The first monograph of the incisive Hugh Hayden (previously), American Vernacular celebrates a decade of sculptures and installations that evidence his keen political and cultural consciousness. Published by MIT Press and edited by Sarah Montross, the 256-page volume is heavy with images, featuring 90 photos of Hayden’s work that explore conceptions of race and class through intersections with nature.

Frequently working with trees and bark—the latter even envelops the book’s cover with “HUGH” appearing carved into the rough, protective sheath—Hayden is drawn to wood and often utilizes the material to consider the vast array of issues born from slavery and its enduring legacy. Both “Hedges” and “The Jones Part 3” shown here feature branches protruding from the surfaces of the domestic works that make them impossible to use, a metaphor Hayden returns to as he examines the inhospitable realities of life in the U.S. “All of my work is about the American dream, whether it’s a table that’s hard to sit at or a thorny school desk. It’s a dream that is seductive but difficult to inhabit,” he says.

American Vernacular is currently available from Bookshop.

“Hangers #3” (2018), fir, walnut, and ebony with oak dowel, steel, 11 x 28 ¼ x 12 ½ inches. Private collection

“Good Hair 3 (Brainwash)” (2021), white oak, wire-drawn black boar hair (bristle), metal face mask, 10 x 11 ½ x 9 ½ inches. Private collection

Detail of “Hedges” (2019), sculpted wood, lumber, hardware, mirror and carpet, 144 x 208 x 208 inches. Photo by Mark Waldhauser, courtesy of the Shed Open Call

“The Jones Part 3” (2018), sculpted eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana) with steel, 78 ½ x 180 x 26 ¾ inches. Private collection

Detail of “The Jones Part 3” (2018), sculpted eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana) with steel, 78 ½ x 180 x 26 ¾ inches. Private collection

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article Hugh Hayden’s First Monograph Surveys the Inhospitable Nature of the American Dream appeared first on Colossal.

In Greek mythology, the Oceanid nymphs are the daughters of Oceanus, the great world-encompassing river, and a sea goddess named Tethys. Innumerable and present in every aquatic environment, the poet Hesiod described how they “serve the earth and the deep waters,” personifying springs and the sources of marine expanses. For illustrator Sonia Alins, the stories of the Oceanids provide a well of inspiration. “I’m exploring, in a poetic and allegoric way, concepts such as motherhood and sisterhood,” she tells Colossal. Her dreamy depictions of women and children floating serenely in water (previously) evoke maternal care and emotional connection.

Alins’ ongoing series Dones d’Aigua, which translates to “women of water,” focuses on glowing, full-figured figures who float, bob, and dive unselfconsciously in seemingly infinite expanses of blue rendered in ink, acrylic, and watercolor. Despite the apparent isolation from surrounding land or activity, the figures express deep bonds and a sense of togetherness, security, and tranquility. “I’ve continued creating artworks with clear references to (the Oceanids): motherhood, femininity, feminism, and love,” she says. “Those were the main roles of these Greek goddesses, and I feel linked to them, too.”

Find more of Alins’ work on her website, where you can purchase hand-finished editions and limited-edition prints. She often works with her husband Juanjo Barco, a fellow illustrator, to complete her pieces. You can follow her on Instagram for more updates.

“Celebration”

“Amitié”

“Written in the skin”

“Família”

“Motherhood”

“Mother with baby”

“Maternidad”

“Las nadadoras del arrecife”

“Oceanids I”

“Plaisir”

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article Sisterhood and Maternal Bonds Surface in Sonia Alins’ Ethereal Illustrations of Tranquil Swimmers appeared first on Colossal.

Unlike conventional exhibits, “agriCULTURE: Art Inspired by the Land” engages visitors through art to imagine the tastes, smells, sounds, and textures of the land across five different locations.

18 local and national artists were paired with Boulder County farmers to create paintings, sculptures, fiber art, photo weavings and more. Their works are on display at the Longmont Museum, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Ollin Farms, Milk and Honey Farm, and the Agricultural Heritage Center.

Visitors are encouraged to go from site to site to experience the various site-specific work. “There is so much about farming that is approached like an art form in order for it to be successful,” said Joan Harrold, marketing and communications specialist at the Longmont Museum. “There are natural connections between the two concepts, and both are a rich part of the culture of Boulder County.”

Inspired by agriculture and nature

“We asked farmers and artists to work together to create art that is inspired by the land. It’s interesting to see all the diverse directions the artists have taken that prompt,” said Harrold. “We gave them the flexibility and freedom to create what they saw and use the mediums they wanted.”

One artist created a very large curtain of corn stalks meant to represent the amount of corn required to produce two gallons of milk. Harrold said, “His intention is to take the curtain back to the land at the end of the exhibit and return it to the field where it can decompose naturally and provide nutrients for the next crop.”

Artist Margarita Cabrera intertwined food accessibility, soil regeneration, and pollination, all of which are central to partner farm Ollin Farm’s mission, by working with 60 community members to create ceramic spoons. Harrold said, “Margarita engaged our community last summer to create the spoons featured in our exhibit. So many people were involved in what is not a typical art show.”

At Milk and Honey Farm, artists created a series of five sculptures placed on mobile stages. At the Agricultural Heritage Center, artist Amanda McCavour created an experiential piece of ethereal embroidered flower curtains that are hanging in an old historic barn. It has the look and feel of flowers blowing in the breeze.

In the Longmont Museum’s gallery, the exhibit also features hands-on exploration activities for families, including digital microscopes, a farm tractor sandbox, and an interactive magnet mural.

The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art’s gallery features eight artists using various media. “The works celebrate Boulder County’s rich farming heritage while also sparking dialogue about environmental challenges such as climate change and water rights.”

The “agriCULTURE: Art Inspired by the Land” exhibit runs through January 7, 2024

Offering something for everyone

The Longmont Museum hosts many events throughout the year from concerts, to theater, to talks and films in their intimate 250-seat Stewart Auditorium.

This summer, enjoy a free outdoor concert in the Museum’s courtyard with diverse music from blues and jazz to country and R&B.

Sundays on the Farm is an opportunity for families to enjoy an afternoon of making art, petting goats, food, music, and a lot of fun at each of the three farms featured in the “agriculture” exhibit.

The Summer Kids Film Series features a range of films from Disney classics to recent blockbusters on Tuesday mornings.

For more information on the “agriCULTURE: Art Inspired by the Land” exhibit and other performances and events visit them online here or here. 

For the last few months, I have been following the adventures of a drop-ship entrepreneur who goes by the name of “Patryk Marketer.” A video by Marketer first popped into my feed in early April, featuring his claim that he had a surefire system to generate a passive income from A.I.-generated art.

In the first video I saw by Marketer, which gained half a million views, he was brimming with excitement about the money-spinning potential of A.I. All you had to do, Marketer explained, was get a site like Midjourney to dream up some cool images for you. Then, you upload them to Etsy and let the money roll in as online art-buyers discovered your creations.

“I think that the biggest pro is that there is unlimited potential,” Marketer told his viewers. “The more images you make and post on Etsy, the more money you can make… Profit margins on these items are relatively high.” Best of all, in his view, is that the income stream is “completely passive. You build something, you upload it to the Etsy server, and you don’t have to do anything at all.”

Marketer followed up with a seminar called “How To Sell AI Art On Etsy A To Z Blueprint 2023.” This hour-plus video has been watched another 200,000 times, making him a modest thought-leader for people looking to make a career in the brave new post-human online art world.

Essentially, what Marketer was selling was clip art in bundles of 20 PNG files. The Marketer Method was to employ an Etsy analytics tool to find out what was selling in the digital graphics space, then use Midjourney to create a slight variation on it to capture a piece of the same market.

For instance, Marketer explained that he had discovered a demand for clip art of mushrooms on Etsy. He saw that the most popular example of mushroom clip art was red, and so he used Midjourney to make a bundle of pink mushroom images to sell.

Marketer boasted that he had garnered 216 orders in March by making 23 Etsy digital art listings. That meant revenue of about $490, which translated to a profit of about $207 after subtracting Etsy fees and marketing costs.

They were modest results, but Marketer thought things were just getting started. “I’m gonna snowball this thing,” he told his viewers. “I am going to build it up and make this thing bigger and bigger.”

In the last six months, I’ve been alternating between being morbidly fascinated and low-key horrified by the glut of shouty influencers and gormless social-media gurus preaching ways to “turbo-charge” your income with various A.I. “content hacks.” It really does feel like watching some kind of mind virus spreading. At least Marketer seemed good-natured and relatively forthright, so I’ve been checking in with him every so often.

His progress from those first excited claims can be told via the evolving titles of his videos:

­March 31: “How I Got 200 Orders in My First Month on Etsy Selling A.I. Art”

May 2: “Selling A.I. Art On Etsy For 2 Months: Realistic Results”

May 16: “My Etsy A.I Shop Is Failing … What I Am Doing To Fix It”

June 9: “3 Months Of Selling Etsy AI Art … What Happened?”

July 7: “4 Months Of Selling Etsy AI Art… There’s HOPE”

July 11: “You Won’t Make Money Selling AI Art On Etsy… Let Me Explain”

Cue sad trombone.

After three months in the trenches, Marketer is ready to admit that a lucrative career as a digital artist may not be the low-hanging fruit he thought it was.

“Once you get into it, you find out that it is not as easy as people say,” he recently conceded. “It’s challenging to make enough money to sustain your lifestyle.”

As it turns out, the kind of clip art that actually sells is highly trend-based, so you have to be constantly scanning the horizon and producing more things to get on top of the new trends. “The thing I have learned—it was a hard lesson—[is that] trends on Etsy change so fast, super-fast.”

Additionally, Marketer has discovered that the profit margins are not actually that high after all, since getting the A.I. to generate something saleable requires some effort:

When I say you won’t make money selling A.I. art, I mean that you need to put in work, active work. I thought this was going to be passive… The creation process of A.I. art that you will sell is actually pretty time-consuming—and when I say that, some actual artists might laugh at me, and I understand why. But because there [are] so many A.I. art bundles on Etsy right now, you cannot just make one clip art and list it. That means you have to spend a couple of minutes to maybe an hour to generate it.

It may be possible—and who could have guessed this?—that flooding Etsy with near-identical A.I. images might have diminishing returns.

Putting any thought into actually making something interesting undermines the promise of this particular money-making scheme—the whole promise was that A.I. did most of the work! “I’m trying to spend as little time on fixing images as possible, so I can actually make these bundles really fast.”

Given these realities, Marketer now recommends that instead of pursuing an independent career selling A.I. art on Etsy, you get a day job and invest your income into running an A.I. art business on the side. He also suggests systematizing the process into steps that remove as much thought from art-generation as possible. With such a system in place, you can then hire “virtual assistants“—Marketer says he pays two people $300 and $250 a month, respectively—to do the actual work of pumping out on-trend Midjourney clip art, with the aim of getting the hustle back to a semblance of that “passive income” sweet spot.

So as long as you adjust your expectations from “doing what you love” to “managing a sweatshop,” the A.I. art dream remains very much alive.

More Trending Stories:

What Opulence Lay Behind Marie Antoinette’s Secret Bedroom Door? The Palace of Versailles Has Just Reopened the Queen’s Hidden Chambers

An Ornate Viking-Era Relic Unearthed by a Metal Detectorist in the U.K. Could Fetch More Than $30,000 at Auction

A Rediscovered Portrait of Katherine Parr, Henry VIII’s Sixth Wife, Fetches Four Times Its High Estimate at Sotheby’s

Art Industry News: More Museums Distance Themselves From David Adjaye After Allegations + Other Stories

For Their First U.S. Museum Show, Artist Wynnie Mynerva Has Reimagined the Creation Myth as an Act of Rebellion Against the Patriarchy

An Israeli First-Grader Stumbled on a 3,500-Year-Old Egyptian Amulet on a School Trip

Why Hasn’t Atlanta’s Art Scene Flourished Like Other Cities in the South? A Tragic Tale May Hold the Answer

Follow Artnet News on Facebook:
Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward.

LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN) – When Alktra Farhan lived in Iraq, her religion put her life in danger. Now that she’s in Lincoln, Alktra is not afraid to share and celebrate the beliefs of many.

“I love painting,” Alktra said. “It is a part of my life. And I want to show others’ lives.”

Alktra grew up in Bahdad, and she practices Mandaeism, an ethnic religion that centers around prophets like John the Baptist. After completing middle school, Alktra enrolled in an art institute where she studied for two years. However, her education at the institute was cut short when women without hijabs were being killed in Iraq.

Since hijabs are not required in Mandaeism, Alktra was among the women at risk.

“My mom, she was very scared,” Alktra remembered. “She said, ‘We want to move to Syria.’ First time, I didn’t accept because I need to continue my education, but she said, ‘It is too dangerous right now.’”

The bombings caused her family to flee to Syria when she was 17. That’s where she took classes for refugees like how to cut and style hair. But she especially enjoyed classes that taught her to play guitar, create oil paintings and paint on glass.

Alktra says the Iraqi education system does not include a high school education, so it was difficult for her to continue schooling in other countries. She eventually received a certificate in the fine arts.

In 2010, Altra came to the United States. While living in Illinois, she learned English, worked at Goodwill, and met her husband. She moved from Illinois to California, until she, her husband, and children settled in Nebraska in 2018.

At first, English was difficult for Alktra, so she kept buying the wrong paints at Walmart. A kind friend let her borrow an Amazon Prime account, so she could experiment and buy glass paint online.

Eventually, she found support from ECHO Collective, a nonprofit that helps new Americans become entrepreneurs.

“I was delighted when I saw what she could do because we really don’t have anything like that in Lincoln,” said Kelly Ross, founder of ECHO Collective. “So I know she had a pretty exquisite niche.”

Ross invited Alktra to classes where she learned marketing and business skills. She helped grow Art by Alktra, a business dedicated to selling paintings on glass. Echo connected her with a contest held by a nonprofit for refugees called Hello Neighbor. She submitted a painting of interlocking hands, and it was selected as the logo for their national conference.

Alktra meticulously paints on mirrors, dishes, and flat surfaces, but she makes custom pieces based on requests. She washes the surface beforehand and uses toothpicks to manipulate the paint into nooks and crannies.

“Last time, I had a customer ask for a teapot with a flower,” Alktra said. “I hadn’t tried that before, but it’s okay. When it’s curved it’s a little difficult, so I have to be very careful.”

One of her favorite pieces is a painting of a cross with a white cloth draped over it, surrounded by jasmine. It’s called the Mandean darfash, or the Mandean cross.

“My people know about my paintings because of this picture,” Alktra said, holding up the cross painting.

Aside from her faith, Alktra creates artwork with symbols from other religions, such as Buddhism and Christianity. The state of Nebraska is also a huge source of inspiration for her. She lays out her masterpieces on her table at indoor craft shows, and among them are depictions of the State Capitol building, the Lincoln skyline, or Chimney Rock.

“I search a lot about everything from Nebraska,” Alktra beamed, gesturing to a ‘dream poster’ with photos and drawings of aspirations. “I love it. I love Nebraska. Nebraska is where I can have my dream and my education. It gave me a lot of things.”

She hopes to display paintings in her own studio and teach classes one day. But for now, she travels to craft fairs with her daughter Linda Farhan. At eight years old, she helps Art by Alktra set up for shows, and in the meantime, she is learning her mother’s craft too.

“It’s really cool to have these paintings because when she does hard stuff, it freaks me out,” said her eight-year-old daughter Linda Farhan. “It’s like so cool.”

Her goal is to sell her paintings to every home in Lincoln. But most of all, she wants to promote unity.

“It’s my personality,” Alktra said. “I don’t say, ‘Oh, this is a different religion.’ No, it’s every people. It’s nice. It’s good.”

Alktra says she is very grateful to the family and friends who helped her get to where she is today. Art by Alktra can be found on Facebook, Instagram (art_by_alktra) and Tiktok. Prices vary depending on customizations and shipping, but 8×10 glass paintings can range between $55-100.

Copyright 2023 KOLN. All rights reserved.

The Art and AI VIP explores the interplay between artistry and artificial intelligence.

Painting may seem old school, but it’s a profoundly technological practice. From the tech behind brushes to the mathematics of perspective, artists of all kinds have long placed themselves where science, technology, and art meet.

But it’s never been more challenging to pinpoint where a relentless ocean of technology splashes over the ever-shifting sands of artistic expression amid the rise in artificial intelligence tools such as DALL-E and ChatGPT capable of generating images, text, and even music from relatively simple text prompts.

This landscape has proven fertile ground for School of Literature, Media, and Communication (LMC) resident painter Mark Leibert, who for years has turned to algorithms and computational methods to help inspire and refine his work.

Leibert and collaborators from the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) have gone even further, recruiting a team of student researchers in the Art & AI Vertically Integrated Project (VIP) to explore the artistic implications of AI and the technological implications of art. In fact, they were well ahead of the recent public buzz over artificial intelligence tools, having launched four years ago — before DALL-E and ChatGPT became household names.

“We have a really unique situation here where we can think about how these techniques can be used for artistic means and how to use those creative neurons to approach some of these new technologies,” said Leibert, an LMC professor of the practice. 

Art and Computation Central to LMC’s Mission

The Art & AI VIP is one of many arts-and-technology efforts housed entirely or partly in LMC, a unit of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts. The most recent initiative is Interactive Media Arts, a partnership between the Ivan Allen College and the Georgia Tech Library, that features many LMC faculty.

Other projects include Professor Brian Magerko’s widely acclaimed EarSketch coding-through-music platform; work examining the shared DNA behind quilting and computing spearheaded by Anne Sullivan, an LMC assistant professor whose doctorate is in computer science, and Professor Janet Murray’s continued exploration of the impact of digital technology on storytelling. The School also recently added a new artist-in- residency program, in collaboration with the GT library, to further examine the nexus of art and tech. It also has invited musicians to a residency program with similar aims, that one in conjunction with the School of Music.

“LMC has always been about looking at how technology is shaping literature, art, and storytelling in general,” said Kelly Ritter, chair of the School. “The Art and AI VIP is one way we’re doing this, but whether it be a new center dedicated to exploring the nexus between media arts and research, the extraordinary work of faculty such as Brian Magerko and his team, who are helping teach young students to code, or how technology and its impact is suffused throughout our writing and communication program, this sense of interplay between technology, textual study, and media arts is central to what we do.” 

AI: ‘Solutions in Search of a Problem’

DALL-E’s AI-generated take on Leibert leading a class.

The VIP draws students from across campus, many interested in exploring the creative potential of technological degrees or in scratching a creative itch they aren’t always able to satisfy amid a heavy courseload in computing or engineering.

“Tech has great resources for technology and amazing resources for literature, media, and communication. This seemed like one of the few bastions in which the two were really intermingling,” said Jude McClaren, a second-year computational media student.

Leibert formed the VIP team in 2020, initially partnering with now-retired GTRI researcher Betty Whitaker. He’s now working with Ethan Trewhitt, another GTRI researcher, who helps students dig deeper into the sometimes mystifying ways in which AI and artistic intent interact.

“AI systems, in some cases, are solutions looking for a problem, and giving them new outlets helps you recognize where the limitations of those systems are,” said Trewhitt, a senior research engineer at GTRI. “Then the creative motivations of the people using these systems can create new ways to solve problems that can then be used toward what you would consider more practical applications that aren’t necessarily art. So it’s kind of a feedback loop.” 

Exploring the Intersection of Art and AI

In its four years, students in the Art and AI VIP have explored the intersection of the two fields through various projects. In recent years, students have tried using AI to write horror, create moving portraits, animate children’s books, explore new takes on old music, creative interactive, emotion-sensing art, and tools to visualize poetry and music. 

In the Spring 2023 semester, an interdisciplinary group of students with experience in coding, illustration, 3D-modeling, computer animation, website design, marketing, and AI systems worked on creating a human-like extension to the ChatGPT AI tool.

You can see a gallery of some of the recent work they have done in a database maintained by the Art & AI VIP.

Their techniques include generative adversarial networks, diffusion models, transformer models, and natural language processing models, as seen in publicly available tools such as DALL-E, EbSynth, and ChatGPT.

“I would say the bulk of the students are working in the deep-learning space, which tends to be a little more black-box kind of functionality,” Trewhitt said. “The fun thing about this is there really isn’t such a thing as failure, so it’s safe to really play with things that can surprise you.”

While Trewhitt is still working through ways to dive deep into the technology behind such systems in a way that works for a team with a range of backgrounds, some more technical than others, some teams have surpassed his knowledge in some areas.

“We had students working on a music video project recently, and by the end of the semester, they definitely understood it better than I did. I had dabbled in it, but they had spent hours really getting it working the way they wanted, peeling back the layers of a complex system to get it to do what they wanted it to do.”

Michelle Lee, an Art & AI VIP member and second-year computer science student from New York, is working on a music visualization program. She said the VIP has allowed her to use her computing knowledge in a creative way that she hopes will help after graduation.

“I hope to bring creativity wherever I go,” Lee said. “I hope to work at a tech company, and I’d really like to bring this kind of creativity to make my work different and unique.” 

Thinking About the Ethics of AI and Art

Tools such as DALL-E and ChatGPT have made headlines in recent months. The coverage ranges from astonishment at the tools’ ability to render true-to-form, if sometimes absurd, images or text to outright alarm at the potential the tools have to deceive or perhaps even put artists and other creatives out of work.

It’s a topic of discussion in class, of course. Leibert, Trewhitt, and the students have discussed how emergent technologies, such as the AI tools used in class, can scramble methodologies, disciplines, and careers. They’ve also discussed how working with art creates opportunities to be nimble, reframe conventional thinking, and surface novel ways to solve problems. Leibert says that can, in turn, lead to the creation of new tools or even new careers. Case in point: the rising demand for people skilled in “prompt engineering” — in other words, able to coax quality results from a tool that can sometimes be mysterious and even erratic.

That kind of work is something creative people have done for a long time, Leibert said.

“Artists and writers have worked with generative prompts and games for much of the last 100 years,” he said. “Sometimes it has been the flip of a coin, consulting I Ching, or selecting from a deck of prompt cards. Tools like Photoshop and Illustrator have been a part of my process for at least two decades, and working with this group has increased my appreciation for the work computer scientists do.”

Ethical issues also come up, of course, such as who is doing the creating — the human, the machine, or some mixture of the two — and who can claim ownership over the resulting works.

“This is a very new and fast-moving field, so we spend a lot of time talking about the technologies and the creative and conceptual potential of AI in art. But the nice thing about what we are doing is that we are able to have these conversations about ethics in an informal manner as we work, so this kind of ethical thinking becomes as much a part of what we do as the technical inputs or the artistic outputs.”

Students in the VIP are well aware of the ethical issues and committed to using AI for good. And many view the use of AI to make or remix art as natural, just another tool in an artists’ toolkit.

“AI is a legitimate way of making art,” said Marin Hyatt, a third-year computer science student from New York. “I think, like anything else, AI is just a tool, similar to Photoshop. It’s just a different way to make art.” 

State

Zip Code

Country

The city is inviting artists and residents alike to be part of the process of figuring out how to further invest in arts and culture in neighborhoods across San Diego.

San Diego is creating its first cultural plan, dubbed Creative City, that will guide investments in arts and culture in alignment with the city’s other priorities — like its climate action and parks plans — for the next seven to 10 years.

“Part of what makes San Diego a great city is our vibrant arts scene and rich cultural heritage, which is not only connected to our history but also the diverse communities that call our city home,” said Mayor Todd Gloria.

The city is one of the largest holders of cultural assets in the region and provides arts and culture funding to nearly 200 organizations annually, supporting film and cultural festivals, such as the annual Cinco de Mayo celebration, as well as nonprofit programming, said Jonathon Glus, executive director of the city’s Commission for Arts and Culture.

“We have a very lively city, but we want to bring more creative and cultural life to our public spaces across the city,” Glus said. “We’re asking the community to really tell us how they want to experience art and culture in their city.”

Glus says the new cultural plan will focus on areas such as artist and creative workforce development and retention, neighborhood creative hubs, arts marketing, cultural tourism and collective impact strategies for regional arts philanthropy.

The framework may also include strategies to employ the arts to address challenges including mobility, climate and environment, gang prevention, youth development and the housing crisis.

“The creative workforce is a vital part of our economy,” said Glus, adding that more than 100,000 people in creative industries generate over $11 billion in economic activity. “We need to make sure that those creative industries can really thrive here in the same way that we need other types of small businesses to thrive.”

Last month, the city began hosting various family-friendly public engagement events to get insight on local cultural traditions and learn what San Diegans envision for arts and culture in their communities moving forward. About 500 people attended, according to Glus.

More public events will take place later this month, beginning with a virtual forum on Monday, July 24.

The town hall will be followed that week by six pop-up events across the city, where participants can learn more about Creative City, provide input and join in on hands-on art-making activities.

The first pop-up is scheduled 5:30-7:30 p.m. on July 25 at the San Ysidro Branch Library. The event will be held in Spanish with English interpretation available. Other language interpretation is available upon request in advance.

A toolkit is available to guide San Diegans in hosting their own community conversations. A public survey is also available online until Aug. 31. Both can be found online at sdcreativecity.com.

The city hired San Diego-based consulting firm Cultural Planning Group LLC to facilitate the planning process, including aggregating public input, as well as input from industry and sector-specific groups, analyzing existing conditions and identifying additional opportunities to develop the cultural plan.

The plan will be developed early next year, and the city plans to seek further public input on the proposal in the fall. The plan is expected to be finalized by March 2025 and will go before the City Council for final approval.