.

Chair, staff is ready when you are.

Good afternoon.

Welcome to today's meeting, which is June 9th, 2025.

We are at 1.06 PM.

The meeting is now called to order.

Will the clerk please call the roll to establish a quorum?

Thank you, Chair.

Commissioners, please unmute for roll call.

Commissioner Anderson is absent.

Commissioner Eisenberg?

Here.

Commissioner Lamelli is absent today.

Commissioner Martino?

Here.

Commissioner Ohebu?

Here.

Commissioner Smith?

Commissioner Toccolino?

Here.

Commissioner Wallace?

Here.

Commissioner Winlock?

Here.

And Chair Lavullo?

Here.

Thank you.

We have quorum.

I would like to remind members of the public in chambers that if you would like to speak

on an agenda item, please turn in a speaker slip when the item begins.

You will have two minutes to speak once you are called on.

After the first speaker, we will no longer accept speaker slips.

We will now proceed with today's agenda.

Please rise for the opening acknowledgments in honor of Sacramento's indigenous people

and tribal lands.

To the original people of this land, the Nisanan people, the Southern Maidu Valley and Plain

Miwok, Patwin, Wintun people, and the people of the Wilson Rantiria, Sacramento's only federally

recognized tribe.

May we acknowledge and honor the native people who came before us and still walk beside us

today on these ancestral lands by choosing to gather together today in the active practice

of acknowledgement and appreciation for Sacramento's indigenous peoples' history, contribution, and lives.

Thank you.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands,

one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you.

We will be moving to recognition of dedication and service to the City of Sacramento Arts,

Culture, and Creative Economy Commission.

Thank you, Chair.

As this is the last regular scheduled meeting before your current term expires, the City Clerk's Office

would like to extend our sincerest gratitude for your service to the arts, culture, and creative economy

economy, economy commission.

Your service has been invaluable to this commission as well as the City of Sacramento.

If you would like to say a few words regarding your time on the commission, please feel free to do so now.

Thank you.

No, this is for Commissioner Martino.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I wasn't expecting that at that moment.

But yes, it's been an honor to serve on the commission.

I am stepping away to prioritize my business, Art Tonic.

I'm participating in the Culture Business Accelerator cohort right now.

And that program has been helping me advance my business.

So if you're interested in learning more about my business, Art Tonic, you can join us on Pitch Night on June 27th, which I believe Jason will speak to later.

And also to help launch a new gallery and studio facility I'm part of called Prism Art Space.

And that's at 2120 K Street.

And you can find out more about both of those on Instagram at Prism Art Space and at Art Tonic.

And I'll still be in Sacramento.

And also to all of the Convention and Cultural Services staff and to commission members, feel free to use me as a resource or connect with me if you need any assistance connecting with the artists and organizations in our community.

My email is justina at art tonic.org.

Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Martino.

We appreciate you so much and your time that was here.

I really I learned a lot from you.

I liked pulling from your energy.

So I appreciate the time that you were here in the dais with us because it always takes good people.

For other people to learn from.

So you're awesome.

Thank you, Louisa.

Yeah, and it's been really awesome to be on the commission with you all.

I think that we have a really strong crew of commissioners right now.

And I'm really excited to see what you all are going to continue to do.

Perfect.

Moving on to our first business today is approval of the consent calendar.

Clerk, are there any members of the public who wish to speak on the consent calendar?

Thank you, Chair.

There are no speakers for this item.

Thank you.

Are there any commissioners who wish to speak on any of the items?

Okay.

Is there a motion and a second for the consent calendar?

Motion.

I'll second.

Thank you.

Will the clerk please call the roll for the vote?

Thank you, Chair.

And that was a motion by Commissioner Eisenberg with a second by Commissioner Wallace, correct?

Correct.

Commissioners, please unmute for a vote.

Commissioner Anderson is absent.

Commissioner Eisenberg?

Yes.

Commissioner Lameli?

No.

Is absent.

Commissioner Martino?

Aye.

Commissioner Ohebu?

Aye.

Commissioner Smith?

Aye.

Commissioner Toccolino?

Yes.

Commissioner Wallace?

Aye.

Commissioner Winlock?

Yes.

And Chair Lovullo?

Aye.

Thank you.

Motion passes.

We will now proceed to the discussion calendar.

Item number three is our two.

Art in Public Places GIS overview presentation.

Thank you, Chair Lovullo.

Commissioners, good to be here.

My name is Donald Gensler.

I'm our Art in Public Places manager here and I'm joined today by Amy Tokuhama, Tokuhama,

Takuhama Chapman, who is our arts program assistant.

We're thrilled to be talking with you today about something that last time I was up here

I mentioned that we would be coming back to share with you this GIS searching tool.

But we've also talked about this in years past.

And one of the important things that it's, you know, I want everybody to know is that

we've been building this collection since 1977.

And through that time, now that we also have separated from the county, we're still looking

at about 450 artworks, city owned artworks.

And it is increasingly important for us that we start to think about how people throughout

the entire city get to see this artwork.

So that we start to think about issues of equity throughout our city.

Who gets the chance to interact with artwork on a daily basis?

What are the decisions that we are able to make to help bring art throughout our neighborhoods

and communities?

In fact, goal five of our creative edge plan is to infuse neighborhoods and communities

with art and culture.

And I think looking at the creative edge plan, this fits into hopefully achieving some of those goals.

So what's happened over the last few years is we teamed up with our IT team here at the city of Sacramento.

Sacramento, mainly with one gentleman named Michael Dobbins.

I don't know.

No, Michael's not here with us today.

But he's been really incredible.

And Amy has spent a lot of time focusing on trying to develop this GIS mapping tool that you all can now access.

I placed a postcard on each of your areas there.

And what Amy's going to do for you and for anybody tuning in or watching afterwards is take you through what that user experience might be like.

One thing I do want to say is that we feel that this is a soft launch.

That whenever you're working on something, you kind of tend to have, even though you don't want it,

you tend to have these kind of personal blinders on.

And we realize that and we want to recognize that, that we need more work in this, but we need your help.

And we need the public's help.

And so we do hope that after you take the time to try out the GIS mapping tool and search public art throughout the city, that you'll take a moment and answer some survey questions.

Maybe do it a couple times if you try it a couple times.

This will really help us.

We're aggregating this information.

And then that will help us to develop and really make this the kind of ongoing user friendly tool that we hope it can be.

That said, I think it's really exciting as it is.

We also do have, I'll say briefly, and then I'll let Amy kind of take you through it.

We do have a public art archive that is also currently available where you can search both the county and the city collections.

But our GIS tool is just focused on our city public art collection.

So with that, Amy's going to sit down here and share with you all a little bit step by step.

When you go, the first step is to go arts.cityofsacramento.gov.

Amy?

Amy Tokuhama- All right.

So, you can hear me.

Amy Tokuhama- Sorry.

My name is Amy Tokuhama-Chapman, and I am the arts program assistant at the Office of Arts and Culture, Arts in Public Places, as Donald said.

And as Donald said, one of our responsibilities that we take very seriously is, in addition to adding to our wonderful collection,

Amy Tokuhama- is to find ways to market the collection and present these works of art so they are more accessible and enjoyable for the community.

Amy Tokuhama- And our goal is to actively promote both locally to our residents here, as well as statewide, nationwide, and beyond, so that our collection receives the attention that it deserves and also serves as a destination driver for the city of Sacramento.

Amy Tokuhama- So, if you don't already have arts.cityofsacramento.org bookmarked on your computer, you should have it bookmarked.

Amy Tokuhama- And if you go to the website, you'll see micro sites for the various programs under the Office of Arts and Culture.

Amy Tokuhama- And if you toggle to the Public Arts tab, you can scroll down and at the very bottom you can see different public art micro sites for Community Mural Sacramento, for example, in 2022,

Amy Tokuhama- The Del Rio Trail project that we finished. And how do I back browse on this? How do you back browse? Anyways, okay. So, going back to the public art page, this is the GIS survey that Donald was referring to. Also available on this page is the Public Art Archives.

Amy Tokuhama- And Public Art Archives houses the City of Sacramento's collection, as well as collections from around the nation and around the world. But here is our GIS mapping tool. So, if you click on the mapping tool, it will bring you once again to the survey. Like I said, soft launch. So, we are looking for feedback. So, the survey is located in three places. You just click anywhere outside the box to get to the tool itself.

Amy Tokuhama- Here you see on the sidebar, the details of the pieces in the collection, including the title, the artist name, the location, materials, and any photographs that we might have.

Amy Tokuhama- Here is a search bar. And you can search for artwork by artist name or by art title. For example, Merle Axelrod Serlin has a piece here in City Hall that I'd like to show you because it's one of my favorite pieces. It's not very visible to everyone because each one of these pieces is outside the elevator on one of the floors of City Hall, first through fifth.

Amy Tokuhama- So, most people just get to see the one that's at the very bottom on the first floor. But it's a beautiful piece. Or you could search for, for example, reflection.

Amy Tokuhama- The piece that's right out here by Kurt Ernest Steger right outside of the council chambers here. And I'll let you play around with that. You can look for your favorite piece of art or a piece of art that you've never, that you're not familiar with and you want more details on.

Amy Tokuhama- These filters here on the right side, this is your base map, which gives you some reference points, image reference points. Here we have our materials filter. So you can search for pieces based on are they made from bronze, are they made from ceramic.

Amy Tokuhama- Here we have a filter that you can search by zip code. You can search by council district or you can search by category, which is, is it a sculpture, is it a mural, wall treatment, etc. Here, this little information will bring you once again to our survey.

Amy Tokuhama- So now that you've had time to click around a bit, you can go back to the survey. And the thing that I did want to share with you today is the directions tool, because this is one of the fun parts of this GIS mapping tool.

Amy Tokuhama- And it can help you to, to map out your next art adventure. So I'm going to map out a little adventure for us. We're going to start here at City Hall.

Amy Tokuhama- So we'll go 915 I Street, and then we'll use each of these to, to add locations. And we're going to do a tour of community murals, Sacramento. So we'll start out with Beth Rubel's piece, Rhythm and Victory, which is on Northgate Boulevard.

Amy Tokuhama- That's out by where I live. So I'm very familiar with that. And I also know that there is one at the, um, Pannell Community Center by Leonardo Moliero, called Totem. So we'll add that on to our stop. And from there, we'll go out to, oh, Liv Unger's piece that's out in, um, on Del Paso, The Rhythm of the Boulevard. I'm going to add these fairly quickly, because there are 10 of them. Um, and from there, let's go to the Mack Road Gallery.

Amy Tokuhama- That's the Mack Road Valley High Gallery by Shona McDaniels. And then we'll go to the Hagenwood Community Center, where artist Brandon Alexander has a piece called The Ones.

Amy Tokuhama- And after that, we will head out to Ryan Road's piece on, um, Broadway, um, called Cultivate Life on the Channel 10, um, building. And then we'll go back to Natomas and see Shane Grammer's, uh, Skies the Limit on the backside of the Natomas Unified School District.

Amy Tokuhama- And then we can go to Oak by Saks State. Flowing Like a River by John Osgood. You can see all of these popping up by using either the title or the artist's name. And then we'll go to the Common Ground Church and see the piece with the same name by Gregory Schilling, Common Ground. And, oh, um,

Amy Tokuhama- Which is, um, in the Freeport area. And then, of course, we have to get back to City Hall because that's where you left your car. So we'll bring you back to 915 I Street. And bam, here comes your map. Let's collapse our sidebar so we can get a good view of it. And it looks like one of those floppy, um, toys that, see the whole. And it will take us three hours and six minutes to do this circuit. And I'm going to push my magic button.

Amy Tokuhama- Can I ask a question? Can I?

Amy Tokuhama- Oh, we're almost there. We're almost there. Just get, wait, this is a big reveal.

Amy Tokuhama- Optimizing the route.

Amy Tokuhama- Optimize route.

Amy Tokuhama- Oh, thank God.

Amy Tokuhama- We can break it down.

Amy Tokuhama- We're down to one hour and 47 minutes.

Amy Tokuhama- Four hours and 47 minutes.

Amy Tokuhama- From City Hall.

Amy Tokuhama- And if I don't have to bring you back here, we can get it down to an hour and a half. So, um, and you can go through here and your route will take you, um, will give you turn by turn direction.

Amy Tokuhama- From, from one stop to the next. Um, it will, uh, um, also you could say you wanted to change your, your route and switch, uh, your, your stops and move your stops along. Um, the one thing that we have not been able to do is, um, save the maps or export them to maps. So it's an in

Amy Tokuhama- Real-time function where you are at Brandon Alexander's and you want to get to Liv Unger's and you know exactly the turns to get there. Um, it is one of the things that we are working on. Um, there's a lot of potential. There are some limitations. Um, but that's my, if you, if you come and you try to save the map, um, it comes and asks you to sign into, um,

Amy Tokuhama- A system that we can't sign into.

Amy Tokuhama- We're working on that. And I, and I think that's one of the things that we would love to hear about also if that's important or if somebody says, you know what, we put this on my phone, we put it in the car, we figured out where we were going to go and it worked just fine. We just followed the thing. We, we'd be interested to know that too.

Amy Tokuhama- Or if some tech genius has a wonderful workaround, we're open to that as well. But, um, that's my presentation. If anybody has any questions, willing to take them now. Yes.

Amy Tokuhama- Well, that was my, my first question was if you could optimize the route. So thank you for doing that. Um, I was wondering, are you, um, planning on making this a mobile app as well? Because I imagine people will be using this on the streets and won't have a computer.

Amy Tokuhama- Exactly.

Amy Tokuhama- And I was trying it on my phone and it was okay, but it was a little clunky.

Amy Tokuhama- The, um, the experience on the mobile app is slightly different. Um, it is slightly clunkier because it all has to fit on one screen. Um, so,

Amy Tokuhama- I do have a, a directions, uh, that was on our landing page, but it was taking up so much room. I'm going to put it on a separate page that you can link to. Essentially on the mobile app, all of the instructions and all of the functions will be at the bottom of the screen. Um, and if you scroll to the bottom of the screen and click, it'll bring up the, the, um, the, the, the, the details. Um, and if you scroll to the bottom of the screen and click, it'll bring up the, the, um, the, the, the, the details. Um,

Amy Tokuhama- And Amy, it's not actually an app. You're still just, you're just, you're just accessing it through the browser on your phone.

Amy Tokuhama- Yes. Yeah. So, I mean, so the one workaround right now is you can, of course, any, any website you can copy and you can create a small icon on your phone. So you could have it there on your phone. That's just a kind of a functionality of the phone, but you are going to be working through whatever browser you use, whether it's Safari or some kind of Google browser or something.

Amy Tokuhama- Okay. So, uh, right now there's no separate app. You can't go to an app store and purchase that app.

Amy Tokuhama- Sorry. Yeah.

Amy Tokuhama- Because it's a still in beta testing. We're still-

Amy Tokuhama- Well, I mean, yes, it is very much still in beta testing, but also that's just not something we've developed thus far. We haven't developed a separate app. Um, and, and remember, this is all happening in house. So a lot of hours from Amy and also our IT team, uh, and specific GIS team here at the city. So it's baby steps.

Amy Tokuhama- We have been working with the history division on an app, uh, that they actually have that we may, uh, we may partner with, but that one is more based on, uh, stories, uh, that you can then go to a certain site and then click on it and hear, you know, the artist talk about that particular work. So we'll see. I think this is all kind of happening in real time. And again, we're interested in, you know, any feedback. Um, and,

Amy Tokuhama- Things that you really liked about it, but, or things that you found, uh, frustrating and you'd like to see changed.

Amy Tokuhama- Exactly. Commissioner Eisenberg.

Um, yeah, um, I was playing around with it earlier and, um, you partly kind of answered my questions already, but, um, I did notice, like, you have descriptions of, you know, what the, what the artwork is and who did it. But, um, often, you know, when I've, when I've been on site at public art, you know, there's, uh, plaques that have information.

Amy Tokuhama- About the concept of the art. And I was just wondering if there's plans to include something like that, um, on this function in the information area, something about like, well, why did they make this?

Commissioner Eisenberg. That would be, that's, that's perfect. So exactly.

Commissioner Eisenberg.

Commissioner Eisenberg. Yeah, that's, that's the type of thing we'd love to hear.

I know other folks have said, you know, every piece should have, you know, a little GI, a little, um, you know, QR code so that then you can, you know, and I, I agree.

Uh, but we're also looking back at, you know, 40 plus years of this program. And so we're only going to be able to do kind of what we can moving forward. But I think to your point right now, we've got some of the basic kind of information about the work, like artist medium, you know, maybe even a session number, but we don't have a little writeup about it.

Okay. Yeah. And, and generally not all of our plaques have a writeup.

Yeah.

Just so you know, I mean, yeah. And our, our kind of standard plaque would not have an artist statement.

Yeah, I, I understand that, but I, I feel like, um, public art can be so divisive. Um, sometimes like people have opinions, right? And if there's information as to why an artist did what they did, I think that goes a long way to, um, sort of expanding their understanding and experience of, of, of the work.

And I think, you know, given that that's one of the missions, uh, of the commission and, and the office, I think it would be helpful to have something like that.

Well, and also by doing that, by having it on our GIS site, then we don't have to go back and replace every single plaque and have a statement there, but we can have that statement on the GIS. So that's great. And so, and again, if you wouldn't mind, you know, when we've obviously wrote that down, but, um, you know, those kinds of, those are the exact very, I mean, it's like we planned it.

Uh, those are the exact kind of comments that we're looking for, um, that just help. Sometimes we're, again, we can be a little myopic because we've been looking at this thing.

Yeah. Well, it's still, you're still a work in progress.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, and that, and that suggestion, it seems to me that that would be a really easy workaround because that would just be a matter of adding a field.

Right.

Um, that would just pop up in the detail section.

Okay. Yeah. That was going to answer my other question, which is, you know, like how much architecture behind that would that be?

Yeah. Not, not too much at all. I can see that as being a fairly simple fix.

Oh, good.

Um, much easier than exporting the maps.

Okay. Yeah.

It's a really problem.

Okay. Well, thank you.

Commissioner.

Well, thank you.

Um, maybe you guys covered this, um, and trying to keep up, but, um, on the, on the landing page.

There's, um, some links to sort of just like one-off projects. Is that, can you go back to the screen?

Or the, um.

Yeah. Let me, let me actually talk about that. So that's a little separate from, um, the GIS, which is trying to map the entire collection, which we still, the entire collection is not on there, but it's getting closer.

Um, what, what has happened, yeah, go back to just public art.

Yeah.

Yeah. So what's happened is, um, of course, our projects go back to 1977. And so what we, what we did is kind of choose some of the more recent projects.

And then we have kind of a micro site for each of those. And I think moving forward, Commissioner Wallace, that's the direction that we're going.

We'd like to see a small kind of, at least a page on each project so that as you go down, if you want to find out more about particular projects, you can, you can kind of click on that.

Um, of course, some of these then have their own micro sites. So community mural, Sacramento has another site that you can go to.

And, uh, Del Rio trail also has another site you can go to, but I'd say that is probably a trend because my, my sense as a visitor to this city, if I try to put on those glasses, I come in and I go, how do I even find out about this stuff?

Uh, artist statement is nice, but sometimes I'd like to even have more information. So we're trying to move in that direction.

Um, awesome. I also have a question about the county and non city elements and that's maybe two different pieces. So, um, we had a county collection and, uh, back when the commission was city County, uh, was that incorporated into this at all into this project?

So the county collection is in the public art archives that was started back when we were still a city dual agency. Um, and so what we, what we focused on for the GIS project was just city. Um, now we have heard, uh, some of the feedback we've gotten is people have asked, could you add kind of different filters?

So let's say you wanted a filter of, um, other cultural assets in the city.

Yeah. That's what I was going to say. So can we get the other shape files? Like, are they available on an open data portal somewhere that it could be incorporated into this?

Yeah. Uh, I mean, eventually I think that would be a good direction to go, but, uh, because we, first and foremost, we wanted to work on, uh, the city collection that that's what our office is mainly focused on.

How many times I get questions about state public art or wide open walls, murals or whatever that are in the city, but are not under the purview of the city. And they don't have like a centralized place.

Yeah.

And I know it's not necessarily our job to provide that centralized place, but it would be cool if there's links out that could be integrated into the GIS map.

This is kind of like a, a, a kind of like a backwards, uh, response to that instead of saying what's not in our collection. This just defines what is in our collection.

Uh, we could put like a statement of other places that you could look if the piece you can't find is, is not the piece you're looking for. You can't find it here. You might look.

And, and, and only some of those have websites, right? So wide open walls has its own website, but I don't know if there's a state public art collection website. Um, I don't know.

So, um, I mean, you know, so, so, I mean, I think it's, you bring up a really good point. And again, we had actually, uh, atrium nine one six was here, I think just last month or the month before and said, can't you map all the cultural assets in this city?

And I think that's a great idea. And again, that could be, again, another box that you check creates a filter that allows you to then see all of those things. Um, and a great project and maybe something that we could, um, get some additional outside funding for as well at some point. Thank you.

Yeah. You also might.

And please do write that in a survey so that we can kind of have it.

Yeah. And I also just want to say, like, you might see if, like, an organization like Code for Sacramento might want to assist you with that, like, collection.

What organization?

Code for Sacramento.

Okay.

Because they might be willing to do a date-a-thon and pull that together for you.

Okay.

Great. Thank you.

Commissioner Ohebu.

Thank you.

So, I've been playing around with the website.

I don't see a place where people can make suggestions on art that's publicly available.

Yeah. So, the, if you go, well, if you can just go down to this.

All that we have right now go down is the survey.

Yeah.

Yeah, there.

So, that's, so, if you just go through and you select that and then there'll be an area where you can kind of list information and comments.

And you could fill this survey out multiple times.

If, you know, we don't expect it just to be a one-time thing.

It's more like each time you go, if you go, oh, you know what, I'm having trouble with this particular artwork.

That's really helpful for us.

And actually, that's something I think that would be good.

Encourage people to do the survey, you know, whenever.

And we kept it really short.

Right.

So, you go right to your comments pretty fast.

Okay.

Yeah.

Maybe just add a section, like, do you have a, like, maybe there's an art that you want to add to this, to the GIS.

Oh, yeah.

So, right now, the focus has been city-owned collection.

But there's some city-owned collection work that's not on there, too.

So, yeah, I think that's a great idea.

Yes.

Yes.

I did have more to my comment from earlier.

Yeah.

First of all, I wanted to say great job, you guys.

I know anything having to do with making a map is really challenging.

I mean, I have worked on maps together before.

You had a little experience with that?

Yeah, and I worked on other mapping stuff before.

I know it can be a real challenge.

So, I think it looks really great so far.

I just wanted to make a suggestion, and I can put this in the survey, to maybe add links to artist pages, like artist websites.

I don't know if that's a good idea because the websites might not be working in the future.

So, that might be something that you need to keep an eye on.

Right.

And another thing is, I, of course, went to the public art project I helped with, one of them, and River Crossing.

And I noticed the date was wonky, so you might want to just double check the dates or have someone else take a look.

Yeah.

Cool.

Thank you.

Yeah, as you might imagine, there's just so many small little details.

And that's exactly kind of the thing.

So, like, we both worked on River Crossing together, right?

So, I mean, we went over it, but, like, you just, sometimes you just keep looking over that stuff.

So, yeah, if you see something like that, that's super helpful.

We're honestly crowdsourcing.

We're literally crowdsourcing right now to try to get some assistance on that.

So, thank you for those insights.

Any other questions or comments or just general thoughts?

I'll be keeping my eye on the survey responses, for sure.

Yeah.

Well, thank you all very much, and we look forward to seeing your responses to the survey in the future.

Thanks again.

Oh, and, oh, you guys got postcards.

That's right.

Okay.

Good.

Thank you for that presentation.

Our next item on the agenda is Forum on Accessible Theater presentation.

Thank you, Chair Lavulo.

First off, I just want to thank, again, our in public places manager, Donald Gensler, and our in public places program assistant, Amy Tokohama-Chapman, as well as our IT staff, Michael Dobbins, who did a tremendous amount of work in getting us to this place.

So, kudos to all of you, and just grateful for all of the work that you're doing.

The whole point of that was to just make our public art collection more accessible in a variety of formats and platforms.

So, that's critical to our work.

And kind of a segue to this next topic of accessibility and increasing accessibility for all audiences.

The purpose of this next item is to receive information from friends in the community, our organizers of the All-In Festival of Accessible Theater, being held at the Wilkerson Theater and the Three Penny Theater later this month, June 27th through the 29th.

And you can go find more information.

We'll be reiterating this website at allintheaterfestival.org.

All-In Theater Festival.

Theater is spelled T-H-E-A-T-E-R.

All-In is a project of the Short Center Repertory, which is a theater company established in 1988 as a community outreach program of developmental disabilities service organization, otherwise known as DDSO.

And they first mounted the All-In Festival in 2024 as a collaborative effort with Intervision Theater and Theater V58.

And this was the culmination of initial support from the Office of Arts and Culture through a Capital Region Creative Corps grant.

So, the Office of Arts and Culture is really excited to be building on this relationship.

We know that it is critically important for us to support all audiences for the arts, all artists throughout the city in a variety of disciplines.

And this organization has been doing tremendous amount of work, specifically supporting audience members, as well as artists and creatives with disabilities.

So, with that, I want to bring up our guests, Jim Brown.

Feel free to come up to the podium and introduce our friends who will be sharing additional content for their presentation.

Thank you so much, Jason.

My name is Jim Brown.

I'm the coordinator of the All-In Festival.

And with me today are Carrie King, the founder and director of Theater V58.

She'll have more to tell you about that program.

And also, Tim Hickerson, who is also one of the directors of Theater V58.

And he's going to give you a sample of the kind of theater that we are presenting at the festival.

Most of us here are used to thinking about accessibility as a matter of accommodating people with disabilities into experiences created for the mainstream world.

With theater, accessibility is often discussed in terms of the audience experience.

So, whether there's wheelchair access, ASL interpretation, and at some venues in our area now, audio description for blind audience members.

The All-In Festival kind of turns that whole concept inside out by putting actors with disabilities at the center of the creative process and centering their experiences and perspectives.

I'm old enough to remember when actors of color began to be given roles that were traditionally thought of as white roles.

And I believe it was about nine years ago that the first actor in a wheelchair was cast in a role on Broadway for a character who wasn't in a wheelchair.

So, this is still an evolving concept.

The All-In Festival takes this idea further by presenting theater created by and about people who are neurodivergent, blind, or have low vision, or are deaf or hard of hearing.

These are productions that give mainstream audiences access to stories and perspectives that it normally wouldn't experience.

This year's festival is on June 27th to 29th, as Jason mentioned, and it will feature three original productions by Short Center Repertory, Intervision Theater, and Theater V58.

The festival, as Jason explained, is a project of Short Center Rep, which was founded as a community outreach initiative by DDSO.

DDSO provides art-centered services to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and Short Center Rep exists to expand that mission by creating theater with all communities of disability.

About 10 years ago, Short Center Rep began casting blind and deaf directors in cross-disability productions

and incorporating ASL and audio description as creative elements in these productions.

This effort at cross-disability theater gave birth to Intervision Theater, which is theater specifically focusing on the experiences of people who are blind and low vision.

Their director, Regina Brink, would be here today, but she's working today with the Sacramento Police Department on accessibility.

So, this is the theme for the afternoon.

Theater V58 is the other theater that grew out of that effort, and they create theater in ASL for deaf and fluent signing communities.

And Carrie King will tell you more about that project in a few minutes.

Last year, the three companies got together and, with funding from a Creative Core grant, launched the All-In Festival as a community outreach effort.

The festival begins on Friday, the 27th, with the Forum on Accessible Theater, which Jason mentioned.

This is a way for us to sort of look behind the process of the productions themselves at the practices and ideas and policies that go into creating theater without barriers.

We'll be featuring disabled artists and activists and activists and their allies.

And this is a presentation really developed for theater professionals, event producers, policymakers, and academics.

You are all welcome to attend that.

Jason's been really helpful in helping us put together a meaningful program for the Forum.

So, I want to thank him again for that effort.

With the festival performances and the Forum, we hope to help broaden the definition of accessibility and to enable greater access to theater arts by people of all abilities.

And as Jason mentioned, you can read more about the festival schedule, the productions we're putting on, and the people behind those productions at allintheaterfestival.org.

That's theater with an E-R, not an R-E.

And I hope some of you can join us there.

And with that, I'm going to turn this over to Carrie King to talk more about her vision for accessible theater in Sacramento.

And then following that, Tim Hickerson will share a short performance of some original music and lyrics presented in ASL.

And that will give you an idea of what we're going to be presenting at the festival.

So, take it away, Carrie.

Hi, good afternoon, and thank you so much.

I want to thank you for your time today.

As you know, introduce me as Carrie King.

I am one of the co-founders of the Sacramento Valley's first community, very first community theater for and by deaf and hard of hearing,

and fluent signing members of our local deaf community.

The deaf community is considered, as you may or may not know, a linguistic minority,

meaning culturally it is the same as any other foreign language speaking culture,

with the exception of not being able to hear.

In the deaf culture, the inability to hear is not considered a disability.

Deafness is not something to be pitied, fixed, or changed.

The only thing deaf people cannot do is hear.

As an actor, as an interpreter, and an ASL educator, it was a life's dream to combine both my love of theater and American Sign Language together

to provide representation of deaf people, deaf culture, and American Sign Language on stage for both deaf and hearing audiences.

In 1992 to 1994, I had the opportunity to intern and work with Deaf West Theater Company,

which at the time was the first and only professional theater company in Los Angeles and then the entire West Coast for the deaf.

It is here where I gained the knowledge and the intricacies of deaf theater

and the unique processes of translating traditional theater into American Sign Language.

In 2007, I was accepted to the Theater Development Fund program Interpreting for Broadway at the Juilliard School in New York City.

This led to an opportunity of interpreting for stage on Broadway.

Traditionally, some, but not all theaters have provided access to performances by hearing actors through the use of American Sign Language interpreters.

It is not sufficient just to put any interpreter into a performance situation.

Performance interpreting requires years of specialized training and experience.

Too often, deaf theater patrons are let down due to a lack of quality of services provided

and the lack of deaf representation in theater performances.

Positive deaf representation on stage is desperately needed and wanted from the deaf community.

In the past, deaf characters have been portrayed as helpless, hopeless, and cognitively impaired.

Lately, Hollywood has become more inclusive of positive portrayals of deaf actors using ASL and film.

However, there are fewer and fewer opportunities when it comes to casting deaf individuals

who use American Sign Language in live shows and theatrical productions.

Even when companies announce they follow a quote-unquote non-traditional casting policy.

Growing up in and around the deaf community, I knew firsthand the stereotypes and stigmas deaf people faced.

It was the stories which fueled theater V58's desire to produce local community theater that would allow the creation of original material to be created and performed by deaf and hard of hearing

and fluent signing members of the local deaf community, which explored themes of discrimination and audism.

Audism is a new term you may not be familiar with.

It is a form of oppression against deaf and hard of hearing individuals, which the belief that the ability to speak and hear is far superior to those who do not speak and only use American Sign Language.

Flash forward to 2025.

Theater V58 is currently working on an original show entitled Welcome to Our Table, Where Silence is Loud.

And this production will focus on the connections and disconnections that deaf people face within their families, within their community, and within society at large.

This groundbreaking show will utilize improvisation, storytelling, stand-up comedy, and poetry to give you a seat at our table and a perspective into the deaf world.

Most recently, I had the amazing opportunity to work with a national team of ASL interpreters working with the band Coldplay in Las Vegas.

Yes, I just flew in last night from working with the international team.

I had made connections and have been featured in the documentary film called Sign the Show.

And the lead director of that film was at the venue there.

And I was able to meet with Mr. John Bell, who is the director of accessibility for Live Nation, which is the nationwide producer of most huge concerts that are here in the United States,

where we are planning to work together to establish a program to train, mentor, and employ professional performance sign language interpreters across the United States,

so that we can ensure that these patrons of music and theater get the service and quality of services that they will deserve.

Theater V58 looks forward to seeing and being an integral part of Sacramento becoming a premier location for inclusive, accessible theater in California.

And I thank you for your time.

And right now, I'd like to introduce my very good friend, my co-worker, my talent in charge, Mr. Tim Hickerson.

And he is going to just show you a brief poem.

And I believe you've all been given the English transcription.

There will be no translation, but there is some music behind the actual poetry.

And I'd like to go ahead and allow Tim to just briefly state what he has.

The music was actually created by Mr. Hickerson.

And the production is in American Sign Language, theatrical sign language.

Thank you.

Thank you, Kelly.

Thank you.

So I've had the dream of making our own music for the deaf community and hard of hearing community.

And my hard work and specialty in this area was to develop music and music that actually reflects our own deaf experiences, our frustrations.

And this is our goal to find equal access with communication and with other individuals within our lives.

And so this is what we've been working so hard on.

And Theater V58 has allowed me the platform to share this with you.

It's also a form of education as well as entertainment.

So I hope you enjoy.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

sogar

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I need some silence.

I need some silence.

I need some silence.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I just wanted to say thank you for presenting that.

I work with a lot of nonprofit organizations

to help them write grants, and accessibility is often

just a box they try to check off.

But to see you all making art that really embodies accessibility

and brings it to the deaf and hard of hearing audiences

is just really inspiring to see.

And I look forward to checking out your festival.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I really enjoyed that.

I have seen concerts.

It's the thing right now where there's concerts,

and you'll actually see someone signing the concert,

and they're very into it.

They're like, they're just as hype as the actual performers.

And I was watching you, and you were really

in sync with the beat.

And I was like, that's really cool, because as the beat is bumping,

he's also going like this.

And he's so it was really cool to see.

Thank you so much for your presentation.

Thank you very much.

My pleasure.

I was just curious whether you have any programs for children

with special needs.

And have you been involved with any of that in our community?

We don't currently, but this is something we keep hearing about as well.

In other words, more of a community facing type of training for those communities of people.

It's definitely on the list.

Our aspiration is to make the festival both an annual event,

but also kind of an umbrella under which a lot of these kinds of activities could take place.

So, for example, over the next year, we're going to be presenting some theater training

for the actors in our companies, bringing in a master technique instructor from Brazil

who specializes in a particular kind of technique that works very, very well with our community.

And we can envision a time when that kind of training is also made available to the wider community as well.

So, so we, we have some ambitions in that direction and we're, we're starting to make some baby steps in that,

in that direction.

Good.

Good.

Thank you for that suggestion.

Thank you so much.

Any other commissioners?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All in theater festival.

This is the first, the segment on the first day.

That is the forum for accessible theater.

Can't wait to share additional details with you.

Again, it's important for the Office of Arts and Culture to build on this work

and a desire to make sure that all sectors of the community are supported

in whatever artistic discipline, whatever modalities they are practicing

and experiences they're having.

So we're really excited to be increasing our work

in terms of building accessibility through our programs and initiatives.

So updates.

I just have a few.

The Creative Growth Fellowship launched last Monday.

This is an opportunity for up to 200 artists to receive $850 per month for a year.

Applicants must be 18 years or older, City of Sacramento residents,

and able to demonstrate work in one of the indicated eligible artistic disciplines.

This is a huge undertaking and a really amazing opportunity,

so we're excited to offer this.

I will note that the deadline is June 20th at 11.59 p.m.

You can go to cityofsacramento.gov forward slash growth for more information and to apply.

The Art and Public Places team, in addition to the GIS survey tools, have been just extremely busy as ever.

Last week we saw a dedication event.

It was a celebration for Liv Losey Unger's mural, the Living Balance, at Sutter's Landing Regional Park.

Again, I want to acknowledge Amy and Donald for their incredible work in bringing this event together

in celebration of arts, culture, community, the environment, our tribal family members.

It was just a wonderful event.

I also want to thank Mayor Kevin McCarty and Council Member Phil Pluckybone who were in attendance.

So if you are interested in this vinyl mural, this vinyl wrap mural,

it is, again, at the Sutter's Landing Regional Park, the Baylor Building, which is located at 28th Street, Sacramento 95816.

This is the skate park at the top of the road leading up to the river access points.

There is also a new request for qualifications, birds and benches.

This is an invitation for qualified professional artists to apply for three position opportunities

as part of a new artist design benches project in North Natomas Regional Park.

There is an information session which you can apply to attend June 25th, 530 to 630.

And again, you can find out more about that at arts.cityofsacramento.org.

This concludes my update, and I'd like to pass it back to our chair.

Thank you.

I think we have a question.

Yes, I do, of Jason.

Jason, I was, you know, in light of all of the what's going on with the budget for the city and all else,

can you give us a status of where you believe that we are with arts and culture in as far as the budget?

What kind of things are we asking for?

What do we see?

Or what's the discussion around the arts and culture budget, please?

Sure, I'd be happy to answer that.

As many of you may know, tomorrow marks a significant date for the approval of the budget.

This is a June 10th city council meeting.

There, thankfully, have been no major considerations for the Office of Arts and Culture.

Our department head, Megan Van Borys, has worked tirelessly, I think, as an advocate for all divisions within convention and cultural services.

The most important consideration is that we are not looking at any personnel loss of positions within the Office of Arts and Culture.

So that's very important because we are a very small entity.

We are looking at some shifts in funding for youth workforce development in particular.

But overall, we're looking at not seeing any major shifts to our future programming.

But that's not to say that we don't need to look at, perhaps, what does it look like to find revenue-generating opportunities within our programs and initiatives.

That's not to say that we aren't going to have to look very carefully at funding for programs and initiatives in the future.

And this is certainly an indicator that we need to continue to look at partnerships throughout the region in terms of supporting some of these programs and initiatives, especially in light of ARPA funding drying up.

For example, with the Creative Growth Fellowship Project or Program, this is funded through federal ARPA-related dollars.

There are a number of other initiatives that have been funded through ARPA dollars, such as our Arts Journalism Program with Solving Sacramento.

Any number of initiatives are going to need additional funding if they're going to continue.

And so that's something that we're going to have to look at into the future.

Jason, we all know what's happening on the federal level with arts and culture.

Are we going to be impacted in any way with the federal direction?

Yeah, that's a good question as well.

What is happening at the federal level does have a chilling effect across the arts and culture field.

We are not certain if there are organizations that have been directly affected by loss of NEA funding or additional federal arts-related funding.

I don't think that we've heard specific cases of that.

And I could say that our State of California funds through the California Arts Council is pretty secure and stable.

So thankfully, we're not looking at any changes to our near-feature programming as a result of what's happening at the federal level.

But again, I will say that it's certainly affecting the climate in the field.

And it's another indicator that we all need to look at partnerships and additional funding models for nonprofit organizations and artists in communities.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

I just wanted to mention that Culture and Creative Startups, in partnership with the City of Sacramento,

will be having the pitch night for the accelerator program that's wrapping up on June 27th from 5 p.m. to 8.30 p.m. at Aggie Square.

I believe Culture is working on the official flyer for that.

But speaking of funding, there's going to be a lot of people in that room, including Fiona Ma, who's like, what's she, like the finance?

Treasurer.

Treasurer.

State Treasurer, yeah.

State Treasurer.

Yeah, so people who are from other sectors who are interested in supporting the creative economy.

So as commissioners, I would suggest that you go and just network and talk to the people in the room about the importance of arts and culture.

I think that's going to be a really great evening.

And hopefully we can get some more support for funding for the arts and cultural sector.

Also, I want to mention related to the Creative Growth Fellowship, although Art Tonic, my business, is not officially affiliated with this fellowship outreach,

we did offer some office hours a few weeks ago, and we have received requests to do a peer editing session.

So we will be holding a peer editing session for artists applying to this fellowship either next Monday or Tuesday.

At Prism Art Space, 2120 K Street, we have air conditioning, which a lot of art spaces don't have.

And we have a nice monitor that we'll put the rubric up on.

And I have created an editing checklist that I use with all my artist grant clients.

So we're just going to have a night where we get together and edit each other's drafts and check them against the rubric.

So you can follow me at Art Tonic on Instagram for information on that.

For the peer editing, that's June 27th at Aggie Square.

What time is the peer editing?

I think we're going to do 628.

We just decided to do it this past weekend.

And I'll be partnering with Demo Art and Books to do that.

Okay.

Yeah.

Thank you, Vice Chair Martino.

I wanted to circle back to a couple of things that you had mentioned.

The culture 12-week accelerator program of which you are a participant in.

We're really excited about that.

The culminating event.

And that's correct.

I am working with Rashawn Davis and his colleagues to get out information on their plans for the 27th.

So I think that you can look forward to additional information.

Most likely an article or blog post in City Express.

Certainly with our social media.

Leading up to that event as well as the All-In Theater Festival.

All happening actually the same day.

So a little bit staggered.

So I think that you should be able to hit elements of both if you were so inclined.

But thank you for sharing that.

And stay tuned for additional information.

Thank you.

We'll head over to the next item, which is Commissioner Comments and Ideas.

Are there any commissioners who wish to speak?

Let's officially open it.

I know that Commissioner Wallace has.

I had some questions for Jason.

And maybe these go on the follow-up log.

But there was an APP selection back when I was on the commission years ago for the convention center.

The De La Torre Brothers piece.

And I was wondering if we could get an update on when that might be installed.

Or if it will be installed.

It's been a while.

And then I was wondering if we were going to, maybe this is just a suggestion, but sort of take a temperature of the nonprofits in the city that are maybe our CAA grants or ones that we work with a lot or that are really important and critical to the community.

To start working on plans for nonprofit stabilization.

I know that a really major institution in our community has lost a capacity building grant from the NEA.

And I expect that more will follow.

And so whatever we can do to sort of be a comprehensive bulwark against these assaults on our funding infrastructure would be great.

And whatever we can do to put that information out.

And I'll just echo what Justina was talking about.

There is this initiative alongside creative startups folks to start thinking about other resources for creatives.

And so if you have ideas about that, definitely talk to Rashaan or Alice or myself or Justina or anyone else you know who has thoughts and ideas.

Because I think we have to come up with a new approach going forward.

And then I guess since we're just doing comments, I just wanted to say I want to thank Justina for her service on this commission.

I think she's been a really important voice.

And I'm looking forward to working with you on the inside-outside game from here on out.

So thanks.

Thanks, Maya.

Ditto.

Ditto.

So I think I heard two questions or comments for the follow-up log in the future.

And this is only the second and third time that we've exercised this.

So I think that if I'm not mistaken, we can add it to the follow-up log.

But there may be some additional information that I can request that I'll request of you in the interim before the next meeting.

And then we can see if we can appropriately answer your questions and perhaps get a discussion going on some of the comments that you had.

Thank you.

Any other commissioners wish to speak?

All right.

The last item is public comments.

Matters not on the agenda.

Clerk, are there any members of the public who wish to speak on public comments?

Matters not on the agenda.

Thank you, Chair.

There are no speakers for this item.

Thank you.

This concludes today's agenda.

Thank you, everyone, for your participation.

The meeting is adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.