MAH Cultural Vibrancy Report

2022

SANTA CRUZ MUSEUM OF ART & HISTORY

CULTURAL VIBRANCY REPORT The MAH’s role in the creative economy and how we support place-based development and community building

Contents Executive Summary................................................................. 02 Creative Economy...................................................................... 06 Cultivating Place ........................................................................ 09 Growing Capacity......................................................................... 13 Fiscal and Strategic Planning.......................................... 14 Cultural Vibrancy..........................................................................19

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Executive Summary 02

Place-based development is an approach that uses the unique natural, physical, and cultural characteristics of a location and its people to optimize interventions for smart, equitable growth.

It considers the emotional attributes of a community alongside physical improvements, ensuring a long-term, holistic benefit to residents and guests, and thereby the entire community. Place-based initiatives are at the fore of community planning strategy in towns, cities, and counties around the globe, and the arts and culture are key to creating the cultural vibrancy that defines their success.

Fortunately, Santa Cruz County is rich with cultural resources, community character, and a strong sense of history, as well as a wealth of nonprofit organizations, museums, community groups, artists, and historians who enrich our cultural landscape. In this report, we outline how the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH) and our local creative network contribute to cultural vibrancy, and how we can continue to advance community development by investing in our creative economy.

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Creative Economy 06

The Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History is a thriving community gathering place that serves more than 130,000 people annually through rotating art and history exhibitions, visual and performing artworks, public festivals, education and outreach programs, and cultural celebrations. At the MAH, we seek to ignite shared experiences and unexpected connections, bringing people together around art and local history as a way to cultivate community.

At the end of the day, however, the MAH is also a business, with a bottom line and operating strategy. Like other museums, we are involved in the creation, distribution, and consumption of works of art, historical publications, archival materials, and similar cultural products and services. We are part of and contribute to the creative economy, which is one of the largest industry clusters in our state. In California alone, the creative industries support 2.68 million jobs, $209.6 billion in labor income, and $650.3 billion in annual output.

The term creative economy encompasses not only the arts, media, and design, but creativity itself as a strategy for innovation and entrepreneurship. Thus we are also catalysts for experimentation and production, with the potential for widereaching impacts to our local economy.

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The MAH bolsters community development by

experiences, and historical interpretations

creating vibrant, energetic spaces that strengthen

serve as wellsprings of inspiration. We are

connectedness, spark idea exchange, generate

dedicated to seeking new ways to wed our

excitement, and drive investment.

community’s strong entrepreneurial spirit with

We influence creative economy and community growth in the following ways:

Driving Economic Development Joining forces with County and community partners, the MAH transformed Abbott Square and Abbott Square Market into a hub of creative happenings. By bringing people together around meaningful objects, stories, and experiences we build cultural vibrancy, and there is a return on that investment that is not always easy to quantify, but clearly present. The market is now a venue for local businesses, and our revitalized downtown center attracts investment in the form of residential and business developments.

It has become fertile ground for all forms of creative innovation, and a point of intersection for regenerative economy.

Investing in Creative Entrepreneurs The MAH supports many local entrepreneurs— from food vendors in the market, to artists and historians pushing the boundaries of their fields, to innovators finding new ways to disrupt an industry. Our artistic and literary commissions, residency opportunities, research awards, and history publications support the creation of new works, while thought-provoking artworks,

our rich creative culture.

Operating a Fiscally Sound Organization The MAH must remain attractive and relevant in current and future markets to ensure visitation; earn revenue, financial gifts, and support; and optimize our resources. We do this by offering impactful programming that keeps our patrons coming back. One of the defining tenets of our organization is to learn from experience. Thus, our current strategic planning process is based on assessing the economic and social impacts of our initiatives, so that we can make any necessary changes to best serve our community, now and in the future.

Synergistically Building Vibrancy The MAH is one of many cultural organizations that make Santa Cruz what it is—a quirky, caring, creative, vibrant place to live, work, and visit. Partnering with one another on mission-aligned initiatives defines who we are as a community and results in a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. It is crucial that we work together to enrich and grow the creative economy, infusing it into all aspects of our County and City. Not only does this benefit our minds and spirits, but our cultural and economic vibrancy as well.

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Cultivating Place

Innovation and creative practice promote place identity, enhance livability, spark engagement, drive tourism, invigorate the entrepreneurial ecosystem, and ultimately serve as engines of economic development. To continue moving this work forward, our plans for the future involve the following emphases.

Placekeeping To understand placekeeping, we first need to unpack placemaking, a movement well-known to civic planners that occurs at the intersection of creative economy and community development. Placemaking is a concerted effort to recognize and

More than preserving historic buildings, placekeeping aims to elevate local culture, heritage, and landscapes through artistic and historical interpretation, in recognition of the fact that all are valuable and relevant to urban and rural communities alike.

shape the cultural identity of a place,

Not only do the MAH’s exhibitions,

growing pride among residents and

festivals, and programs encourage

guests. It inspires the active care and

localism as well as the tourism

maintenance of a place and its social

that financially benefits businesses,

fabric by the people who live and

workforce, and City and County

work there. Placemaking is something

tax revenue, they also invest in our

Santa Cruz does very well.

cultural profile in a way that enriches

Placekeeping recognizes that a community already has a strong cultural identity, a history, and a people, and thus there is no need to

the lives of our local community, invites visitor participation, and ensures we remain attractive and relevant in these rapidly changing times.

create something new or artificial.

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Community belonging

Social connectedness

Cultivating a sense of belonging among all

Connectedness is key to growing a sense

people helps to transform communities

of belonging, and the experiences we

by contributing to healthy, meaningful

craft around it are designed specifically to

lives and safe, inclusive neighborhoods.

encourage people to come together,

When we encourage culture and identity

interact, and engage in mutual value

to flourish, civic participation increases.

creation through an exchange of

Belonging is so fundamentally important

knowledge and information. Residents

to human development that recognizing

who are engaged become invested in the

and nurturing it should be a cornerstone

MAH and one another. This builds the

of urban planning and social policy.

public value and perception of the

MAH programming seeks to enhance belonging by animating our museum,

organization, while contributing to the community’s wellbeing overall.

historic sites, and public spaces in a way

In our view, the museum is a civic

that acknowledges and honors our

common, or public space. This is true of

diverse cultures and histories, while

the MAH itself, as well as our efforts to

encouraging interaction and community

reach beyond the museum walls—in

building. We use interventions to engage

physical, intellectual, and emotional

people as active collaborators around art

space—to embrace shared heritage,

and history; to make and offer space that

lifelong learning, cultural literacies,

fosters encounter, dialogue, and social

physical and mental health, and more.

cohesion; and to build individual and collective capacity to sustain socially and place-connected, resilient communities.

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SANTA CRUZ MUSEUM OF ART & HISTORY

Growing Capacity Here are some of the specific visioning, organizational, and programming approaches the MAH is taking to increase creative capacity and competitive advantage within the aforementioned emphases: • Articulating narratives that

• Investing in local artists, historians,

represent the beliefs, values,

and creative practitioners via

and ideals of Santa Cruz County

commissions, residencies, space,

to guide our programming

and resources

• Launching a biennial festival

• Encouraging a shift toward

series to connect and inspire

regenerative economy by working

patrons and guests in and around

within our community to capitalize

the MAH and County

on opportunities

• Unveiling temporary public

• Building support for citizen artists

artworks that invite engagement

and storytellers to increase

and interaction while creating

involvement in creativity and

a draw to our civic spaces

cultural exchange

• Creating new artistic work and

• Committing to accelerating

cultural content in addition to

diversity and equity in our cultural

preserving and presenting our

workforce and leadership pipeline

collections • Designing virtual activities that invite online interaction to serve our community during and after the pandemic

• Collaborating with other cultural organizations to strengthen our mutual impact • Engaging in the global conversation by connecting local and regional initiatives to broader contexts

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Fiscal and Strategic Planning The MAH will be revising its budget over the coming years to allocate a greater percentage of resources to some key areas, including creation and content development, promoting revenue-generating activities, and prioritizing initiatives that

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support efficient operations, enhance the guest experience, and bring the stories of Santa Cruz County to a wider audience. We have already shifted our previous, payrollheavy allocation into one more focused on the goods and services needed for quality program delivery, marketing impact, and infrastructure improvements, and we will continue to scale these to new operating budgets aligned to industry benchmarks.

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In this way we bolster our ability to present our dynamic slate of programming—from innovative exhibitions and biennials rich with thought-provoking installations, to meaningful residency opportunities that give time, space, and financial support to artists connecting our past with the present, to interactive educational experiences that integrate cutting-edge learning tools and resources to help interpret and contextualize our work. the future.

Over the past year, museum stakeholders came together to write a new strategic plan that will

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serve as our roadmap for continued growth over the next five years. Our major strategies are to increase engagement and retention through innovative and time-tested programs that attract audiences, engage community, and spark connections; deepen relationships and collaboration through mutually beneficial partnerships that leverage resources and expertise to benefit the public; and build

The MAH is committed to strong governance

resilience and capacity through streamlined

practices and comprehensive financial

practices in all areas of management and

management, and we actively seek funding from

operations. With organizational learning as a

federal, state, and local agencies to broaden

core operating tenet, we rely on data-based

our base of support. More detailed financial

decision-making and measurable methodologies

planning will be based on the strategic plan, in

to improve, extend, and increase the impact of

which we are laying out our processes for

MAH experiences, while continuing to embrace

understanding, assessing, and optimizing our

the experimentation, risk-taking, inventiveness,

strategies, structure, systems, and skills.

and reflection the MAH is known for.

SANTA CRUZ MUSEUM OF ART & HISTORY

Cultural Vibrancy Santa Cruz County has long specialized in creativity, and the MAH is proud to be part of that time-honored tradition.

Our achievements to date are the result of

Drawing on the multidisciplinary strengths

an exemplary group effort made possible by

of our peer creative community, the MAH

the collaboration of many partners—from

contributes to vibrancy by offering a robust

dedicated community volunteers and

slate of activities that cut across visual and

longstanding local arts and history groups to

literary arts, music, dance, film, spoken

regional and national supporters. Together

word, education, and the creative and

we have built a livable downtown (where

technology sectors. We seek out bold,

livability refers to its tangible, physical

relevant programming that engages our

attributes), and together we can ensure

community as a creative partner, reflects

vibrancy (the positive emotional qualities of

both past and present, invites audience

a community) for years to come.

co-creation, and showcases Santa Cruz’s

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global identity. We also use art and

we can to support the sector. We need to

history to transcend aesthetics, impacting

develop vision, strategies, and priorities in

community goals from public health,

partnership with community experts and

human rights, social justice, and

practitioners, and ensure long-term

environmental stewardship to

funding to sustain such high-quality

sustainability.

programs and facilities.

In 2022 and beyond, the MAH forges

The MAH looks forward to joining

boldly ahead with our inventive offerings,

municipal planners and policymakers in

working with colleagues and partner

conversations around recovery efforts,

groups to breathe new life into our

because we know that artists, cultural

cultural scene and public spaces. This has

organizations, and events add great value

become more important than ever as we

to our community. Recognizing this

take steps to emerge from the pandemic,

cultural vibrancy is not only key to

reconnect, and rebuild.

attracting and retaining people and

Arts communities around the world have experienced colossal blows in the past year, and our own cultural landscape in

businesses, but to making and keeping place, nurturing belonging, and fostering connectedness.

Santa Cruz County has been altered in

A renaissance of art, culture, creativity,

unprecedented ways. At a time of such

and community is upon us. By recognizing

uncertainty about the future, it is crucial

and strengthening the institutions,

to recognize the enduring value of

businesses, and individuals who make our

creative enterprise to drive community

creative economy flourish, we can

development. We need to celebrate our

harness it to the benefit of all.

local cultural organizations and do what CULTURAL VIBRANCY REPORT

Acknowledgments Funder Recognition It is through the generosity of members, corporate sponsors, foundations, and government partners that the MAH is able to be a community resource and economic asset. To learn more about how to get involved with the institution’s work, please visit the MAH’s website to see our various engagement and philanthropic opportunities.

We thank our donors, volunteers, and collaborators for their tremendous support, and look forward to working with new friends as we continue to pursue new horizons.

Land Acknowledgment The land on which we gather is the unceded territory of the Awaswas-speaking Uypi Tribe.

The Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, comprised of the descendants of indigenous people taken to missions Santa Cruz and San Juan Bautista during Spanish colonization of the Central Coast, is today working hard to restore traditional stewardship practices on these lands and heal from historical trauma.

Photo Credits The majority of images featured in this publication were sourced from the MAH’s portfolio and archives.

Special thanks to photographers Ashley Holmes, Michaela Clark-Nagaoka, Garrick Ramirez, Mickey Ta, Marcello Hutchinson-Trujillo, and Alex Vasquez.

ADDITIONAL CREDITS Pages 16-17 Photo by Noah Berger/SF Chronicle

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Please contact the MAH at 831.429.1964, if you have any questions.

For more information about the MAH, please visit santacruzmah.org.