The Arts and Culture Committee, chaired by Vice Chair Mario Castillo, convened on May 21, 2026, with Councilmember Sally Alcorn and staff from multiple council offices. The meeting featured updates on World Cup arts opportunities, a joint presentation on the proposed renewal of the Hotel Occupancy Tax (HOT) contract with Houston Arts Alliance (HAA), a presentation on the Houston Cultural Districts' summer marketing plan, and public testimony from 11 speakers. No votes were taken; the committee discussed proposals and heard community input.
To order the arts and culture committee meeting. I'm the vice chair of the committee, Mario Castillo, here joined by Councilmember Sally Alcorn and Chambers, as well as staff from Councilmember Twila Carter's office, staff from Councilmember Joaquin Martinez's office, staff from Councilmember Julian Ramirez, and Councilmember Tiffany Thomas. With that, we will begin. Okay. Um I don't have a ton to update on. I did want to say that because it's a question that's come up a few times, and and I think it's relevant and of course very timely. The arts community, I think, has continued to ask this office since coming in about opportunities to be more connected to the festivities happening, celebrating the World Cup and you know, opportunities for artists and and uh different public art opportunities. And I think there's been a lot of really great questions. I don't have all of the answers, but I did want to share uh a few things that I know, and I can share the uh links with all of the council offices, uh, but I do know that for the um organizations, institutions that are going to have uh arts programming during the summer that you would like visitors to be steered toward. There is a microsite that Houston First has created to allow you to go in and input your information and and um they're doing a lot of SEO investment to be able to direct folks there. Um so that's one opportunity, and then I believe in today or yesterday there was a a story um in the paper about another project. I'm not entirely certain how that's being funded, maybe through the host committee, but a project um with a number of different murals around town, and I don't have tons of details. I just found out about that one, but I believe there's there it's a project managed by Batiri, who's a a um muralist, and um there will be opportunities for local artists to participate in those. I think there's 10 of them. And um there is also uh Dan, can you tell me the name of the project, the ribbon cutting? Uh, okay. Oh, thank you. Easting Gateway. They're the East End Gateway mural um project, which is another very collaborative project that's celebrating uh the World Cup, and there's a ribbon cutting for that coming up very soon as well. So I'll share all of those dates and details with the council offices via email. But I I just wanted to say that I know that I recognize the community's been asking those questions and I've been asking those questions and as I'm receiving information, trying to get it out to you all. Um and then beyond that, I I don't want to delay us because I know there will probably be lots of of questions, and this uh presentation will take a little bit of time, so we can move into that. Great. We can roll right into the joint presentation with the Houston Arts Alliance on the hot contract update and timelines. Um Taylor will be joining you for that. And thank you for the update around the activities with uh opportunities related to FIFA. I know folks are excited about that, and the ribbon cutting is actually uh in district H, so that'll be happening on Saturday. Thank you. We're yes, we're excited, and I know the arts community is very excited to have this influx of visitors and be able to really showcase all that Houston has to offer. So, however, I can do, whatever I can do to help. I'm here to do that. So thank you. Um before we dive into the slides, I want to just say a little bit about um, and you can probably go to the next slide, but um, I want to just say a little bit about the um hotel occupancy tax program, which is uh, as you all know, it is a uh contract of the mayor's office of the arts. It is a program that has existed for many years. These are local hotel occupancy tax dollars that the state specifically allows via state legislation municipalities to invest in the arts, with the understanding that the arts is a driver of tourism and that it would generate further hotel occupancy tax dollars. And so there's there's a number of parameters that are laid out by the state, including, you know, what percentage is allowed and um and how that's able to be executed. And so the city of Houston allocates uh the maximum allowable, the 19.3% to the arts from its local hot. And uh in doing so, we contract with Houston Arts Alliance, which is a nonprofit organization who was a which was established 20 years ago now, where they're celebrating their 20th anniversary this year, out of the reorganization and restructure of several local municipal arts agencies, um and in order really with the idea that that this work could be more community centric and more efficiently executed on if there was this nonprofit administrative partner to run very transparent um fair grants processes on our behalf. And so that's what Houston Arts Alliance does for us, specific to this contract. We also have another contract with Houston Arts Alliance, but specific to HOT, that's what they do for us. Um from a timeline standpoint, this was a five-year contract with two one-year extension options, both of which were executed uh by this administration, and the final extension option expires at the end of this year. However, because of the uh lead time needed for HAA to run its grants processes, we need to get that secured pretty quickly this summer. And so we're going through this process. We've had a number of stakeholder conversations between myself and Taylor with different um parts of the sector. We've met with the um leadership of the large institutions that mostly sit in our theater and museum districts, and uh we have also met with the seven cultural districts and their leadership. We've met individually with some of your offices. We will be reaching out to meet individually with all of the council offices. Um, and we've met with a number of different artists and community members and really kind of workshop this through a lot of feedback. So I hope that we are, you know, we we have a pretty good um plan in place, and and it doesn't look vastly different from what it looked like before. Uh if we can go to the next slide.