Speak.

You can state your name and you have five minutes.

You good?

Good.

Okay.

Seeing no other members who wish to speak, I'll close public input.

We'll now move on to the approval of the January 12th 2025 meeting minutes.

There's that typo, Bridget.

At least it's early.

Are there any corrections?

Would someone like to make a motion?

Oh, you go.

Motion approved the minutes.

Is there a second?

I'll second.

All those in favor.

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

That passes.

Okay.

Moving on to regular business.

The first agenda item is overview of the City of Lafayette's arts and cultural resources department and programming downtown.

Now hand it over to executive director Keating.

Hi, everyone.

I'm really excited to welcome Rachel Hanson, who is our director of ACRD.

Since so much of our identity and the vibrancy of our downtown is related to arts and culture and the work that ACRD does, I thought it'd be great to invite Rachel just to spend time with us to go over her department, her cultural assets here, her programming, and really use this time just to have a casual conversation with her.

And that included funding public art.

It included helping fund elements of R Night Out.

And so while there's not an ask tonight, this is more just an informational session to see where there are opportunities for partnerships in the future, and just to understand the ins and outs of everything from R Night Out to R on the street.

This is a casual conversation, so feel free to jump in and ask questions throughout it.

Yeah, absolutely.

Great.

All right.

And um we have some time with this, you know.

Um, think about like 45 minutes to an hour.

So um we can spend as much time as we need to.

Um, but I I blocked out some time, so we can just dig into it.

So I'm gonna hand it over to Rachel.

Great.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you for inviting me to introduce introduce myself and my department to all of you.

I know many of you or most of you through various other partnerships and from around town, but I wanted to share the work that we do.

My name is Rachel Hanson, and I am the Arts and Cultural Resources Director.

I've worked for the city for over 10 years, and I have served as director since June of 2022.

And I would like to introduce my department.

We are so much more than just Art Night Out, which is sort of our big public face.

Um I want to share our dedication to partnerships and placemaking and tell you what we're doing in 2026 and where we're headed in the future.

Our goals come from our five-year strategic plan and mesh nicely with many of the council goals and the old town tomorrow action plan.

Some of our goals can be achieved without funds.

Um they're achieved through staff and the work that we do in and around the community.

Others require support and resources.

Our work focuses on bringing art activities and events to the whole community, elevating equity and representation in art and culture, reducing barriers to grants and programs, and developing partnerships to enhance connections.

We have our vintage style neon light, which I think might have been funded by Laura many many years ago.

We are located on the north end of the old town core, and we have the collective houses our staff offices and provides cultural offerings to the community.

We host seven major exhibits and with coordinating events throughout the year, including programming, film screenings, business of arts workshops, art openings, poetry readings, artist talks, art workshops, and other cultural offerings.

We have seven people on our staff, three full-time and four part-time.

And our staff also serves as liaisons for the Cultural Arts Board and the Public Art Committee.

We're on a growth trajectory, which is great.

So we do lots of fun things, including the art on the walls, but lots of other opportunities to connect and create and experience lots of great things.