001did i say that right buffer buffer um buffer present um currently in superior township all right john katarski president in ann arbor marianna porter present in ann arbor peggy leonard present in ann arbor michigan sophie grill present in ann arbor placenta young present in anova and our council rep travis rodino will not be attending tonight so chairman you have a court excellent so first and foremost i want to welcome our new commissioners bufford and marianetta porter thank you for agreeing to join our commission um i thought it would be nice if we could welcome them all by doing brief introductions of ourselves and then asking them to do the same um just so they can get to know us all a little bit better kind of get a little bit of information about our background
002and what we do what why we're here so i'll start i'll be the guinea pig and then we i'll call on people so you know when to unmute yourself so i'm allison buck i am the marketing director with the guild of artisan artisans currently uh we do the ann arbor summer art fair we do seven other art fairs throughout michigan and ohio we run the gutman gallery um prior to that i worked at the ann arbor film festival and the arts alliance and art and really got my feet wet in public art over at the arts alliance doing a couple different public art projects including the canoe imagine art project and the traffic boxes and just fell in love with public art projects at that point and really just wanted to make sure that public
003art remained present and important within ann arbor so that's why i joined the commission joined about four years ago now and have been a chair this will be my third year so i'll be rolling off at the end of this time um i would have sarah go next but she's not here um david you're the next screen i see if you want to do your introductions sure i'm david easom an architect with cornerstone design a mix of single-family multi-family and commercial architecture worked with a lot of non-profits around town in particular and i was on the arts alliance board for many years that's me thank you david um i'll go over to sophie next hi i'm i'm an artist and i'm live in ann arbor and i organized west side out hop which is a
004local sort of art fair art walk twice a year and also i'm looking forward to going back to being a docent at uma fabulous john can you give us a little intro uh my name is john catarski uh i'm a retired educator i've been on the art commission for since 2012 uh very interested in public spaces and how to enhance them and i had a public art practice in flint for a decade or so i call myself a recovering artist so but in any event i haven't made art in a few years thank you john um peggy if you could introduce yourself hi i'm peggy leonard i'm an art teacher in the ann arbor public schools and i think i've been on the commission this is my second year sophie would know sophie and i
005came on together second or third i don't know with covet everything is just lasted forever but anyway um i am passionate about everything that's art but in particular um public art and so i really enjoyed being on the commission i'd like to welcome both of you looking forward to working with you thanks peggy can you do an introduction too please i'm assenta young i'm an artist i focus on mosaics as an art form and mosaics has always been um has a longevity history in public art and i have been enjoying seeing public art here and there throughout the city so i wanted to participate on the commission and sophie invited me and so here i am i don't think it's been a year yet but i'm getting closer to that thank you before we move
006on to our new folks craig can you do a brief introduction of yourself yes i'm craig hubey i'm public services area administrator which is an odd fit in the art onto the art commission but through the miracle of municipal government and structure that's where the art commission falls um vanita uh harrison who's not here tonight is the staff member in brains behind the city's running of the art commission so i am merely acting as a poor substitute for her tonight thank you craig um we will get to know jennifer a little bit later um marionetta will you do an introduction for us sure i'm marionetta porter i'm a mixed media artist most of my work revolves around african-american history culture and identity i work with a lot of different materials i'm also a professor at
007the school stamp school of art and design the university of michigan which i just recently uh stepped down and retired june 1. so i'm a professor emeritus at the staff school of art and design i'm very excited to work with you i've always been passionate about about art and i'm really interested in learning more about art in public spaces congratulations on your return thank you and welcome jamal can you do an introduction for us please yes thank you alison uh jamal bufford i am a hip-hop recording artist so i'm uh more of an audio artist and uh i am the project specialist for washington county my brother's keeper uh which is a non-profit organization started by barack obama and it is focused on cradle to career pathways for boys uh black and brown boys men
008of color um of all ages trying to help counter some of the barriers that we face whether it be criminal justice system the education system uh economic inequity um been in that role this role for about a year and a half now i've been making music for well over 25 years i've performed in 15 countries performed all over the uh united states um and music led me to doing youth work uh sharing my love for hip-hop with young people in ann arbor public schools um from ann arbor went to nra public schools went to university of michigan um uh yeah and i guess that's about it um uh thankful for this opportunity to be nominated and working with you all and i'm looking forward to it great thank you i'm very excited to have you
009both on board and we'll uh hopefully not scare you off in our first meeting well well i actually should add that you are going to scare me off i actually do have to uh depart a little bit early i apologize um it is my fifth uh wedding anniversary with my wife so um i have reservations i have to dip out a little bit early i apologize for that that's okay congratulations thank you um all right so the next thing on our agenda is our approval of agenda um do i have a motion to approve the agenda thank you david and a second i saw john's hand go up john you second yes um any discussion of the agenda no okay uh all in favor of the agenda any opposed great um we will go on
010to public comment then we are very lucky to have um oh i'm sorry craig sarah just joined us in the attendees if you can promote her to a panelist so she can participate i know she i will gladly do so um and uh jennifer is welcome her is here from the ypsilanti arts commission um and i know she has some slides and i saw craig make you a host so you might be able to share them all right let me get them i'm gonna accept hang on a second hang on can you see the slides no we can't see them right now okay hang on a second do you have the option share screen at the bottom hey sarah jennifer maybe while you play sarah we did introductions of ourselves for the new folks um
011do you want to do a quick introduction of yourself just so everyone else can hear it yes absolutely good evening everyone sorry for the delay i think at the wrong link so thank you allison for sending that over um so i am relatively new to the mission that i've been working uh with uh with the arts for my entire career um i worked in performing arts um as a kid growing up in theater dance and music and studied art history in college and i've been um working with galleries in sales and marketing of art since then and currently work uh running the retail department of motowee tile works and joined the art commission about a year ago and is now vice chair all right jennifer take it away yes jennifer uh i am no one
012cheering so you when you want to advance just let me know you know craig you are my new best friend thank you don't ask me how i don't ask me how i did it because i can't i think it was a miracle so meant to be i think you know more about zoom than you think you do so um hello everyone i am um absolutely delighted to be in the zoom room with you today um to um kind of start what i'm hoping is going to be an ongoing conversation and opportunity for collaboration between our two arts commissions for the city of ann arbor and the city of ypsilanti and i'm excited that allison is going to be joining us at our august 19th meeting also on zoom um this month um to kind of
013kick things off so alison thank you for the invitation and um i'm actually feeling like this is a little bit of old home week because i've crossed paths with so many of you um on the arts commission in ann arbor um over over time so um if you can go ahead and advance craig a little bit about me that's me on the left with the cuphead and the green hair a little bit of a different look in this photo but i am super excited to be the um inaugural chair of the city of epsilantes um art commission we are just kind of coming up on our um first year of actual meeting activities and in the rest of my life that does take more time than i thought that it would in all sorts of
014good ways which we can dive into but in the rest of my life i'm currently serving as executive director of a local nonprofit arts organization wonderful productions we are a local community based nonprofit that is focused on building and connecting community through the power power of arts and creativity and you probably know us best as producer of the full moon luminary festival and the festive fools puppet um street theater that happen in downtown ann arbor in april and in ypsilanti um we're coming up on our annual ipsy glow event which is very similar to the full moon festival in ann arbor i've been in this role since fall of 2019 kind of just pre-covered and prior to that i had served as president and ceo of what was art serve michigan and repositioned as creative
015many michigan leading statewide advocacy and professional practice supports for the arts and creative industries statewide and i'm a lifelong champion for the power of arts and creativity in our daily lives in the education of our kids and how we connect as communities you know just in transforming possibilities for people of all ages and here in michigan i really got my start years ago as economic development director and dda director for the city of ypsilanti during which i was able to be part of the early kind of development of the riverside arts center on huron street in downtown fc um i'm just i love everything about creativity um a little bit about our commission um we are by comparison um to your commission very new we're kind of newbies in this space we were created by
016city ordinance in january of 2020 just a couple of months before covet hit and as a result we've only met by zoom which is a super challenging way to get to know people and get our feet wet in this work but we were established in a similar way to the ann arbor commission as an advisory body to our mayor our city council and city manager and it actually says in our ordinance that we're responsible for advising on all things art in epsilante we are comprised right now of nine members we can have as little as five as many as nine including one non-city resident on that spot is currently held by lynn settles the former ypsilanti high school art teacher who recently retired and were able to also include two non-voting youth members those positions
017have not yet been filled we had our first meeting in june of 2020 you know as i said we've been doing everything remotely which has been a bit of a challenge but what's been super exciting for us is that unlike in many communities when there's kind of a ground swell whether it's coming from the community at large or the artistic community for a city to establish an arts commission we certainly have that in epsilanny but our arts commission was really an effort that was led by our former mayor mayor beth beshert and city council who really saw the importance of having a leadership group at the city level to guide and really infuse our city with the importance of arts and creativity and so it's a kind of a bit of a different dynamic in
018getting started but it positions us i think very well for our work moving forward that we have such solid support and excitement from our city leadership team as we're getting started that's definitely been a big benefit for us we have a long checklist i can dive a little bit into some of our specific responsibilities i think they really mirror the ann arbor public art commission roles and responsibilities but kind of overall our charge as an advisory group is to promote right the importance of arts creative industries creativity as part of our community dna as part of economic development as part of what makes ipsilanti an amazing place to live work and explore we're charged with helping to educate building awareness around that with the broader community cultivating opportunities for the arts really to thrive and
019to prosper in our community and overarching all of that is upholding our city values of diversity pride and heritage and with a really sharp focus on helping to further city aims on providing inclusivity and access through our public art and creative experiences can advance craig so um our um development of our ordinance and our kind of charge of responsibilities was kind of really led by the city attorney who did a lot of research also looked at the ann arbor ordinance as one of the community models in crafting the city of epsilantes model but in general while we have like three pages of to do's on our checklist they really kind of distill into these broad categories um of the commission being responsible first and foremost for developing a strategic cultural arts master plan public art
020plan and the related policies and procedures right to guide development locations calls for art review of proposals and public spaces keeping an eye on the importance of maintenance and really focusing that advisory role in all things art that are happening in public spaces places the public realm we have no budget at present and one of our charges which is a little bit of a challenge in getting our feet wet and getting started is that we're responsible both for generating funding and cultivating funding opportunities funding partnerships helping to advise city staff the city manager on those kinds of funding investment possibilities we do have the opportunity to request annual budget allocations as well as part of the city budget process we are charged with identifying and cultivating collaborative opportunities with public private partners right at all
021kind of levels local regional state national um thinking of like ways to partner with eastern michigan university or washtenaw county or um the huron river watershed council or various non-profits kind of that full range the city also has a very important i think goal for using the arts commission to advise city staff on opportunities to infuse and engage arts and creative opportunities as part of our economic and community development strategies one of the kind of current opportunities in this regard is the water street redevelopment project which has a new developer that looks pretty serious in doing a mixed development in that area along the huron river and adjacent to the downtown on the east side we're working with the city and with the developer kind of advising on different ways that they could plan to
022accommodate public art as part of their ultimate design planning and for that space we have an overall charge for building community awareness of the power of art and creativity as part of education of our youth right doing that through strategic communications working as advocates for this platform and this agenda within our community and i'm sure similar to probably what you're responsible for we have annual right reporting requirements budget request opportunities coordinating with our city leadership team and i think one of the challenges that we face i don't think it's um unlike your commission and other groups that do the work that we do in communities we're limited not only by budget by by staff capacity we do have we're very grateful that we've been assigned an amazing staff liaison elise jacobson who's wearing i think
023at least three hats in city government primarily working as the downtown development authority coordinator and as the city's public engagement specialist but perhaps more importantly elise is a amazing talented practicing local artist co-founder of alloys studios off of east west michigan avenue and so she brings not only like the connection to public process and city right ins and outs but she brings that voice of local artists and all of those relationships as well which has been super valuable okay craig you can zip ahead so um we've had kind of you know this last year has been crazy for all of us in a lot of different ways and it certainly has been challenging to find the right ways to kind of get to know each other as a commission to kind of wrap our arms
024around our responsibilities as an advisory board kind of get going on all of those planning functions you know again doing all of that with kind of limited staff capacity funding capabilities and not really being able to be in community with our community and so one of the um important things that we've been focusing on really kind of got started on this this spring is to organize a online community and artist survey that we're looking to launch this fall that will be a baseline kind of invitation to the community from the general community wanting to understand what community interests are with relation to public art and the arts in general how our community is interacting and participating engaging in the arts and creative experiences and then with the targeted invitation to listen to our local artists
025you know understanding who they are who's practicing what are their disciplines you know are they able to do they have to juggle three jobs to right sustain their creative practice what keeps them up at night and what they need to thrive and stay in our community and um we're again eyeing this for a fall launch using an opportunity to kind of hone in at this kind of what we were hoping was going to be a post pandemic right moment like we're still putting masks back on but like we're getting closer to that moment like in that time what what do we need to know as we're thinking about setting goals and priorities and plans for the commission and for the city's public art initiative what do we need to listen to to really begin laying
026those groundworks i'm sure that once we are able to be back in the room with community we're going to be supplementing this kind of online survey work with in-person open meetings um you know focus groups those kinds of things but we were very grateful to have had an opportunity to connect with the emily hall tremaine foundation in connecticut thanks to a relationship that i had from creative many their national group that if you're not familiar with them i would encourage you to absolutely check them out they have an initiative called artists thrive which is a a national platform providing survey tools for self-assessment and kind of collective assessment that artists can take to kind of identify kind of what they need to do to thrive like set their goals and for organizations like ours or
027other non-profits that engage with artists to be able to um really assess how we're doing in that role what more what how how do we need to improve to really truly effectively and um smartly um support artists and collectively help the artists and arts thrive in our communities so the tremaine foundation has offered us a little bit of money i think the grant at this point is only about 4 000 but it's going to support like the efforts for doing surveymonkey and being able to do some reporting and assessment and communications to get the word out both on the invitation to participate as well as sharing the results so that's really a key focus right now and i admittedly it's taking us a little bit long kind of coordinating all of this remotely but excited
028to be able to share that experience with you as we go forward that then leads to right informing the development of our public art plan and policies that we really need to guide our commission in leading in this advisory role for the city so we've kind of been holding on this until we hear from the community um but one of the things that has kind of taken a step forward is that there has been quite a bit of interest in a more immediate opportunity to develop an incentive program that would kind of encourage street art performance busking within kind of the downtown districts of our community and so that's been kind of moving ahead of the rest of the planning process these are areas where we would be absolutely thrilled to be able to learn
029from you because you've been working in the space a whole lot longer than we have been um and then the other kind of um amazing and interesting but sometimes challenging dynamic that is just our reality right now is um we seem to be in this moment where um doing public art whether it's private murals or it's groups that are wanting to do creative things in public spaces it's kind of like a contagious it's a good contagious thing right now during a covid moment and so we've had um just like property owners that are wanting to enlist artists and we have groups that are doing things in public spaces and so we've been in a position having to advise on projects before we have plans and policies and guidelines in place which has been a little
030challenging we're kind of building it as we go i guess i would say and um so i can we can go to the next slide and i can jump into some of those example projects so um and and they're pretty cool projects um too that have been um presented to us in this um quick year that we've been started um the two top ones um first the ipsy black lives matter street mural project this project was um organized by survivor speaks activist and founder trishay duckworth who was working in partnership with two local artists barney judge and trevor stone trevor being a former program coordinator local artist from ann arbor but also with roots at the riverside arts center and i want to say they approached us initially back in december january of like at
031the break of the 2021 new year to propose the creation of community created and installed black lives matter murals for the heart of our town and there was a tremendous degree of community support the city was solidly on board to support this and ultimately the commission recommended approval of two locations for the blm murals the downtown location is on the south block of washington street between michigan avenue and pearl street right by the parking lot and dolores the new taqueria that just reopened and um the second one is on the entrance to riverside park off of east cross street in depot town these projects moved with rapid fire speed through the review and the community organizing process including fundraising city did not allocate funding to support these the funds that were were totally grassroots community
032crowdsource funding largely done on facebook and the murals were installed in late may in preparation for unveiling as part of the juneteenth celebration um in june june 19th where there was a whole community creative celebration music performances and such that happened so um some other photos of these as well i think the um um one kind of um dynamic for these murals particularly the one that's downtown is in trying to locate them on a street that didn't require state mdot michigan department of transportation approval we were focused the city wanted us to focus on locations that were city jurisdiction streets and the washington street location was ultimately selected for that reason because it was in the heart of downtown but that's also currently part of the blocks that are closed for outdoor dining so at
033the current moment you can't really get the full um feeling of that downtown mural as much as you can the one that's at riverside park so for that to be our first um project um success and accomplishment with the community um is incredibly meaningful as i'm sure you can understand um the second major project that was brought forward again just before the turn of the new year was the ipsilantic community school student streetscape banner project and this was a result of a prior curated exhibition of all ages student artwork that was selected to be exhibited at the u.s department of education in washington d.c in may of 2020 and the focus was on really the importance of racial equity and just social justice and a powerful group of student works of again all ages that
034were curated for that exhibit and what happened covet hit and the student artwork did not end up going to d.c and the community funds that were raised to support the students and their families traveling to dc to be part of the opening none of that happened and so the school district kathy fisk our fine arts coordinator worked with the other community funding partners to reimagine how we might celebrate this amazing exhibition of student artwork and put it in the public realm and ultimately the concept of designing streetscape banners that today if you come to ypsilanti maybe you've seen them they're in the downtown depot town and west cross street districts um all of i think there are 58 images are presented in that way and it was a bit of a challenging from a design
035standpoint challenging with a variety of sizes and scales and quality of the artwork it was somewhat challenging to translate that into streetscape banners but the commission and the community partners felt very strongly that that was a worthwhile sacrifice to make in being able to bring the visibility and to celebrate the students and young artists and for them to be able to feel that community support around the works that they had contributed so those will be up for a while and i think this was another example of us kind of building as we go because this project then sparked the epsilante dda to have to revisit how they entertain streetscape banner creative proposals and so there's a whole new policy now that allows the banners to be used as another form of artistic expression by other
036groups and artists and then finally as i kind of mentioned before um kind of all of our bigger work has really been focused on reviewing these projects that are being presented to us to move forward advising the city manager and the mayor and city council i can go ahead craig so i talked about um the blm project and the streetscape banners the other thing that has been um a bit of a both an opportunity and a challenge for us as an advisory commission is as part of the downtown development authority's efforts and the city efforts to support street art performance music other forms of creative experiences in the heart of our downtown last year during covid when the streets were closed they very quickly kind of endorsed and allowed groups in depot town and on
037the north washington block on some of the restaurants and bars in that area to put stages on the street and just begin to program activities to enhance that outdoor dining experience this year they're formalizing the permitting process for that kind of oddly the permit that the arts commission has to review is a noise permit for amplification of music and there are weekends when you can apply for amplification and the other days of the week you can only do non-amplified music we've been in kind of an ongoing dialogue with city staff about the importance of kind of relaxing those limitations to be able to encourage more accessibility and more variety of experience within the community but they're also balancing the concerns from downtown district residents who complain about the noise so it's kind of been a
038bigger conversation we're trying to figure out the right role oddly um while the arts commission role might better be positioned to advise on like a slate of programs that would um you know give us an opportunity to weigh in on diversity of like musical genre or different artistic disciplines or accessibility of community voice pretty much what at this point we're reviewing is who's requested which dates on the summer calendar and we don't get any of the other information and actually what the programming is that's being presented so it's a starting point of i think what is a learning opportunity and an opportunity for us to kind of um help guide the city on how we could play a more meaningful role go ahead and craig and i'm almost done because i know you have an
039agenda so just a couple of quick photo images this is kind of a shot of the washington street blm mural not a very good photo i was short on photos as i came back from vacation today to pull this together from you but we had a lot of people from across the community that came out and were super excited to help put the paint on the pavement next um this is a aerial view of the blm mural on south washington street okay an aerial view a pretty amazing aerial view of the mural in riverside park a view of another example of the banners these in depot town and then some of the other things that are kind of speaking to um kind of the excitement group stepping up if you haven't had an opportunity one
040of the other performance opportunities that's happening this summer is johnny lawrence the local jazz great out of ypsilanti formerly at washington community college is hosting a summer friday night jazz series in riverside park that is happening right in the public park space it's been happening every friday night through the summer on the days when we've had all the crazy rain it's moved to the ypsilanti freight house in depot town and the crowds you can look to the next slide the crowds for this are every week it's like it feels like it's doubling every week i imagine that by this friday it'll be a bigger crowd and more masks given the county's recommendations today but i think that this is testament to there is such community um just hunger for coming back together in this moment
041right now i mean i think it's there in general but it's more so this year than ever and to really celebrate the power of our artistic talent and the creativity in our community um this is um black jake and the carnies which is another downtown performance group that ziggy's on the alley off of michigan avenue in the downtown district performs our programs around the ipsy glow kind of halloween time frame a huge draw in the community but a kind of an example of a whole different kind of musical experience and then an example um this one from last year's ipsy glow in october this actually being a group of ann arbor homeschool kids that were home schooling more than normal last year during covid called the 19 nerds that did a temporary installation using paper
042cups like solo cups in the chain link fence at ypsilanti city hall as you're coming into town that was illuminated at night as well and making their statement about the importance of diversity and inclusion and racial racial equity so um just to kind of quickly wrap up you know i think that i was super excited when allison reached out we'd worked together um years past when she was at arts alliance and i was at creative many um exciting to think about um the power and the opportunities that we have as commissions in two neighboring communities we have our unique charges and yet we have so many opportunities i think to learn from each other and to be able to exchange right ideas models experiences you know when we're struggling with something in ypsilanti and not
043sure kind of which way to go you know i am really grateful that you're there that we can reach out to you and i think there's a great opportunity for us to have an ongoing kind of dialogue um you know i don't know call me crazy i'm a passionate arts advocate at heart and i think that like collectively the energy and the passion that we bring in our respective communities and together for the power of public art in place in individual experiences of how we connect as a community and define right the places we call home i think that like there's a tremendous opportunity into the future for how we might unite that voice broadly building broader community awareness community connections i just strategically and probably sasely put this picture in deliberately this is a
044street mural that was in created by treetown murals with wonderful productions for this spring's full moon celebration in april and it was an amazing design process that treetown murals engaged with ann arbor public school teachers and students who created 300 plus designs mandala designs radio designs that inspired this mural that was installed the weekend before full moon on the intersection of maine and liberty streets and um you know the city was determined that it not be permanent and we used paint products that we thought were going to be at least somewhat lasting into at least through the summer season and sadly we had one of those horrific rainstorms the day after was completed and lost so much of that amazing work treetown came that week and kind of fixed it up but it was not
045as detailed as it was when it was finished and it actually for full moon if you were there we used lots of sidewalk chalk and light up hula hoops and it became kind of a interactive community safely distance art experience for kids of all ages that night but i think this is kind of an example of the type of kind of conversation together we could spark within both of our communities and you know we are completely open to um the opportunities for you know what other ways um as um neighboring um commissions and lovers of public art might we join forces join forces join voices support each other we are really part of a bigger community region and the powerful work that you do and that you support in your community um you know benefits
046us as much as if somebody and vice versa so um again as i mentioned in the beginning super excited about this being the start of an ongoing conversation and collaboration and partnership with you well thank you so much jennifer um sophie i have to thank you sophie first brought to our attention the fact that you guys existed and that you were coming about and um kind of pushed us to say hey let's get to know them let's figure this out and um i'm really excited i think that we can inspire and support one another and lots of different ways and hopefully like collaborate i think that jennifer and i are planning to grab coffee every once in a while and just kind of compare notes but i also think like hopefully we can as commissions
047do that as well i think we will face a lot of the same sorts of challenges and opportunities so um that we can kind of build on each other and kind of inspire one another and help each other along the way hopefully yeah does anyone have any questions for jennifer i see sophie your hands up i think that's uh that was a very inspiring uh list of amazing achievements at the time and uh i think there were some great ideas in there that we could probably think about ourselves like they have two non-voting youth members and um i think there was the idea of the lamppost banners which i think we've had some engagement with but we could maybe do more with that um and yeah i love the idea of collaborating a little bit
048more formally from time to time so that we do have meetings and um think about things we could do together because obviously more is bigger sometimes and might be able to pack more punch who knows definitely what's up so i was very excited listening to you and hearing of all your accomplishments and how you were so inclusive of diverse expressions in art um and so you know i think there's lots of room for crossroads you know between us so thank you amen and i have to say that um you know i want to be sure that it's it's clear that like the accomplishments were not the commissions right i mean we just happen to be blessed with the charge of being advisors in a moment where we have amazing community members that are stepping forward
049to make amazing creative things happen and so like the role that we have um that i take really pretty seriously is like how can we make that as easy as possible right um and and help the city see ways where they can streamline normal policies and permitting and things so that we can really make it easy to be creative in our inner tongue any other questions for jennifer before she goes about the rest of her evening i mean you're welcome to stay and listen to our whole meeting if you want okay you're welcome too for sure um i can't promise it'll be as entertaining as your presentation though although we are going to go over our annual reports so who knows thank you yeah are you raising your hand i am apologizing for having to
050step out because my mom's okay no worries all right so we will move on to next on our agenda is our approval of minutes do i have a motion to approve the minutes sarah thank you do i have a second peggy thank you um is there any discussion of the minutes from last meeting no fabulous i'm seeing no discussion do i have all of everyone's approval of the minutes all in favor yep anyone opposed great um let's see next is old business we don't have anything new business is review and approve the um annual report so you will may remember that we discovered we forgot to do the animal report last year and no one said boo so we just combined them this year so the this is two years of an annual report of
051what we've been doing pretty much through the pandemic um so the annual report follows the fiscal calendar so it's that fun like june to july report um and hopefully you all got a chance to read it over david sent in lots of great notes which i have incorporated um grammar stuff changing names so that they're spelled right thank you um and things like that nothing um at the meat of things though i wanted to um open up the discussion if there was anything specifically you guys thought um i just categorically forgot or um just didn't define well or anything in the report or feedback you guys had david i thought overall it covered it or last two years really well it was just little details to make it read better i thought yep and i
052went ahead and i already put all those changes in in my word version my google word version so i will pdf that and get it back to vinita all right i guess if there's no discussion we can do i have a motion to approve the annual report david now i have a second john thank you i'm all in favor any opposed great we have an annual report yay that'll go off to um city council and hopefully they'll all you know be enamored with all the wonderful things that we've been doing um and just you know all want to come to our meetings everyone's going to be thrilled right um next on our agenda is report from staff will you be handling those craig saying is i am it for staff today i will be handling
053great um actually four items three on the agenda pickle street mural project has been withdrawn i understand the principles are leaving the area um so i i feel that's a loss but that's my personal statement on that um next the water treatment plant stairwell project is finally moving and on schedule the anarchy can you just yeah i can or you can just get it no you can you can say where it's at it's i believe it's on the call for art right now okay so the the project itself um i'll just bring marionette up to speed is um at the water treatment plants which is i don't know exactly where it's located it's okay 919 sunset where's that um it is near the dam it's near the corner of sunset and newport okay so anyways
054they do a lot of tours um and a normal year in their building for students and so they have a stairwell that is inclusive in that tour um and they wanted to put a mural in it and they are hoping to have a mural that has shows kind of the history of the building and um water treatment plants in general and they have this great proposal they're putting that they've put together um i am blanking on his name i want to say greg but that's not it glenn glenn glenn has come to us a couple in a couple meetings um and he has presented their call for art and their process and how they're going to select the work um and we've reviewed that with him and so they put out the call you said
055craig i bel if it's not out it's soon to be out okay um and i believe they will be asking someone from the commission to participate um in the selection process um so if anyone's interested that'll be coming up pretty soon and maybe a little background so the new commissioners understand why this project in this location um much of the funding that we get to sort of direct toward art comes off the cip and there is cip work going on at the water plant and they carved a piece of it out for this art in the stairwell um and while glenn is an engineer i think some of us think he's done very well at our the manchester water tank near uh the washington stadium split was one of his projects that was put out
056on the street so uh we have hopes for this project yeah glenn and i actually cross paths way back when and i did the canoe imagine project he was an engineer at stantec when we were and one of the engineers that approved the canoe fan foundation and all that stuff so he's been around the public art for a while the background on that is that's where we learned that in on the stadium bridges art we learned that uh no no disrespect but the heck with the art the whole project is really about foundations it's an expensive portion of the art yes yes um the ann arbor area community foundation funds are in hand and available for your use great after much uh back and forth of how to do it and get the right people
057to sign off as the city was in transition but it is now available for you the other one that is not on your list is the street murals uh i know council member rodina has had conversations with the attorney's office and the attorney's office has provided him uh privileged uh communications and when council member regina attends he can share with with the group what is being proposed or what's going forward so that's the black lives matter strange mural that we got the presentation it would be street murals not only that one but street murals in general going forward oh cool uh it would be what to deal with what jennifer faced on on the full moon one was the current code requires temporary art and what are the options for getting around that or changing
058it to allow more permanent art so that is happening great all right so that is happening i'm assuming you mean changes are happening that we might be happy about i can't say because i'm not fully in the discussion between the attorney's office and the council member i just know that they're occurring and uh options are being uh put forward to the council all right well good we're challenging that then the very least sophie i see your hand yeah i think the water treatment plant mural deadline was uh july 31st which was um too short for me as is often the case but uh yeah so that one they should have had their applications in okay it's on the the city uh website um i don't remember how i came upon it but uh i did
059see it eventually and i think it was a bit too late for me but yeah i think deadlines deadlines are always too short as far as i'm concerned well hopefully they got enough applicants i hope so yeah that's that's it all right well thank you um does anyone have any questions about those updates um from craig before we move on to our working groups okay so um with our working groups tonight if you can if we don't have a specific update like you haven't met recently if you can just tell us a little bit about what your working group is and who is participating in that working group and kind of give an overview so that marinetta can get familiar with them that would be helpful so the business owners and development work group is
060the first one on our list john i think you get to head that one up yes thank you um this work group tries to inspire public art paid for by private developers and one of the ways in which we do that is a member of this group serves on the design review board and has an opportunity to um recommend or uh discuss ways in which their project can um can include public art in addition to that we have a public art idea book and a best practices uh sort of list um that i'm on that work group and i'm not sure sophie are you on that work group with me uh i don't know who else is on the work group uh david um are you on that work group with me yes david is
061david is on the work group uh i think mary was and mary and jonah was yeah and they're both they're no longer on that work group so david and myself um another group but i'm i'm blanking on which one it was now i i think you're on the special projects i am on that one i know but i could have done something else too and i i just can't think what it was now exactly uh but uh in any event uh the design review board only meets when there are projects uh that are being developed within the dda boundaries uh so and they have not met for the past couple of months and so therefore i have nothing more to report okay well thank you john for being our voice at those meetings uh when
062they do happen we appreciate it um capital improvement projects uh david do you have any updates or can you actually give us a little background about that group sure the capital improvements project working group is basically one of the the few mandated requirements for this commission the city annually issues an updated capital improvements plan list of major projects that they're planning to work on um when you hear when you hear cip that's what we're talking about we'll hear cip all the time that's that's it some years it's a major update some years it's a minor update and a lot of it is roads and sewers and things like that that are a little hard to decorate with art but we look for projects on that list that seem like they might be suitable for public
063art and recommend them for enhancement so the the cip comes out typically in mid-december every year and we try to get a plan together in the last couple weeks of the year and early january so that this commission can vote to move it on to the the council so the rest of the year we don't have a lot to work on so we don't have anything new to update at this point but since our last meeting but that's what we do great um i know last time you had mentioned there was a fire station project that was moving forward do you know anything more about that project i have not heard anything about any of the projects okay uh were you referring to a town yeah you're on parkway okay all right i don't know
064the status of that but there was one for a mural on a fire station door but they changed to a glass door so the mural project went away um yeah i don't know anything about that one but this was this fire station was just starting early designs so there wasn't much yeah to do there wasn't going to be much to do with it for a while got it i think some of the building might have been postponed uh due to the pandemic but it's an interesting building in that i think they're building it with the idea that there's not zero emissions yeah when um when that opportunity comes back around i think it would be a great idea uh we had the sustainability grant um monies that were potentially offered to us and we were
065looking for a project to fit that with and perhaps pairing um pairing those together could uh make that move forward even faster or inspire art to be considered um as we move forward uh in that project but i know that um the pandemic has you know influenced some uh some scheduling so we can always revisit that right okay um david do you have anything else before i move on i don't think so no okay and let's see we've got the communications work group next which has myself and sarah and peggy are on that group um we haven't met recently we've been kind of holding off to focus our attention on doing using the funds from the community foundation um once those are available and now they are a focus of ours is going to be
066doing the announcement of the golden paintbrush award so we haven't done that yet so those funds will be used to do that as well as just general communication about the collection um so we have our work cut out for us in the next couple of months um as we look at that communication work i know um marionetta we had talked with you a little bit about that group maybe being an important one for you um to participate with as far as your background with education and that being a key portion of communicating and advocating about our public art collection and maybe a good fit so i don't know if you're still considering that one or not but we'd love to have you um let's see the fundraising work group is next i think that's myself
067and sarah we haven't raised any funds recently um but hopefully as we do more advocacy work i know that i saw somewhere that vanita i think applied for that sustainability grant for us so that could be potentially in there um we'll see um the leadership forum work group has not met the leadership forum is the concept is that we'll have community members participate within this leadership forum to act as our liaisons within the community to talk about advocate support public art they will meet with us at least once a year we'll also use them as a source to communicate emails through talking about our collection um talking about what we're doing and sort of be an exterior voice for us both internally and externally communicating with the community about what we're doing but then also
068giving us feedback and telling us what they're hearing and what their interests are and being another platform for us to communicate with our public they also the idea is that it might be a stepping stone either on to the commission or off of the commission so for folks who are kind of worn out and don't want to be on the commission anymore but still want to participate with us they could they could roll into the leadership forum but also the other way around you know if people are a little hesitant about joining the commission full term and but they want to kind of get their feet wet and kind of figure out what we're all about they could join also the leadership forum and see what we're about and then kind of roll into a
069position in a future date um does that kind of define what we've been talking about in that group is there anything i missed guys okay i think that group deb mexico was our former vice chair she's gonna still kind of provide some insight and voice on that um group and i'm on that group and john's on that group all right peggy are you on that group too i think i was on that group too yeah okay great glad to hear it um let's see the next group we have is nominations and leadership review um these are kind of two separate groups um because we have where we have to nominate more people to come on to the commission but we're uh we're full now which is exciting um and i think the next roll around
070if we've got our dates right aren't until may of next year i think um i'll have to pester um benita to custer me when we should be looking at that again um and sophie you have your hand up i was just thinking that since most most of us are on multiple groups and there seems to be quite a lot of things do we need to be one or two people bigger um well going one or two people bigger would um involve changing our bylaws which i think if we are interested in doing we could talk about doing um i think having more people might give us more energy and more ability or it might not i don't know honestly david would it be possible for us to have non-commission members on committees if they're interested
071in working on something yes um i like like um deb staying on with the leadership forum so you know and almost like advisors to working groups and advisors to us i think that that might that also um might work with the leadership forum as a way for people to kind of interact back and forth between that group as well so that's a great point is there a formal way that that works or do you just say to the committee meeting committee groups that they can just grab somebody off the street or how does it work uh i do not believe there's any formal way that it works um it's just probably first it's probably like project based yes i mean if you're working on a special project for example that you wanted to ask one
072of the former gold paintbrush award people like how was your experience or something like that i mean i don't i don't think you need the commissions like yes you can talk to other people john i think there's a provision in our bylaws that'll allow us the commission to appoint people uh to serve in a variety of capacities so uh i think that any of the working groups can informally engage and involve people but if we wanted to actually appoint a non-commissioner uh to a working group we do that we have the capacity to do that it would come about i'm imagining is that the the chair would recommend to the entire art commission the appointment of this particular person we would vote on it and they would serve on that group [Music] craig back back
073tracking a little bit you were asking about when the next uh expiration of terms are and it looks like end of may end of may 22 june 1 of 22 um piers one is in may 31st and one is june 1st why that split i don't know but at least that time frame in 22. yes i think that's also when my term as chair will end so um everyone can think about that well i i don't know but the sheet shows you may of 23. i don't know if that's a year an extra year's penalty for any opportunity oh yeah and i guess we usually usually vote for chair investor at the end of the annual year so we'll figure it out but just wanted to bring those dates to your mind okay thank you
074um so yeah nominations and leadership um so i'm sorry before we go back to that do does everyone kind of get a feel of how we could add people if we wanted to as far as um adding them to work groups if we had potential folks that were interested sarah um i mean bringing back the idea of the non-voting uh youth members i think that would be a great way also to to add to that and to be honest i mean we have the youth working group but we also have the nominations and leadership working group and um i either one of those working groups could probably take the lead um on getting that process started or work together um so but i think that would be a wonderful thing to to add especially um
075coming out of a pandemic year where we've had you know kids just have a completely different um school experience and adding something like this an opportunity like this could be really really beneficial yeah we want the teens participating not just from government who had to come sit through us and get our signature for going to a public meeting [Laughter] yes so okay so that is work that those either that group or the youth outreach group could be working on in general nominations and leadership are either nominating new people to join the commission um as people roll off or they are reviewing the leadership on an annual basis with the rest of the commissioners doing a quick survey and saying you know how did they do and are we going to re-up them is there other
076people that are interested are they rolling off that kind of stuff and the nominations group work group is predominantly the chair and vice chair the leadership review has been john and i don't john who worked with you was it peggy that worked with you on that i think jonah but um oh yeah jonah's gone now he's he's off right um so policy and governance work group has not met about anything in particular although it sounds like travis is taking on our taking on city attorney's office and working with them about getting some policies changed for the better of more permanent art installations in streets so that's good hopefully we'll see here some good updates about that coming soon um that group is predominantly sarah and myself um but if anyone has interest in that kind
077of thing policy and governance we'd love to have you join us i know david you're really into the nitty-gritty of language and things i think you would love that work group um next work group is special projects which is like the fun work group they get to do all the special stuff that comes to our table that really doesn't have a catching place that we kind of throw at you guys and say hey you guys take this on and they have shined recently reinvigorating our golden paintbrush award and i will let you guys take it away with that update yeah well we we we did get somewhere with the golden paintbrush award uh which was which is an award that existed a while ago uh for people who made a special contribution to public art
078uh an admirable con contribution and john kotowski suggested we revive it so we have but i would like to now pass it over to sarah fuller who's been taking the whole thing on her shoulders recently so she's probably got more updates than i have well aunt vanita has been pivotal in this process so uh what we've been working on is um working with the city's i.t department bonita's been doing that on putting together a digital packet of our nominations which have been sent out to our judges some of our judges have had an issue accessing them so we are going to uh reach back out and uh try and get the it problem solved so vanita and i are on that um and then we've sent out a doodle poll to make sure that we
079can uh uh determine a meeting time for uh all of our judges to hopefully meet in one meeting where we can accomplish um actually selecting our award recipients uh so we're looking at next week or the following week uh to have that meeting uh take place and uh grading criteria has been um given to the judges as well so our main focus is going to be making sure that everyone has actually been able to access that digital nominations uh packet and then actually be able to then complete all of the grading criteria before we have that meeting so that we can move through quickly and have those uh nominations ready to go um something else exciting and i forgot to take it uh home with me today because they wanted to show you guys via
080zoom but uh we do have the awards also created those are the uh 4x8 um uh burton tower uh tiles uh that will be ready for for uh our recipients of the award and then of course the next thing that uh the special projects group as well as myself and benita will meet to discuss will be our people's choice award uh which we have decided um we will choose the people's choice award from um the grouping uh that uh our judges nominate so we're going to give less options um just in the uh for practicality reasons uh so that we can uh you know get that decided and then um announced and then hopefully generate um even more uh buzz for next year's golden peak brush award does anyone have any questions great just be
081sure you share that with us so we can all vote and share it with all of our friends to vote as well awesome are there any other portions or projects you guys are working on in special projects that we should talk about um i think one of the things we're waiting on is for more information about the new city flag idea um but i think we have to get sort of instructions via the mayor or something to decide craig seems to know something about that go for it craig oh you're muted craig and switching from teams to zoom back and forth to mute buttons in different locations what i what i know is what i don't know i do know that sarah higgins has prompted the mayor a number of times we have a resolution
082drafted and to him if he wants to bring it to city council so it is out of staff's hands at the mayor's office great uh sophie um i just had another thought which is if the pickle street people aren't doing their mural that maybe we could somehow take it up and make it happen some other way if that space is already kind of allotted and agreed to there if if i may there is space on the allen creek berm wall uh they were filling in for lack of funding the allen creek berm opening project went way over budget and they it consumed up the money that was uh being allocated toward art so we have to explore if we can squeeze out some quarters and dimes and nickels to get that art funded again okay
083so it was it was about the funding not that they'd gone to a different city and we're doing a different thing well it we were we were slating them to fill that space yes but they were raising their own funding in their proposal do you have a sense of how much money is needed for that i don't off the top of my head um you know the question is what are we spending on the water treatment plant stairway mural would be somewhere in that same vicinity of value i think that was about 12 000 correct i think yeah it's not a huge sum of money so i i don't think all is lost at this point i think the the uh the disputes that are going on on the contract have to settle down and
084then well once the dust is settled go looking for the money okay um youth outreach work group which i think is just me right although i because i lost my other members but i would love to have some more people join me and like sarah said with the beginning of the school year i think this would be a great way to involve some more youth or involve youth period in our group so yeah jamal you what's what's sophie i'm nominating jamal in his absence well and but something's not here anymore either i thought she was on that group or showed interest i thought that the last time we met we talked about the fact that um you know i joined i joined it with both jonah and mary and that we were looking for other
085people to join so okay and you know what else i really would like is to maybe maybe not tonight but maybe at our next meeting kind of go back since i wasn't a part of when that group was formed just kind of the initial vision for those people that were a part of that i mean i i get that we want to involve i'm thinking high school students college students i don't know high school students in our group but just like how that all came to be since i wasn't on the commission then and i know that ipsy has a similar um role that some of their students play so anyway that's just some background info before i move ahead with that so i would say the background was from several years ago that that
086when that work group was um created um the initial intent was to have youth voices on our commission um which evolved and the conversation went back and forth between voting or non-voting i know that travis was saying that he was working with another commission who was doing similar work bringing on some youth for non-voting so um he might have some good insight on how that went or how they're going about that um is travis a part of this group travis is our city council liaison was he on the youth leadership though so our city council liaison doesn't usually sit on working groups he he talked about being interested in that working group though i remember um so yeah okay and though i mean i think it kind of evolved from that to supporting a project
087and doing a project with youth predominantly because of mary's association with neutral zone so it somewhat will be i think project based it could be related to youth art month you know i know you're deeply involved with that so supporting those efforts um in some way when those things come about with main street et cetera that would make sense right okay maybe you and i can talk offline too about okay sure perfect any um questions or further comments about our working groups okay um that is the last item on our agenda um before we adjourn do folks have anything they want to share either personal or professionally um related to the arts or not sarah i had um and i actually probably should have added it to the agenda but just a little update that
088i was able to uh uh to sit in on the alleyway project the presentation that um we had from jason ennis so that has moved forward i was able to vote on a few um submissions and that was all monitored with the ann arbor arts center and there are some really fabulous uh really creative uh projects that were uh that were incorporated in in this and i cannot wait to see this uh come to life there are multiple locations um in ann arbor that are suitable for these for these projects and um you know i think we we've we've done the voting and it will just be contacting those artists and making sure that it will sit within the stipulations of of those alleyways whether they're pedestrian only or whether they also serve as um
089as service roads and whatnot so um be on the lookout i will definitely as as it continues to get updated i will update our group as well um it's going to be really cool so i'm excited come down the line cool i'm excited to see that project happen too um i will share a personal update so my son is right now they had a coveted case at his camp so um he's home this week and he was bored and he wanted to um make money and so he was like well can i sell can i make sell some lemonade and we don't have any lemonade um so he decided to sell his artwork he set up a little table and he was going to ask 50 for each of his pieces but i talked him
090down to 10 cents and put out a tip jar so that was that was fun that was part of our afternoon today he had his own little art fair booth we didn't get a whole lot of foot traffic on our street he was pretty disappointed it wasn't art fair traffic but you know he made a couple bucks and he got a monster truck a mire later so it was a success peggy you're muted hon i know i just wanted to piggyback off that um creating your own art and sarah mentioned the ann arbor arts center they've done an amazing job having art created around our town during the pandemic and if you are out and about i know we do have some public listening they have a free art book that you can pick up
091it's for kids at the art center and it's a great guide that you can use to walk around and look at the public art it's actually geared more towards really young kids but talks about the symbols that the artists have used and um i just think it's a great intro to young children about public art i want to give them a plug and the book is free pick it up at the art center yes and it's an idea we can piggyback off of at some point for advocacy and communication and ideas for sure and congratulations allison on a another successful ann arbor art fair oh thank you yes we were very excited we had really great attendance you know we were talking earlier about people being eager to get out and support the arts and
092it they were eager they were here and even on the rain day so thank you yeah it was it was a great year sophie yeah today i had first meeting to prepare for the october westsider hop which uh which was so exciting because i'm having two helpers this time and last time it was just me so i'm very excited about that and we should be able to do something much more big and amazing and well attended i hope awesome do you have dates yet october 16th 17th october yep 16 or something great all right well with no other updates um i do i have a motion to adjourn sarah do i have a second david uh all in favor [Music] aye opposed okay motion passes have a great evening everybody i'll see you soon you