Welcome back to this monthly meeting of the parts, Arts and Culture Committee of Denver City Council.

Join us in the Parts Arts and Culture Committee starting now.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you for your patience.

We had to postpone starting committee a little bit, but we can start with.

I think if you all want to head over to the table, and while we while you walk over, we'll introduce our council members.

I'm Flora Alvidres, Chair of the Parks Arts and Culture Committee and Councilwoman for District 7.

Council President.

Oh good morning.

Good morning, Diana Romero Campbell, Southeast Denver District 4.

Great.

And we have some members of our arts and venues team here.

Tadiana, do you want to start introduction?

Sure.

Tariana Namaste, Deputy Executive Director for Arts and Menus.

It's great to be here.

I'm Richard.

I'm Gretchen Holler.

I'm the executive director of Denver Arts and Venues.

I'm Brooke Gilling.

I am the director of Cultural Affairs.

Hi, my name is Megan Gildy, and I'm a senior program manager.

Thank you all.

Great, we're already set up, so take it away.

I just I will kick off just by thanking you for making the time for this.

We are so excited about our new cultural plan.

And I'm gonna turn it over immediately to Tariana, who helped develop this work over the past many years and brought it to fruition.

And she and Brooke will be doing our presentation today.

Thank you.

And I know that some of you um we had the opportunity to share a briefing back in April, but I'm very excited that today we'll also share some.

We've been busy, but so some of the things that we've been doing and then what's upcoming.

So uh Denver creates a collective commitment to the arts is the city's cultural plan.

And you may remember that is a refresh of Imagine 2020, which was the cultural plan we launched in 2014.

And what is unique about this plan is the approach we took to planning and how we will use the plan as a roadmap to uh support the creative sector in our community.

And we took a bottom-up approach, meaning that traditionally cities engage the community, but then they basically share their own vision.

What we did was we decided to not only listen to the cultural sector and our residents, but we're not filtering what we heard, the data that we capture, basically bringing in our vision.

We decided to unfilter, share that directly with uh with you, with the uh collective sector, and then come together, be a convener to then say how are we all gonna respond to what we hear.

So if you could go to the next slide.

So a quick agenda.

Um, we're gonna take you back a little bit so that you can uh understand the context of our work, where um this culture plan is rooted in data, so we want to talk to you a little bit about uh the research methodology, tell you where it got us, um, tell a little bit about our role as an agency because again, what's unique is that this is not just arts and venues plan.

We are sharing what we heard with all of you, and then we'll guide and steward the plan.

And then the most exciting part, which is what have we been up to and what do we have to look forward to?

So, next.

So uh speaking of of data, um, we do know that uh the arts inspire a sense of pride and is a strong economic driver.

Um, and floor uh councilman, we've had those conversations about again that strong economic driver.

Uh, and we also know, as we saw, especially during 2020, that arts plays a significant role in improving our mental health.

And what it's really inspiring is that we actually learned that 84% of Denver residents believe that arts and culture improve our quality of life.

And I'm not gonna go through all the data, but it was really positive that even during difficult times, there was still that belief that we need the arts, and that um we actually this is one of my most favorite questions uh when we ask, is Denver an arts town, a sports town?

I don't know councilman, a cow town.

And every time since 2014, people have said we are an arts town.

So I think it's that's really inspiring.

Uh next, so our connection to the history of cultural planning.

Um, I started with the agency in 2012, and I learned that the first cultural plan for the city was in 1989.

So it had been a minute.

Uh so at that time, we uh brought the first cultural plan in over 20 years.

And in 2014, we launched Imagine 2020, and then which was a seven-year plan, and that's why I always joke that we did not imagine 2020.

Um we arrived, and I would definitely do not recommend doing cultural planning during a pandemic, but there we were.

So what we thought at that time is we knew that was a critical time and we needed to capture that moment, because if that was the moment that we could hear what are the greatest needs and the hopes of the sector in our community, because we believe that there was a after-pandemic, right?

That we would get through it.

Uh, next.