A proclamation endorsing IMAGINE 2020: Denver’s Cultural Plan A proclamation endorsing IMAGINE 2020: Denver’s Cultural Plan
We do have two proclamations this evening, and I have the good fortune to read Proclamation 178 endorsing imagined 2020 Denver's Cultural Plan. It is sponsored by myself, Councilman Layman and Councilman Monteiro. In principle. I mean, principally. Whereas great cities have great arts, culture and create creativity. And. Whereas, arts, culture and creativity contribute greatly to Denver's economy and its residents quality of life. And. WHEREAS, The City's commitment to the arts is seen through the 25th anniversary of its public art program, its distinctive neighborhood art district's world class venues, museums and cultural programs. Support for creative businesses. And. WHEREAS, Denver arts and venues along with the officer office of Mayor Michael Hancock, the Office of Economic Development and many other community partners all work to engage residents and visitors in the development of a culture. A Plan to be for Denver by Denver. And. Whereas, Denver arts and venues worked with the community to craft a shared vision of Denver's cultural future and will work with community partners and engage residents to achieve this vision. And. Whereas, implementation of the plan will build on Denver's strong foundation of arts culture and created creativity to advance creative sector business, improve access to arts education for children and adults, and increase the availability of arts and culture in Denver's neighborhoods. And. Whereas, Denver City Council recognizes that endorsement of this plan is a step toward its implementation, and that support for the continued development of arts, culture and creativity in Denver is an investment in the city that will pay dividends for generations to come. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed by the Council of the City and County of Denver, Section one, that the Council hereby endorses. Imagine 2020 Denver's Cultural Plan prepared by Denver Arts and venues that the Clerk of Section two that the Clerk of the City and County of Denver shall attest and affix the seal of the city and county of Denver to this proclamation and that a copy be transmitted to Kent Rice, Executive Director of Arts and Venues. It is my pleasure to move that the proclamation be adopted. It has been moved and seconded. I'll ask for comments from Council Councilwoman Lehman. Thank you, Madam President. Just the opening of this. Meeting shows you how. Wonderful the arts are in any single setting at all. And just gives you a little bit. Of hope. For this. This plan is for Denver's future. So, again, thank you guys very much. You were terrific. And having a. Plan, we spent, um, I. Was on the committee to work on the plan, and we spent months and months and months doing it. You can look at it if you go to Denver gov dot dot org and go to cultural planner. Imagine 2020. Okay. Denver gov dawg. Imagine 2020. And it's just. A wonderful first step. To a wonderful vision for Denver's future. So I'd like to thank everybody who has written that plan. I'd like to. Thank our two. Venues who have worked really hard so far to get this done. And I just can't wait to see what the next step is. So thank you all very much. Thank you, Councilwoman Lehman. I would also like to add my congratulations to the hard work of the your team and to all the people that were involved. I understand that you got input from 5000 people and combined that to for a vision for a cultural plan for Denver that I think is going to be very meaningful for the livability of this city. It already is very livable. You're just going to make it so and I'm so pleased to bring this proclamation forward and so happy with the plan that you all are outlining for us. Oh, Councilwoman Ortega. I just want to ask that my name be added to the proclamation, and I want to extend my appreciation to arts and venues for the extensive outreach, not only gathering input, but also sharing information with folks about the findings from that input. You all have done just an outstanding job in reaching out to the community to let them know what this is all about. And this is just yet another example of helping to educate the community about that. So thanks for your work. Thank you, Councilwoman Ortega. Councilwoman Monteiro. Thank you, Madam President. I'm really excited after attending today's luncheon to be able to learn more about the plan. So congratulations and great speech today, Ken Rice. But I, I, I join in the celebration because for us in Council District nine, we live and breathe cultural arts through programs like the Urban Art Fund Arts more accessible at the neighborhood level. And art in every neighborhood is a priority for all of us. And I'd like to see every neighbor. Could enjoy the magnificence of arts and all that it does for our city. Even in River North, where we have the Rhino Arts District there, the growing opportunities to nurture and develop art in a lot of our spaces. I also want to acknowledge the other art districts in my council district Santa Fe Arts River, North Navajo Street, and the others that are pockets that I may or may not know of. And if I didn't see it, I'm sure I'm going to find out tomorrow. But I just want to tell you that for me, I know Denver is a huge sports town, and I like that, too. But I also know that Denver is a huge cultural arts community, and that is that's the root for all of us. And so thank you very much for doing this. And now you have a plan and now you have to get to work. So thank you. Thank you. Councilman Monteiro. Councilwoman Robb. Sorry, but I cannot let this proclamation go by without making some comments. And what I was thinking about as I listen to this and just thinking about arts and culture in Denver, Denver is I believe I read, if I'm remembering my history correctly, that some of the biggest advocates for Civic Center Park was a group called the Women's Art League way back around the turn of the century. And then, I believe a mayor or maybe it was Mayor Webb or Mayor Paine is started the Mayor's Commission on Arts and Culture. And then we made that more of a separate department under Hickenlooper. And then when we really went to arts and venues, change came a little with a little bit of difficulty like are we going to lose the arts somewhere and be only about venues? And that certainly has not happened. I think it really provided sort of the catalyst for moving this along. And speaking of another catalyst, I'm so excited about the work being done on the McNichols Building, the old Carnegie Library in Civic Center Park, just to circle around to where my comments started, because I think we will have both a really strong Office of Arts venues in a really identifiable, identifiable place where that sits and is located along with all the other wonderful institutions that our neighborhood. But that can be sort of a hub for us. So congratulations to all of you, and thank you for your hard work. Thank you, Councilman Rob. Councilwoman Sheppard. Thank you, Madam President. I, too, would like to add my name to the record as a supporter of this proclamation. And one thing I just want to mention really briefly is that arts are great for business, right? And anyone who, you know, who doubts that, just take a look at Austin or New York or Las Vegas and , you know, some of the wonderful performing arts and music and other types of things that those cities have. And every year we get to boast more and more opportunities for both our citizens and folks that are visiting to check out the many wonderful things that are going on in the city from our incredible visual arts programs to our great theater programs and our burgeoning local music scene, which our council secretary is helping to highlight on a show called the Denver Laugh Sessions that we premiere right on this channel, Channel eight. So I think every year we get more and more on the map as being, you know, a great cultural city and. It's great for our local economy, too. So I'm happy to support this and just look. Forward to all the great work that's going to come out of the plan. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Sheppard. Mr. Secretary, it looks like it's time for roll call. All right, Madam President. I guess I wrote I. But I. Herndon. I can each name in five. Lopez. Montero. Hi. Ortega. Hi, Rob. All right. Shepard. I'm sorry. Okay. All right. Zero names. Okay. Well. Why, thank you, Mr. Secretary. Very appreciative eyes, no nays. The proclamation is adopted. Now we have another special performance. I would like to invite the poet Jose Guerrero to the podium. Jose Carneiro has been featured on the HBO special Brave New Voices in 2010 and was a guest poet at ten X in 2011. Now a student at the University of Denver. Jose got his start in spoken word right here in town at Café Kaltura. Jose will be performing a poem for us tonight. And you are on a cool. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. It's such an honor. And so I'm just going to go in and read my poem. I hope you guys enjoy. As an educator, I often find myself arguing for the importance of art in our classrooms. I go on and on about its potential to empower our youth and its ability to transform traumatic life experiences into beautiful pieces of art. For those who remain skeptical. I challenge you to take it up with the big blue bear. Yeah, that's right. And as you stand there looking right into the big blue bears, but you will smile and you will realize that that small moment of joy could be the most important lesson we could ever teach our kids. For me, this love was started when I was in the streets walking through the west side of Denver. I saw some of the most powerful paintings written on the walls. The graffiti is vibrant colors reflected how most of us felt inside. Something about seeing names on the wall gave us the feeling of ownership we never obtained through mortgage contracts. Many of my friends would stay up all night searching for the perfect spot a wall that was worthy of their masterpiece. They felt like little kids aligning alphabetical magnets onto the city's fridge. They wrote short poems on bricks because their schools failed to provide them paper. Their artwork never lasted very long before that short time. They turned our alleys into art galleries and trash cans into anthologies. They are the seeds that birthed the roses that now grow in the Santa Fe art district. Yet they were never cited in the government documents. I have witnessed art nourish a community in ways that politicians could never imagine. Like the time that mural was spray painted across the street from the middle school. The mural was a desperate cry. Cease fire. I watched members of opposing gangs come together using the colors of the rags to spray paint the words barrio unity, a treaty attempting to end gay brown on brown violence. And there hasn't been a drive by on that corner since I have listened to spoken word artists and hip hop artists communicate and mobilize the people in the language that academia has deemed worthless. The same words that donors used to describe our services, like helping a kid get through a rough day isn't worth the investment because happiness isn't an accurate measurement of success. But you tell that to the little girl who feels unbreakable when she hip hop on the dance floor. You tell that to the gay boy who just came out to his parents and a poem. You tell that to the musicians who use this to bounce the sounds of the parents arguing off their instruments. Our youth are our future. Let us give them the tools they need to paint themselves a better world. Thank you. I want. Second arrow. Thank you for sharing your words with us. They are very empowering and compelling. And thank you again to the Denver Jazz Club. Can you believe the sound that came out of that? That group, they are great and they travel all over the United States to entertain us. So let's give a young another round of applause for all these young performers because they make Denver an artist. And now I would like to invite to the podium our acclaimed Mr. Kent Rice. No, the band was not named after Kent Reiss. It was named in front of him, he told me, though. Welcome, Kent and Ginger White. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for this proclamation. Thank you to our entertainers. That poem was moving. It was amazing. Anyway, we're very grateful to accept this proclamation and a great debt of gratitude to Ginger, why she did so much of the heavy lifting for this great ginger. Did you want to say a few words? Oh, I just wanted to say thank you both. I thank you all so much. We had a chance to brief you all individually, and it was a pleasure to walk through the plan with you. We're so proud of it. We're so proud of what we're delivering to the city of Denver on behalf of the city of Denver, because it really was a community wide plan. And I stand on the shoulder of some great teammates behind me who made this all possible. So thank you all for your for your help and helping us implement it as well. The one of the phrases that came up from our 5000 people who provided input and it's the thing on which our clothes was we are Denver Oh, that's great. Congratulations. That's really great. We look forward to folding of the plan. Well, we do have another proclamation, and I'll call on Councilman Brooks to recap. Proclamation number 176.