed to be challenging, but now we're saying that something's odd about the comfort next to each other. I think our initial… draft, I think Philip had risk-taking as, like, the thing, and I… and I believe that it got changed to comfortable with risk when we tried to bring it to a different accessibility level. So some of these things, I think it's just important to have the conversation around, not which one is more important, because we know that they're both equally important, but sometimes those are, like.

[17:12] The grammatical things that we have to… wrestle with. Other words I've heard were innovation, or innovative, or virtually progressive. I mean, I don't… So I guess we could just change the words to… Yeah. The risk-taking has come up so much in this process, like, both have a… Like, a fundamental… quality of the greater because of the year, but also as an aspiration. Like, people fret about using that, too. You know, becoming risk-averse. And so, it feels like a really important thing to keep coming back to. And yeah, there are different ways to talk about, right? Like, innovation, sometimes we talk about that, just, like, greater confidence, but I think it's worth the risk in there as a guy.

[18:08] Just like that. nice, unusual, specific word there. I wonder if that portion… Would make more sense in the last statement. But the creative ecosystem. is confidence, value, future, and comfortable difference. Yeah. ecosystem is comfortable with risk. Right. Yeah. Describes with confidence and takes risks, kind of thing. I like their wine. Because it is, like, ending a… landing on that might be, really powerful. I like that. What's that the word? I was just pointing out the experimentation and innovation. It's right here.

[19:00] Because we're also looking to shorten this, are there any sentences, clauses, or parts where you're like, I don't really know if we need that? Well, valued and celebrated seem very similar. Yeah. Creativity is valued and celebrated. True. I don't know if one word's better than the other, or if there's, like, a secret third word, you know, maybe that idea can tie into what Joe was saying, like, maybe you swap out valued as, like, supported by this, you know, like… Yeah. supported by the city, and some better word than that. Okay. I have to say I like it a lot. We have a… Sorry, I've talked so much, like, I also… You were in the brainstorming session, so yeah, you have the inside piece. Well, we did have a version of this, still have a version of the song right, that is pretty… that has, like, specific sentence about support for the arts. Partly because that's really the point of the Blueprint, is to generate support, so we're, like, constantly obsessing over it, but it was something like…

[20:01] you know, it'll be supported, invested in by, public sector and by market forces, right? Trying to identify that. Like, we actually want artists lively, but it's to come from resources, but that's a little too specific, maybe, yeah. So anyway. So that got dropped off, as did, by the way, I think, unfortunately, the idea of the creative sector being super cooperative and collaborative. So that's also not really reflected here. I felt maybe, like, that was a shooting at the leaf. But it is a… it's a thing that's developed a bunch. So, part of the discussions for this has been that City of Boulder, traditionally, like the Comprehensive Plan, the City itself, our previous social plan, which was super successful. Not sure. But… It was… it'll be, like, one sentence vision, and then you can, like, build out the rest. I feel like maybe the work that they had done with the more detailed, and honestly just more, not sixth to 8th grade reading level, could be an addendum to a one or two sentence vision, right? So think of it like that, like, we should have this, like, one powerful sentence that's, like, this is it, and then we can add in

[21:22] The secondary. Longer description that includes those kind of details, right? that's why it's getting… it's, like, chopping in to get, like, to getting to this, like, higher level, right? Which is super hard, so thank you. I think that creativity could go into the first sentence. Culture and creativity are sensible to build those identities. Culture and creativity… oh, that's cool, I like that. And I think that that kind of pulls it away from the, like… Away from the thing that I was rubbing up against. Yeah. Wow. I mean, while we're keeping an eye on our workout, we can also drop culture from that first statement. That really feels like a particularly tricky work, so creativity is.

[22:09] Or legal creativity. Gotcha. Our creative culture. I like the idea of having culture in here toward the meaning that is within our scope of work, you know, because we've got history and other aspects that aren't necessarily artistic creativity. Right, that's true. That's true. What do you guys think about the creative ecosystem? Is that, like, too nerdy? Lauren is always our, like, our, our, our nerdy, watchdog. For the public. No, thank you for doing that. Nerdy slash, It's actually, I mean, our communications person is so good about making sure that we're thinking in 6th to 8th grade reading level, 6 to 8th grade reading level, right? So, because we do want everybody to feel like they can understand this while looking at, so that's a tough one for me, because I… we go between, like, we want to be the most explicit about what we're saying.

[23:12] Which would be the ecosystem? And then, is somebody from the general public that comes off the street, are they going to understand that? Is that going to be inspiring to them? Is it in a vision statement, not talking about the rest of the plan, which we'll have to use, like, some more against. I'm thinking even more than being inspiring. It should be, you know, aspirational, because this is, you know, this is what we're wanting and envisioning in 10 years. So, I like it. I like the word. I understand what you're saying about the approachability of it. And maybe we can tie in another thought I heard by By replacing it with community? creative community. And then that kind of also implies some… Togetherness and collaboration, and…

[24:02] But an ecosystem also… an ecosystem, suggests that there… not only other people creating and producing, there are people enjoying and actually, you know, consuming the product, for lack of a better word. And so that's the idea where it's everything, not just the artists. Yeah. Yeah, and to me, ecosystem also implies that it's interdependent, and its health is reliant on equal and balance. I love the work, but I do get that it's a… From a health standpoint. Well, then perhaps we should talk to BVSD about their grade, their… their… their vocabulary. Yeah, I like that. That's, that might be… I mean, it's also a little polish the latter. Yeah, I'm going back, or I keep thinking, like, the…

[25:04] oh my gosh, biological terms, right? So, like, habitat, which may not be the right fit, or, environment maybe gets to that interdependency… I don't know if any of those bring us in any direction. Beautiful. I mean, creative ecosystem is a… is a turtle barn, right? It's like a… it's a… it's a piece of… it's a jar, there's a piece of, like, professional garden, which we generally try to stay from, but it is… it, like… It defines the condition that we want to see. So that's… I think that's the one we sort of just kept leaping in at. Oh, man, something about it. Does it help at all to say the creed of the college? No. Right, I like it. That might… that word might get flagged, and creative bio. My bio! The creative bio.

[26:10] And just wanna… No, we probably have about, like, 2 more minutes left, I wanna keep y'all on time. We started at about 5 mattresses. Oh, 7 bedrooms. Luxury. And maybe this question is going to be a little hard to answer, but… How would you fill in the blank? We are X percent of the way there. So this vision statement is… yeah, sorry, Philip, I'm going… right, like, are we… Are we really getting there? Are we close? Are we 80% of the way there? I hope… Dear God, we're not 30 or 20, but high level, how does it kind of hit you? Over 75. I was gonna say, like, 75? I just, I want to say, like, maybe instead of culture is central, culture… because I know culture and creativity is integral, maybe, instead of central?

[27:04] Central just seems more, like, location-based. Wait, say that again, please? Not central to what? Integral? Integral. Yeah. you know, Over the past few years, people have been using center as a verb, which I find slightly awkward, but it might actually work, and I say, right? Center, arts and culture, or culture creativity. I don't know. What about core? That might be more approachable. Whoa! Alright, we like homework. I like those kinds of words, like, more than I like the Latin, like… Yeah. swear having this camera. Yeah, yeah! Walls and the grooves. The core is good. A core… yeah. Core like a volcano. New branding.

[28:09] The creative volcano. Period. We're gone. The creative volcano. Well, you guys weren't here when Lauren and Matt came up with the idea of bedrock institutions. Yeah. Remember that? Let's talk about our seismic virus. Yeah. They don't have an ocean. Yeah. Well, this is going well. We do have other items. Okay, okay. We're gonna move off. Sleep on it, yeah. Great, yeah. Just please, please know that, that this is, like, we're… you can tell that we're… we're doing this magnetic fridge. poetry, thoughtfully and meaningfully with all your input. This is gonna go through more rounds of input in the next couple of days, and then we'll see, we'll see what kind of…

[29:06] Core is forged. Nice. How many of you are coming to tomorrow's Town Hall meeting? Okay, cool. Look forward to seeing you there. Commissioner, thank you so much for welcoming us on. Thank you, thank you. Thanks for doing that instead of us having to do it. So appreciated. It was a pleasure. Should we be dismissed? What's the best? No, it's up to you, but, the rest of it was just our eating stuff, so… Hold on, we're gonna go prep for tomorrow morning? Yes, thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks very much. We are going to, jump back to our public participation.

[30:06] The city has engaged with community members to co-create a vision for productive, equal, and inclusive civic conversation. This vision supports the physical and emotional safety for community members, staff, and council, as well as democracy for people of all ages, identities, living experiences, and those of the system. For more information about presentative and community engagement processes, you can visit the website on the screen. The following are examples of ruling quorum found in the Boulder Revised Code and other guidelines that support this vision. These will be upheld during the meeting. All remarks and testimony shall be limited to matters related to city business. No participant shall make threats or use other forms of intimidation against any person. Obscenities, racial epithets, and other speech and behavior that disrupts or otherwise impedes the ability to conduct seating are prohibited.

[31:00] In-person participants are asked to refrain from expressing support or disagreement verbally or with applause. Traditionally, support is shown silently through a very concise language applause signal. Great, thank you. And I presume that we do not have anybody online, so… Aye. Correct. Great, excellent. So we have Georgia Sprout with us. Welcome! Hi, Georgia. Hi. And you'll have 3 minutes. Okay, I don't think it'll be that long. Am I standing in front of the right camera? Here we go. Alright. So, yeah, I just wanted to come in. say thanks for the support that I received for Brown Sugar Nutcracker last year. It was not going in the direction that I wanted it to, so I shut it down, but we've got it back on this year, and wanted to let you know when it is, so…

[32:03] December 13th and 14th… here. There's a QR code on there, tickets. Awesome. Yeah, December 13th and 14th at New Vista High School. So, last time I got… I had an angry person come to me as I was having dinner with the cast at BJ's, like, hey, Georgia, and I'm like, yes. She's like, did you do that brown sugar nutcracker? And I was like, yes. your show was sold out. You need to perform… you need to perform in larger spaces so that everyone can see your show. So, we have 400 seats this year, so a lot more… the new high school. Yes, the new high school, the new auditorium, it's beautiful. We're having a holiday market beforehand, so I have, International… an international group of people that would be selling food and drink and…

[33:00] small gifts at a book and in the cafeteria, and yeah. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. I'll just add, too, when I… two years ago, when I went to the first production, it was… it was so charming and sweet, and it was… like, one of the highlights of the things that they did were the holidays, so go check now if you can. Yes. I've had a few more professional-level dancers this year. And we're not doing the live infinite. Yeah. Thanks. Excellent, thank you. All right, we are going to move on to matters from Commissioners. And we've got 45 minutes for this section, but we have a lot to get through. And I think what I'll start with is one thing that we're going to put off to a later meeting with your buy-in on this, and that's the last… The last one, F, the land acknowledgement discussion, and I'd like to move that to the January meeting, because it is, oh my god,

[34:08] Gaia, thank you. I just completely blanked on her name. Gaia is the one that brought it up as a discussion point, so I think it would only be fair to kind of include her in the discussion. So if that's okay with everybody, if anybody thinks that they're not going to be at the January meeting, we can do some broad strokes of what the conversation is going to be, and give us your opinion right now, and we can also bring that to that table. Is there anybody who thinks that they won't be in January? Great, cool. All right, so we have not had a chance to do liaison updates for quite a while, so I want to give us some time to do that. Just check in and what you're hearing from your liaison groups, what's going on. What people need support with. All that good stuff. I can start. Go ahead.

[35:01] I think I shared that I posted gathering at the Junkyard for my liaison organizations, like, a month and a half ago, based off of what Gaia had done with hers, and it wasn't great. I feel like it just led to some interesting conversations around just organizations having similar questions and ways in which they could learn from each other and collaborate. So Guy and I decided to post one together in December. Again, this will be at the junkyard, but we're combining both of our pools. Knowing that probably half of them will be able to attend, and she's invited SVP to speak on board development, and a couple of, funders to talk about how, like, different grant reports or grant grant proposals stand out. So yeah, I think that'll… that'll be interesting just to see as we think about our roles and, you know, how we can be most…

[36:03] effective in this position. Couple other things, let's see. Frequent Flyers also has their annual Nutcracker-related event, the Rat Cracker, December 5th and 6th, I think. Several of my organizations do winter camps for kids, so Groundworks and New Local have those, in the near future. And just from looking at newsletters, I know that everybody's thinking about Colorado Gives Day. That's… now, it's like the Hunger Games for nonprofits, and putting their push for donations. So, yeah, that feels like a high level. December 9th, I think? December 9th? Rat Cracker? Oh, no, no, Colorado gives December 9th. Yeah. Yeah, but it ends up being, like, actually a full month. There's the day, but then it's, I think, yeah, the entire month of December.

[37:02] Thank you. Okay, I have two broad things. I've been hearing, concern in the community about, competition, fundraising, with Sundance. So… Just something to think about. I think that, you know, Sundays is obviously a non-profit, they're looking for funds as well, and I think I've been hearing, from some of my liaison organizations that they're concerned about that, that competition. You know, they're all going to go to the same donor pool, and you know, obviously, the City of Boulder provides a certain amount of money, but they're getting a lot of money back up as well. So, I don't know if there's an answer to that, or how we, Address that? The second… Oh, go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. Do you mind if I… Yeah, I feel like, when we went to the panel that they were at, that they addressed that, and they're very aware of that, and they're very, at least vocal about trying not to

[38:03] step on that. My recollection of something that I heard them say, to kind of smooth that over a little bit in the arts community is that the level of donors that they are going to is… like, they're getting the Adobe's and, like, like, very large corporations as their sponsors, and I think that they felt that that was a little bit of a differentiation, that they are not going to the same pool. Do you remember hearing that also, or anything else you can add? Yeah, I did, and I… I… I also wrote that. I mean, I think I saw that. The only other thing I can think is that I know already of some examples of new funders coming out to fund things that are not financed, right? So I… I think it's sort of a… the flip side is the all-vost-rise kind of idea, right? And ultimately, within our power is the… the grant program and the funding that the public art, maybe experiments in public art funding, right? That,

[39:14] we're still keeping it pretty… they would still have to apply. Not even sure that they would apply, right, with the kind of, scale that they're looking at. That was it, was the scale that they talked about, right? Yeah. And also, I'm remembering also that they talked about, that they're… their philanthropic pool is national and international, so they differentiated themselves there, too. I made the comment at that panel to somebody that I'm very curious to see how it actually plays out, but they're saying all the right things, and at least Talking about it and aware about it. and aware of the principles, but I… I'm hearing it, too, that there's concern. And then the second thing is, I have heard, and I don't know all the details on this, so I don't want to overstep, but, I have heard that one of the executive orders, on the Trump administration,

[40:09] Is looking at nonprofits, and they're giving a little bit more closely. depending on… And don't quote me on this, so I should do more research on it, but if they feel like the giving is contrary to the administration's goals, it's considered a terrorist. organizations, so I have heard of funding organizations, taking down their websites and starting the money. Elsewhere. So, I don't know if that's something else you've all been hearing, because I've heard that, yes. So I don't know if it's something to think about what we can do about that as a community, or as a… Yeah, no, Sarah. Another forum or two to, help people understand this and how to move forward.

[41:03] And I think I saw something that Colorado was trying to do something more broadly, and I'm sorry, I skimmed this all very quickly. Colorado was trying to do something more broadly to help nonprofits insulate themselves. Some days I take an order. And obviously, we're talking about arts organizations, you know, just the things that our groups do. So you've heard that, too? Yes, I have, yeah. So I thought that's something we should, like, research and keep a pulse on. For sure. Yeah. Maybe we can… maybe, Lauren, I can see what I can find that thread I saw from the state, what the state is doing. Obviously, that's something perhaps you could share in your newsletter. Sure. Yeah, something along… Sure. So we know that we spoke with Josh Branchard at the, from CCI about their funding, because our funding is, city sales tax, right? So we go to labor within the city of Bulbaria, yeah, of Colbert standards.

[42:07] But the federal fund, some of the CCI is staked. federal funding flows through CCF. So, they did hold a, a info session for some of their grantees, and I think Boulder County Art Alliance is also a follow-up to that to help nonprofits thinking about, what they're applying for, what they're putting on their website, that sort of thing. So, we can also try out on that, but yeah, I would like to see… I'm gonna jump in, because I… part of what I was gonna cover is kind of a nice, counter to that, something good, and it's a number of months old, but we have been talking about it. But, turning the wheel, they were impacted by the NEA grants, but they had two different foundations come in and, support them.

[43:01] They chose, like, 80 out of almost 300 organizations that were impacted by those NEA funding. cuts. So the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts and the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation came in and supported… supported them, which is great. And so, Abby had sent me a little note just telling us about They've recently had a week-long residency in North Carolina, where they served over 500 students from 3rd to 12th grade, and they worked in a bunch of different schools. they… they did a production of Stardust and Water, and they have had a bunch of photos online, and we're just really kind of energized and excited about that. They're starting a five-week program at the Family Learning Center, and

[44:01] scheduling programming for the new year for the next couple months, so they're out there doing stuff. I'm excited about it. And then, of course, for… the next couple of weeks, a lot of my organizations have productions coming up. So, Third Law Dance, this coming weekend, on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, they have a dance production at the Dairy. The Boulder Chamber Orchestra on Saturday is having a mini chamber and piano, where they're doing works by Haydn, Schoenfield, and Torzak. The Boulder Opera is, getting set for next year. And then December 20th, Compass Residence is doing, some Beaux Arts. And then the final one is,

[45:04] Culture Caravan, which is doing their Mile High Havana, which is going on through this Saturday, and it's, musical performances back… focusing on percussion, this jazz. Drummer is going to be central to the music performances that they're putting on. So, let's put that back on her. Campable Singers just had a concert, which I watched a livestream of. I think they do free livestreaming for all of their performances, which is, amazing. So that was great. And also, is it pronounced Cantapill? Because they said… pronounced it very differently. On the livestream, and I… Contable. Contable, okay, thank you. I was like, they said it, and I was like, okay. That is… that's not right. And then The Spark is running a production of a musical called Ride the Cyclone. I'm…

[46:00] That sounds really fun, until the 23rd. And then, the Spark, Boulder Chorale, And I think a few others all have, like, a bunch of things happening in December, so I'll send y'all a list, because there's a bunch of, like, holiday programming happening, so… very exciting. And then I'm hoping to do another updated tour of KGMU. I did the one a while ago, but there was, like. construction… mostly construction was happening, so, but they… their timeline was very short. They were, I think that January, February was going to be done, and then, like, up and running by, like, spring, so… Does Riley do that, and MENA. after the first week of December, I would love to join. Okay, yeah, I'll email anyone, yeah, wants to go, yeah. Yeah. Cheryl. Cheryl! Cheryl! Hello! So I don't have everyone's, but first of all, I have been enjoying myself seeing lots of theater. I saw, The Case for Black Girls Setting Central Park on Fire by The Loco.

[47:07] That was probably… it was probably even before the retreat. Fantastic, and someone that I work with was in it, which was also kind of cool. And I went to the Catamount production, it was actually in Westminster, a town called Harris. They do site-specific stuff, and that was really fun, and, like, kind of spooky season. ghosts and everything, so that was fun to do. And just last night, I went to, Drag Queen Magic, also at the local, which was their fundraiser, and it was workshop, and… Yeah, I… I really… I had the opportunity to bring a friend who was not familiar with their work, and I just appreciate the way they incorporate community engagement into their work. And then also they give new voices and new shows a place to start, because everything starts somewhere. Coming up, oh, and I had the opportunity, and I don't know if this counts as a liaison thing, but the,

[48:06] there was a Colorado Educator Summit sponsored by the Arts Media Institute, which, is hoping, planning to do a program, not affiliated with Sundance, but during Sundance, where they get, 30 high school students from the state All expenses paid, workshop, learning experience. During Sundance, and the plan is a certain… I mean, not students, I'm sorry, teachers, to go back and share how to use the media with their students. And the plan is to eventually get at least one teacher from every district in the state within the next 10 years. So, it's a very ambitious project. project, but it's about teaching kids in Colorado how to use media, well, and teaching teachers how to use it. The JCC has a couple of events coming up. They have a new, gallery opening on December 11th. It'll be there for a couple of months. It's an Uruguayan artist, Denver-based. And they also have comedy night on December 14th.

[49:12] And the… sorry, gotta turn my page. And Boulder Symphony has a yoga and music event on December 5th, which definitely sounds kind of fun. As well as a Holiday Pops concert on December 19th. And there's probably more, but I don't have them all. Thank you. We've not done these for about 3 months, and I see about a production a week, at least, so I'm gonna spare everyone all the fabulous things that I've had a chance to. lose myself in in the last 3 months. And I will just say that two organizations, have matching, grant funds that they are running through the end of this year. Both are significant, fundraisers for both of those organizations that scale to fit those organizations.

[50:03] One of them is Boulder International Film Festival, you can learn more about that on their website, and learn more about that fundraiser. And then the other is Viva theater, and this is their first ever matching grant. I also forgot to mention some cool theater that I got to see in the last couple months, well, in the last month. I'm just focused on that. I did, take Jeffrey to suggestion to go see the FIBA production of Motor on the Orient Express, which was the sweetest, cutest, greatest performance. It was… Amazing. It was so good. And then, I always pronounce this wrong, but Kutandara, they had their gala this, past weekend, and I mean, their shows are always just so energetic and fun, and it looked like they were on par to reach their goal, so it was… Really great. Okay.

[51:00] Let's move on to our commission work items, and this is just a chance we've got our new, sort of, subcommittees, and let us know how things are… working on… these issues, and it may be that we're all just in the middle of getting ready for holidays and scheduling things. That's okay. And I'll let you know that that's what the AI committee is doing. We're scheduling a host meeting, so… That is what the Sustainability Committee is doing also, and we're working with the city folks, and we'll be getting together in January once they give us some dates to choose from. Great. With the Accessibility Committee. Yep. Arts Education, Houston Arts. Yeah, same thing. We're also, yes. That was easy. Cool, so let's move on to our letters. Not just… Letter to Council.

[52:05] That's you? Yes. And I… am I just supposed to say what it was about? I can… I can… I can set it up for you. No, no, no. So at the last meeting, we prioritized 3 items that we asked the committee to put into the letter, and I saw that you incorporated them, and then using, sort of, the drafts that have been sent for the City Council in the past. There was a letter in your packet that hopefully you've had some time to look at. And we can pull it up on the screen, probably. Sure. In the time that we have tonight, the idea is any wordsmithing, light-touch wordsmithing that needs to happen before we are all comfortable in taking a vote, and approving this to get sent out to Council within the timeline.

[53:05] For the next meeting. Anything else you want to add? Yeah, and if, I don't know, is it… is it helpful for me to pull up my working documents and be able to take notes, if anybody has? Sure. Okay, so I'll work on that. Yeah, I think we just, like, try to blend both the… The highlights in a succinct way, a degree of, like. I don't know, making it feel… personal and relevant, so I, like, chose to pull out some specific organizations that receive funds through us, you know, in a bit of, like, just, like, making it not just feel like words. And then ended with… tried to put in some very specific asks and action items. I don't come back to building policies, cultural use…

[54:07] cultural uses, permitting, just ways in which city can support the larger video. Yeah. Firstly, congratulations on getting to this point and getting so much incorporated in a succinct and efficient manner, so… Thank you to both you and, and, Gaia for doing this. It was much appreciated. My only… my only kind of feedback to it is, where you've got the word, arts, or art by itself. When it's there as a singular noun, maybe… maybe suggest putting it as the arts, as opposed to art. Because then it… then it's all-encompassing rather than something that's merely visual. Yep, yep, okay. I'm just making that note for myself, because that feels like something I can just go through and do a search by.

[55:03] Yeah, it's not there very often, but when it is, it's like, if we put THE arts, it just, you know, it's everything. Yeah. My favorite parts, little tidbits, where art meets us where we are. And then the creativity shouldn't sit in a single department. Yeah. Nuggets, I love that. I really liked the, like… cedar of the mind, of all the little examples you gave of where our impacts our dawn is. I really appreciated that. Yeah. I had a couple of… like, typos and maybe some grammatical things. Let's see, starting from… maybe it's on the second page, where you're talking about transparency and the… okay, second paragraph. Voters have made their priorities clear, they want opportunities. So the sentence I was looking at is, now it's our responsibility to steward these funds with transparency, intention, and impact.

[56:04] And I wondered if… That felt strong enough for what we wanted to encourage the Council to be doing. Okay, we say we continue to advocate that City Council revisit the issue of gaining ministry. Which, I think… gets to one point, but I think part of it was… It's really hard for us to understand Where the money is going and how it's being allocated is of transparency issues on the franchise. So I wondered if that might be a little stronger. And that's looking. And then my other suggestion was, Where you itemize… What our asks are is, because it's such a long paragraph, maybe we underline, or… Something to help talk them out more.

[57:03] I wondered if… We could include in the planning section. the permitting. You talk about… Like, somewhere you talk about easing the process for events. And… I think, for me, adding temporary installations in there might be good. And then there was a typo in the signatures. We've got Bruce in there still. Nothing basic copy. Yeah. Thank you. But otherwise, I thought it was great. Anybody else? Great. When are you going to be finalizing and out the door of somebody

[58:02] Well, we have to approve it. We have to prove it to me, so… Okay. Can we go back to the… just the… make that fun section stronger? Does anybody have… I might be the only talking around that, I'm just like, or, yeah. It's our responsibility to extort these funds with transparency, intention, and impact. We will continue to advocate the City Council revisit issues the issue of paying administrative costs out of a general fund, blah, blah, blah, blah. So… I thought that sentence, we will continue, was fine. And to be honest, I literally, like, just took it out of our statement that we made a couple meetings ago, just to be like, no, we're serious. Yeah. Maybe it's just as… maybe it's just, like, now it's our responsibility to steward these funds with transparency, attention, and impact. We invite Council to do the same. Like, is that a little too in your face? Jeffrey, help!

[59:08] I love it. And I would invite staff… staff recommendations on this also. Add to the conversation. You can't, okay. Yep, that's work done. Great. Lots of wordsmo, so I better appreciate it. Alright. I'm just now staring at my sentences that feel redundant, so I got… Now it's our responsibility to steward these funds with transparency, intention, and impact, and invite City Council to do the same.

[60:03] We will continue to advocate that City Council can lead to is that… We'll continue to advocate the City Council. Is it okay that it's just redundant in calling out to them? maybe… Caroline, do we… do we invite City Council to do the same, or do we encourage them? I like encouraging. We encourage them, because it sounds like we're being helpful, but it also sounds like, you know, we're not… we don't want you to just, like, look at it, we want you to do it. Yeah. How about we just… we also… encourage sitting down south, and then maybe they're all south-south that included under the same area. Thank you very teeth.

[61:41] Did y'all mute yourselves, or is she typing? No, just working. One of our meetings have never been that quiet. I mean, it was silence. I'm like, oh, God. I'm, like, checking my computer, I'm thinking something's wrong. And I'm not sure, you didn't finish deleting Bruce's name.

[62:00] You just deleted it. I have a different version. Yeah, that one's the PDF. Oh, okay, sorry. Actual one, which is unfortunate, because… then you can see the changes that I'm making, too. Okay. Beautiful. While they're doing that, I have to, admit that I… referenced the wrong thing that I wanted to take off our agenda, and it's not actually in this section. So, the land acknowledgement discussion, I think we can get through tonight. I think that's going to be a quick one, and it was the commissioners applying for grants. That is Gaia's topic, and then I want her to be able to participate in.

[63:12] And when does the grant cycle open for applications? Well, it's already open. Anything that we… if we were to make a decision to change it, it would be for next year. And the land acknowledgement was pretty, pretty well, Outlined in the… Yes. In the. Packet, which should make it go pretty efficient. Is it worth talking about our other letter? Yeah, why don't we… That sounds good. Let her work on that, and then we'll pop over to the Zonia. Wait a minute, it's full of gold. It is up on the screen now, so… Okay.

[64:09] Alright, here's my cursor, so this is where I was playing. We encourage City Council to do the same. I would just… short period. Okay, and take this section out? Oh, no, no, oh, sorry, no, I just meant separating the two sentences. the two thoughts. Because the next sentence is a separate thought about the administrator. Yes. So, yeah, can I just say we encourage you to revisit the issue. But that's, again, encouraged. We advocate, that's what it was. Oh, bonus.

[65:01] That you can continue to revisit the issues in future years. Packard's… And then this was, like, just… We were gonna add temporary installation, so I'm trying to find where that makes sense. -Oh. I don't know what it is. Permitting for events simplified and reduced. Oh, yeah, then the permitting process for cultural events and… Installations? Temporary installations. Okay. And that is misspelled right now. Congratulations. Thank you. Yep. And then my thought was to underline, or somehow… Amplify the asks.

[66:31] What? And will you, underline the word first if, again, it has an A? And then verse at the bottom. Not that all right. Anything else, you guys? I'm looking for these art. Okay. the arts.

[67:00] And then beginning of the second pair. Voila. That's really where it was kind of, like, the kick. Yeah, yeah, here's the arts we have there. Jill, I'll bet that the first one that you changed? Yeah. Here, the arts aren't an afterthought. Thank you. than there. They are… they are a part of. Yeah. B. Can you go back up again for a moment? Sorry. Yep, go ahead. There's two things, actually, that I… One is Chris Jones on his name on the top, it doesn't have a H in it. Okay. That's in the accomplishments? The very top.

[68:04] Okay. It does not have an debate, no H. And then… It's the artist census, but at some point it's an art census. Great. Thank you. Now, we'll see if there's, two pages. I don't know what we paid those consultants, but if you look at those first two paragraphs of what, you and, Guy I came up with, that's some pretty damn good stuff right there. And if you need to squish it down, just single space the header. the two from. Right there. Buy yourself half a page. I'll share that. Yep. We're gonna take over and share the motion while you're formatting.

[69:09] I'll make the motion. I move that we endorse the letter to City Council. One second. Any discussion? All in favor? I was trying to unmute myself fast enough. The only reason I… the only discussion I had was I'm glad Maria was the one to make the motion, because I wanted to hear if she had any edits, and she was suspiciously quiet through all of that. Thank you so much. We've got her endorsement, voila. And yeah, Diane. Jill, Gaia, wow. Yeah, very nice. True. So as we talked about last time, you all asked me to write a draft letter to City Council asking to make, art studios allowable use in… and I made it all residential zone districts.

[70:03] So, the draft letter's in your packet, so, it's organized, so I'm thinking, yeah, thank you for reading this. Yeah. So, first is the request, second paragraph talks about the, need for artist studios. The next paragraph or set of statements, bullet points, talks about the benefits, and then, the proposed amendment and safeguards, and, safeguards also Gives them a little bit of flexibility on, putting, you know, changing the zoning to put some limitations on noise, traffic, signage, so it's just not a referral. And… talk about how Bowler's, celebrated for its commitment to the arts, and That's it. Signed from all of us. I guess I should put all of our names here, or… I just have Boldor's permission, so I can put all our names to match Jill's letter. Any comments, thoughts that you all want to… I just felt really grateful that you knew what all the zoning stuff meant, so that you could craft this well. Thank you.

[71:10] Yeah, I'm trying to picture Maria, and I can actually picture her literally doing a deep dive, like, an actual, like. Like, Esther Williams. Dog. into city code to find out this was even existing. My only suggestion would be to bold the headings on each one of those. Alright. Because I think that would… that would then say, okay, this is what's going to be happening below here, here's the next ask, here's the next ask. Great. I had one typo, and then toward the very bottom, on the right-hand side, maybe the second-to-last sentence, you use the word, I urge, and it should be we urge. Great, and then should this be on the letterhead to match?

[72:00] the other, like, the memorandum, that was the format specifically for the, that was specifically for the City Council letters. Since this is a separate letter, I think I would be good like this, actually. Yes, okay. And it's to City Council. City Council and, You could even say staff, because… I was told to direct it towards the planning team, the team that works specifically on the zoning staff, but to City Council to start, so maybe we Except for that, yeah. Okay, and then I'll… Should we also separate the mayor out as well? Because he's technically a member of city council, but… at a different… I mean, we voted separately for a mayor this time, as opposed to the city council members, so… Okay, great. I… I will make those revisions, and, and what's the process? Send it back to you?

[73:04] Laura, to go back and look at it with their revisions, or what's the next step? Well, I can share, vote language if the is interested in voting, and if you would like to… but if you want to look at another round of edits, then I can put it the next time and… Based on what everyone just said, these are… From everywhere. They were edited in real time just now, so we saw them all. Anybody like to make a motion? I move that we endorse the letter to City Council and staff. We'll keep for a second? You can second that. I second there. Bigger? That's unanimous, thank you. So should I, send it to you, Lauren, or should I… you'll pass it on to the… yeah, I'll figure out what's… Great. All right, moving on, we've got the interview questions that they provided us. I think we had some input a couple years ago in practicos, and if there's anything that we want to suggest that they add, or tweak, or remove, to help us find our best colleague.

[74:13] We can make that suggestion. I did about heaven. Commissioner. They are up. No. I'm glad that we revisited them, but I didn't have any specific Things that stood out to me. Andrew. Yeah. I feel like they didn't necessarily go through all of these questions on the interviews that I watched. So… I think I got asked a total of two questions, but you're the one that's gone through it most recently.

[75:04] True, yeah. It's all borer. I was drunk. No, I'm just kidding. You were sober, don't remember a thing. Yeah. All right, I don't hear any comments, so, I don't think we have anything to suggest and no action to take. So, we will move on to the once removed, now re-added land acknowledgement discussion. So there was a little blurb about it in the packet. And… do you want to summarize it? Yeah, so the gist is that over the last couple of years, we've had a committee, we've, had subject matter experts come in and speak to us.

[76:05] We've had city staff work with us on how do we give some meat to this. acknowledgement that is given at the beginning of every meeting. It just feels, like, wrote and not like it has any teeth. And, the latest… Input to staff and, and then resulting staff recommendation aligns with how the other committees and commissions use the land acknowledgement. And they only read that when there is some action being taken at the meeting that is going to directly impact something about Indigenous culture, or… Or if they're… There's something specific on the agenda. So, you want to tell us the second condition?

[77:00] Sure, so it is a staff recommendation, and this comes from our equity office as well. This is a broader recommendation across the city. So if, for example, there is an Indigenous group getting a grant, or hiring an Indigenous artist for a piece of artwork, then we would ask that the land acknowledgement be read in advance of the meeting, because it would have some kind of direct impact, but otherwise, and we clarify why it's being shared at that meeting, as opposed to other meetings. But in general, it's considered now best practice to only read before meetings where you have to kind of, like, direct work with Indigenous people. I definitely feel like that makes it more impactful when it is being stated, for sure. And Caroline and I actually considered having… I'm sorry, did I just talk over someone? Go ahead, Jeffrey, and then Maria. Okay, and Caroline, when we were putting the agendas together for the last couple months of meetings, we were discussing possibly even putting it on the retreat.

[78:01] But it seemed very… well, it was very appropriate to read it at the retreat, because we're on that land in Chautauqua, which is such a sacred place, but the word Chautauqua is literally taken from the Iroquois language. From the, from the very first Chautauqua movement in upstate New York, so it didn't seem appropriate to even bring it up until afterwards, so, which is why we kind of kept tabling until we got to this month. My only concern is, we had hoped to lean further into this issue, and I feel like we're… backing away from it. And I know I was on the committee with Georgia, but I never felt, to be honest with you, I didn't feel directly connected to the issue, because I'm not Indigenous. So, I feel like we should continue to push forward, do something more, rather than… Just going back to a status quo, or going backwards. So, whatever that happens to be, if it's, like, you know, I think I threw out some ideas a while ago. We have an Indigenous artists do the graphics on the cover page for the meeting, or we have, invite someone to read a poem, or it doesn't have to necessarily be the land acknowledge that.

[79:13] But I think acknowledging Indigenous artists, I think we should do more. And the city's doing. Alright. I agree with you that it feels like more will be better. The thing that I struggle with is that I don't want to do more without consultation with the people who are actually impacted with that, by that. And when we did do our consultation, when we had our special committee meeting. I didn't feel like… that approach was what was being requested by that… by the Indigenous community leaders. So I feel very uncomfortable leaning into something just because I think it's going to make me feel better if it's not being…

[80:05] embraced by the leadership. I agree with you, but then I think the question is… I agree, you know, maybe this isn't the right group to decide what doing something more is, but to continue to reach out and ask that question. Yeah, I think the line of communication should be open. I don't think it should be, like, the end of, okay, we did that, now it's the end, and now they're not reaching out, and now there's no communication with them. I think it should be ongoing. Keep line of communication open, sort of thing. maybe if I can make a suggestion, what we can do in the interim is not let the issue Die on the vine, but we could… add that to our list, you know, reconstitute that committee. And, Take the staff recommendation for now, until we… Have a good approach.

[81:01] That we can help craft on our own. Yeah, I agree with the staff recommendation. It's like a yes and. Right, yeah. I agree also, and I think we as commissioners, and we could do a better job of hand-delivering either individual artists or organizations that have connections with Native peoples to the grants program, which is how we can help them. I wanted to add two things together, and… process, progress. One is still with Boulder County Parks Alliance. They're working on an artist big artist's roster, essentially, and ways to search for different local artists. I think they're going to be Colorado-specific, so whenever it gets going, it'll have different ways to search, including by state, or by location, or all kinds of different things. So, I would encourage us to consider sharing that and trying to get artists of Indigenous background, but all different backgrounds onto that list to help, because that's where we would end up, like, sending people. Same for the mural roster, we'd open it again.

[82:06] And also, the city… this was Tuesday… the city was awarded the Office of Equity, who we worked with on this. sort of background and statements, was awarded a really significant grant from the Colorado State Historical Fund, and they're going to be doing a technographic work with, like, locally here, with tribal nations that were ancestral here, so the, I think 13 tribal nations here, but I've asked them to also, keep an ear up for any, artists that they encounter that we can, like, connect with through that. So I think there's, like, sort of work happening in the background that's not necessarily packet-worthy, I should say, right? But we are, trying to continue to, like, plug into our, connections through the City Adventures Office to Indigenous Artists, specifically for the grant program, right? Cool, I don't think that we have to make a motion.

[83:04] But, if… we can either talk about doing… Who wants to be on the committee at the next meeting, or if we have a strong… people here have a strong feeling that they weren't to raise their hand to do that. Get those granted now. Next meeting is in January. I think that, you know, the point that we don't really have the representation in this group to Really spearhead this issue. So, that's a… DB's just a placeholder. Can we get the right people in the room. Let's put it on the agenda for January. And then maybe we can spend a little bit more time coming up, at least with a plan. Around that. Sure. Okay.

[84:01] Great. All right, we're going to move on to the public art program. I don't know. Let me share my screen here. Rights… Great. Hi, everyone. Here to discuss public art action item, process, and finalist approval for Fire Station 2. This really just got completed, like, last week, so happy that we can bring it here today. Quick overview of the parent project. So this is part of the Fire Station 2 redevelopment project, that's going on through 2028. The budget for public art within the project is $225,000. The goal of the public art is to commission an iconic outdoor sculpture that acts as a visually striking gateway honoring Boulder's values, history, and landscape.

[85:07] process to date, we had our orientation meeting in June, we selected a final… we selected 3 finalists in August, and we received 3 finalist proposal presentations, and the community selection panel, selected a winning artist just last week. Public art selection panel was made up of Michael Benjamin, a local artist, Crystal Nelson, an arts history professor, Caroline Kurt, our arts commissioner, Deanna Barani, a community member, and Shelly Schwartz, a community member. We had a technical review committee made up of city staff, architects from the firm working on the fire station, and the fire chief. We review… this is our classic criteria for reviewing semifinalists. Won't go over it.

[86:03] This is the location of the project, it's at Baseline and Broadway, Kitty Corner from the Einstein Bagels that's there, Starbucks. The art itself will be sited in the southeast corner of the site. The site is on the northwest corner of the intersection, so it's a super visible gateway. Anyone driving in, getting off that highway exit there is going to see it as they're turning north of Broadway. Our community selection panel drafted an RFQ back in June. Like I said, we wanted to create a striking, iconic gateway. They laid out some themes to encourage the artist to respond to, nature, the uniqueness of Boulder, its history, geography, protection of public space, public service. And we had some things that we weren't looking for. Specifically, we didn't want the art to invite any sort of physical interaction or up-close viewing, since this is a fire station, emergency services, we don't want anyone parking there just to see the art. We don't want anyone getting in the firefighter's way.

[87:09] Similarly, we wanted it to be relatively quiet, relatively, not lit, because there will be firefighters living… staying on site, and we didn't want to impact them at all. We also asked, that the artwork not be specifically fire-related, in the presentation, in the, the RFQ presentation, I showed a great example of a giant Dalmatian that was, sculpted outside of a fire station, I think, in Texas. It's very cute. We decided that wasn't what we were looking for. We wanted something a little subtler. And I think we got it, you'll see it in a minute. We had a national call, we received 159 applications, 3 presented proposals, and 1 was selected. Here is our first finalist, who was unfortunately not selected, but created a great proposal called Confluence, artist out of Kentucky. We had some feedback, the panel really liked the movement of this one, the nature inspiration, but had some concerns about it being similar to an existing piece and getting lost in the intersection.

[88:15] Our second, second finalist, also not selected, this was called the Resilient Moon by a St. Paul artist team. Panna really loved this one. Ultimately, it just wasn't really gonna work in the space. It was a little too big, a little too inviting for trash and leaves and snow to collect in there and stuff, but really cool piece made out of moonstone, which was cool to learn about. This is our winning artist. artist team Hu D'Souza out of Brooklyn. So on the left there is a rendering of the proposed piece called Rain Spark, and I loved this image that they provided here of the rain… how they were inspired both by the raindrop and the candle… or the match flame. So it'll be a steel undercarriage with a painted aluminum exterior, so those blue and orange

[89:05] Poles are aluminum. There's another rendering with the fire station rendered behind it, so that's looking northwest. Heck, yes. And here's it at night. I'm really excited about this. This is one of the main things we're gonna work with the artist on, is to make sure that lighting is incorporated into the design. That was… lacking in their proposal, and the community selection panel really wanted to make sure that that gets factored in, so that's our main, kind of Constructive feedback we'll be bringing back to the artist team. There's a little bit about the artist team there. They were great to work with. Yep, so we had a unanimous decision by our selection panel. They gave us some great pros and cons feedback, thought it was really striking, loved how low maintenance it was, the artist team had a great plan for care. The great color use, visibility, captured the firehouse theme without being too literal, which is exactly what we were looking for. Works day and night, you saw the image of it at night.

[90:09] There were some concerns around color contrast issues with the building that we'll continue to work out with the building… the fire station building designers. There was concerns that because we're asking them to add lighting, we don't want them to make the piece any smaller, so we're gonna… we're gonna keep working with them on that, make sure it maintains that kind of striking, gateway, iconic feel. And yeah, there was some concern about making sure there's community engagement, and those are all things that we'll continue to work with. The artist's on. These are the next steps. Obviously, here we'll move to approve the process, and then it will advance to City Manager's Office, and we'll follow up with any concerns from the panel. Caroline, I don't know if… do you want to speak at all to the process? It was really fun. This was my first chance to do the full public art process, and, just really enjoyed it.

[91:10] It was great to hear the just really varied perspectives of everybody there, and the way that the city sets up the process is just smooth, like… I couldn't believe how quickly and easily we came to consensus, just by getting voice. And I do want to add that my understanding is that it was also Jake's first time going through the full process and leading that, and he did an amazing job, and thank you for that. Thank you. Thank you for that. Yeah, I'm happy with the process. We reached unanimous consensus, we didn't have to hold a vote, and I think, from what I heard, all of the community and everyone on the selection panel was really happy with the process. Any questions about how it all went down? I like your choice. I def… I'm curious, because it was a national poll, did you feel like you got a lot of…

[92:06] Out of state applicants? Yeah. Yeah, I think it was 106 to 159 applicants. A lot of out-of-state, and I'm trying to think of the… Like, 10 or so that we kind of narrowed it down to, and… there was a… there was one or two locals, but I think it was a lot of out-of-state, right? Yeah, there was. Oh, and one thing that I'll add about this artist team that I, I noted during a presentation is that they're planning to have it fabricated locally, rather than local to them, and then shipped over. Yeah, that's a great addition. Yeah, it was hard to choose. We had 3 great artist teams that we were torn between. Really, really great folks. I will throw this up on the screen. All right. I've moved that we approve this process. Oh, wait, first I have to…

[93:02] Okay. Approve, then seconded. Okay. I move that we approve this process was properly conducted, and recommended that the proposal by artist Buddha Susa? Buddasusa? Advanced to the City Manager for final approval. I'll second. I'll second. Great, thank you. Any discussion? Get ready for a vote. All in favor? Unanimous. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Any final thoughts or questions? The project won't be done until 2028. The parent project. Great, thank you all. Before we move on to the next session, I have an impromptu question for Brendan. I noticed on the list of the public… of the status of the public art that the Uni Hill project was on hold, and I… I know you've told us, but I couldn't remember why that was. Yeah, there's… first of all, there's not really any…

[94:00] City projects happening that we can really dovetail with, so that's one issue. Jake and I have done sort of a survey of the hill to find, are there other locations where we could do a public art project? And a couple spots popped up, but it's just… it's… it's going to be slow going until there's a larger capital project happening somewhere on the hill that we can add these funds to. add value? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there are very limited public spaces. There's, like, not as many, kind of, activity paths or any of the things that exist downtown that we can usually site hard in. Yeah, yeah. All right. Makes sense. Since we're doing impromptu, can I show impromptu here? Sure. Any, any, Impact for the federal regulations now of not having, art in streets. To our city. not having art in the street. So they're removing… Yeah, like, crosswalk murals.

[95:00] I haven't heard anything. I mean, we do have the… Rainbows. Yeah, hi. must be… I haven't heard anything. That's something, I mean, we're kind of continuing to monitor it. We're not gonna… I mean, we're not gonna remove anything, obviously, unless… We'd need to, but no, that's not something that… impacts the city. Yeah. Not yet. All right, thank you. Any other requirements? That was fun. All right, Sarah? short one this time. We had two community project grant reports, for 2004, you know, the drill… I move that we approve the grant reports from Streetwise, ARDS, and the new local. Is that infinite. Any discussion? I love the commitment to artists, increasing artist pay in streetwise. That's great. That is really great. I also love that they, like.

[96:03] included, like, what they weren't able to accomplish, what they wanted to. Yeah. I really loved on Streetwise how detailed their feedback request for is really a lot of data. And then I also like the new local, how collaborative it was with other Organizations as well. The only thing that I noticed on the new local, and it's not anything to do with, approving the report, but I'm not sure who's the liaison. Oh, okay. The question I had was when I looked at their budget, they didn't have any non-branted support, so I'm wondering how we would support that to becoming sustainable through other avenues of revenue generation. Interesting. They definitely do have programs, workshops, that have that. Maybe they… oh, maybe it was just Maybe that budget was just for this project. Yeah, yeah, I mean, they've got a development director, they're doing… they… they're doing lots of fundraising.

[97:04] Okay, good, good, good, good. Glad to hear it. Hands up. Well, any other discussion? All in favor? Unanimous? Great, thank you. Cool. Just some next steps. Work has begun on the Choose Your Own Adventure booklet. I think it's gonna be really cool if you want to show everyone. We have a Cultural Organization Summit coming up Friday, December 5th at 10 a.m. at Etown Hall. We have 9 other funders presenting. I get permission to present the creative industry slides, so that's cool. And I have, what, 6 people who have RSVP'd so far, so… Yeah, looking forward to that. And then the grant program training will take place, January 15th. I think it'll actually have to be attended 8, because it's big. And then we have a grant writing workshop scheduled January 21st.

[98:00] and a virtual organization summit on February 11th about frequently asked questions, I've talked to Boulder County Arts Alliance, and they get a lot of questions about, is it actually worth it to become a nonprofit, or should I get this with sponsorship? And I've spoken with a consultant that specializes in advising when to go for a grant, public funding, versus corporate sponsorship, so we're going to tackle a lot of those questions that are relevant to these issues. That's it this week. Cute. All right, questions about the manager's memo? Always a hot topic. I try and sell it every month, but nobody takes me up on it. So, first, if you have questions, please. And thanks to my staff for… that's a big collaborative effort. It says manager's wrong, but that is, like, a big staff effort and all. So you might have noticed I started sending out some calendar invitations for our meetings, because we will no longer be in this office as of January 1st. So, we've booked everything, or the first four months, I think, for now, in the field state building, which is City Council Chambers,

[99:10] Just to give you all a heads up that we're, we're also moving over to, It's Park Central. It's the… it's above Mustard Stand. It's that building. So that's where our offices… that's where our offices will be. But we'll, send out notifications, and we'll be in newsletters and things, but… be over there, that brutalist building. Thank you, that was my question as well. That's what we want to know. We're gonna get new members? Since it's being torn down when we moved to Western City Campus, probably no new murals. And… For the December meeting, we traditionally hosted, online only if there are grant reports that people say that they would really like to have the final 20% payment. So Sarah will keep an eye on that, and then hopefully a week before the meeting, scheduled meeting date will let you know. If we do have one, it's, like, 15 minutes, and it's usually just a little easy peasy.

[100:07] Is that a real feat? Clearly, very good. Oh, yeah. Okay. So, happy holidays, everybody. Yeah, happy holidays! Woo! And, I guess I'll bang this. Hey, y'all!