Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the community and culture meeting for Thursday, September seventeenth, two thousand twenty-six.

Let us stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

This item will be presented by community arts community community arts, our arts community manager, Layla Jadala.

Leila, thank you.

So I'll provide an overview.

Sorry.

There we go.

So the goal with the cultural plan is to provide an actionable framework for arts and culture and help us inform the city's vision and priorities for arts and culture.

So that includes public art programming, institutions, creative placemaking and placekeeping, and more.

And again, it helps will help hopefully develop priority areas to identify areas where we can support and expand our creative offerings.

And a lot of um we're hoping that it will be a community-informed, but also align with our broader city plans like our 2030 um strategic plan and as well as other departmental plans as well.

Um part of the goal is to assess our existing conditions and programs, funding and capacity, and again look to the general public and interested parties in informing what um is the outcome.

Our lead partner for this process is uh designing local, which is a national arts and culture.

I'm sorry, I keep advancing the wrong thing.

Um which is designing local and national arts and culture planning firm based in Ohio.

However, they have um recently completed some work in Maryland and different municipalities as well as for the county related to historic preservation as well as arts and culture.

Um they are helping us design our engagement process and developing recommendations from that and will help with the final plan submission.

So throughout that process, um, we'd love the opportunity to present our draft recommendations to you all for your input as well.

And again, the timeline um I like to share that we started a few things in 2025, which were our cultural asset map, which is usually a part of some cultural plans um in other municipalities to help us see what our current cultural assets are.

We did our public art conservation assessment, um, started our collections management, and um, since I've held the position, had many conversations with um different stakeholders in the community, whether it was nonprofits or individual artists on what they would like to see here in Frederick and their areas that they need to support.

Um, but I realized I need um support and help with that um in being able to document everything.

Um the firm came in at the end of August and um did an initial tour of Frederick over two days, thanks to our director of economic development, Richard Griffin, for taking us um around the city for that, but also meeting with several entities when they first visited, and they have already begun part of the engagement process, which I'll speak to more in the next slide, um, which is meeting with stakeholders one-on-one.

And um, as mentioned later on this year, um, they will work to analyze the data that's collected, continue community engagement.

So far, they are scheduled to come back in mid-November for a second round, and then um we hope to have a final plan finalized by next spring.

In terms of internal engagement, um we have a steering committee that represents uh most of the um major departments in the city that touch arts and culture in order to get everyone's feedback and recommendations for both engagement um pain points, areas that everybody feels um like it would it would just be great to get some collaboration and ideas and um thanks to Councilmember Hempelarani for serving on that steering committee as well.

Um we had initial meeting um in August, and then as I mentioned earlier, the um we have kicked off two major points of external engagement with residents.

The first is a survey, uh which I'll get more into in the next slide, but it's available on our website, and um, and then our consulting firm has conducted about half of their 30 one-to-one one-to-one uh interviews or meetings with different community stakeholders.

So that represents creative businesses, nonprofit leaders, um, all kinds of performing visual arts and artists as well.

And then our goal for November will be to um organize affinity-like group meetings with different stakeholders that have similar um interests or are in the same space to have conversations together, and then um to also have an opportunity to present and invite people to provide their feedback at different city events where it makes sense.

Um for example, the Golden Mile Small Area Plan.

Um we hope we have already incorporated in collaboration with planning areas um that people can provide their feedback, but we're going to have postcards also to be able to share with different community members, our NAC coordinators both on the city council side as well as our public affairs team will also be sharing information to invite people to participate in the survey.

The survey itself, so far we have received um a little bit over 150 responses.

Um I have not seen the responses yet.

Um I was hoping to have some preliminary data to share with you all today, but I don't um unfortunately, but it takes about 10 to 15 minutes to complete, and we're trying to capture both demographics um current perceptions, what people would like to see.

Um, and then there's an opportunity for people to um actually engage with a map um to pinpoint where they want to see where things are lacking or bring attention to their thoughts on public art, and then just voluntary demographics um like um race, et cetera, that help us see who we're meeting and who we're missing, and need to do some extra outreach to as well.

And um, and I think yeah, that's basically it.

As mentioned, we are hoping to have really actionable outcomes for the cultural plan, and that would inform after it's adopted by um officially by the city that it helps create a baseline for um arts and culture and will inform annual working plans as well.

I'm happy to answer any questions you have.

Any questions, Councilmember Hambler?

So recently the arts council did I don't want to say something similar, but but an arts I don't know, I was part of a round table, and the county also did something about makerspaces.

And I don't know it what action items those are are associated with those.

Um and I don't know if you've seen them or or how are we in how are we coordinating, I guess, with so the arts council is a countywide organization, even though they're based in the city, and a lot of our arts programming is in the city, and then the county obviously, you know, third of the people live in the city.

Um so what is that collaboration look like?

Yes, thank you for that question.

So um in preparation with the consultants, I have shared all of those um the Frederick Arts Council public artwork plan, which was completed several years ago, but had recommendations in that.

Um I also recently shared the uh makerspace um I guess study that was commissioned by the county as well with them to just help inform what has already been been thought of, I guess, or areas where there have been I guess support um to help identify areas of need.

Um and then the arts council will hopefully also be part of the steering committee as well as a close partner of the city, and obviously they do a lot um in this space, so it's uh better if we have um people like that on the steering committee to help inform the process as well.

I do appreciate the action item emphasis on because I I think um sometimes what happens is we gather information and there's not necessarily action taken.

So I'm I'm excited to see what the policy recommendations are, especially and um the you know, in March we'll be getting into to budget, and so I don't know if we'll we'll get there in time if there some of the recommendations will probably include some budget items.

Uh most likely, yes.

I mean I think the priorities will help impact any budget requests that might come out of yeah, arts and culture for that.

Um is there any way for you to kind of get a sneak preview as we're because I just don't want it to be too late, you know, because I would like to see some action taken from this and and really run with it for the next year.

Sure, yeah, I can I can see what to do about that.

Yeah, thank you.

So if I looked at the timeline, then we're talking about next January and March 2027 in terms of final plan and then uh okay.

So now analysis are in recommendations, and then so what what would that process consist of?

Four recommendations.

Oh yeah, sure.

So um I think what we would like to do is have the firm present with us um those recommendations and then um get any additional feedback feedback at that point as well from city leadership as well as the general public um before the final plan is um finalized.

And then the final plan would be kind of implementation in terms of how we exactly yeah, yeah.