Episode 12: ABBA Summit Highlights Part 2 - Transcription

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Part 2 of our Highlights Show from the Arts for a Better Bay Area 2023 Summit Transcription:

Eric: Welcome to Voices of the Community. I am your host, Eric Estrada. This episode is part two of a highlight compilation from season one of our special series where Arts Meets Impact and our co-production with Arts for a Better Bay Area, featuring interviews with summit attendees and presenters from our 2023 State of our Arts and Culture organization Summit.

Eric: Join our host, George Koster as we highlight the voices of panelists and discussions that happened during the Summit Workshops, which focused on rebuilding our communities through the arts. Our first voices are Joshua Simon, senior Advisor for Community Arts Stabilization Trust, and Katherine Reasoner.

Eric: Executive consultant for Vital Arts during a q and a session on housing for the artist workforce.

Guest: So two short questions. One, I was very excited to hear about the prospect of housing being built in the downtown area. That's something that everybody's like, I [00:01:00] hope with all the empty spaces and the buildings they become, but how realistic is that?

Guest: And it's not a criticism, it's me saying. I'm super excited about that, but it seems like there are a lot of roadblocks for anything like that to happen in the immediate future.

Joshua Simon: I think it's as possible as we together make it. It will require advocacy. It will require coming together. To push to make it happen.

Joshua Simon: So this won't happen if just a developer comes. I mean, it might, but depending on a lot of factors. But there are a lot of roadblocks as you say. So organizing is important, and at the same time it has been done in other parts of the state. So there's not a reason it can't be done, and we're in this bizarre moment.

Joshua Simon: Caste was born when real estate prices dropped dramatically in 2007. 2008, and I thought I'd never see another time like this in my life. Suddenly shopping centers and office buildings are selling for a fraction of what they were. [00:02:00] So we have a very small window, maybe a year or two maybe, to organize. And it's, it's good to see some of my other colleagues from the nonprofit sector here.

Joshua Simon: Uh, it's gonna take all of the tools we've built over the last 40 or 50 years in community development. To pull this off. It's not an easy thing to do. So I'm not saying this is easy, but if we are all in alignment, if we can all come together around it, I do think we can take down some of these buildings and turn them into engines for economic development.

Kathryn Reasoner: We've got a project in Berkeley. There's a Berkeley Artist Housing Task force that's been working for two years to get the city to agree that they keep asking developers who are. Putting up these brand new buildings with market rate housing. They keep requiring that they put retail on the ground floor.

Kathryn Reasoner: So you've all seen the phenomenon of empty retail along all these new things we've been pushing for. Can't we have affordable artists live work on the ground floor to count toward affordable housing requirements, which developers would love to see. We're also looking at empty retail. We've done surveys of main [00:03:00] avenues, and so we're working on it.

Kathryn Reasoner: We've got two projects right now sitting in city planning department where a developer just got tired of waiting. He put in two proposals for two. Housing buildings with artists live, work on the ground floor, which would be part of the development as accounting toward affordable housing cities saying, whoa, whoa, we don't know how to deal with this, et cetera, et cetera.

Kathryn Reasoner: We've got a, a hearing coming up in a couple of weeks, uh, before the housing commission. Just try and deal with some of the roadblocks on some of the. Language and some of the vocabulary and the targets and so forth and so on. So we're in the middle of that right now in Berkeley. And uh, we've been working at for a while, like Josh.

Kathryn Reasoner: I'm optimistic it can happen, but we all have to get involved.

Guest: Thank you. And the last question is, I appreciated your example about the house with the pottery wheel and I'm wondering if the same sort of thematic considerations, so to speak, could be applied to housing that exists in various areas. So, you know, trans artists getting.

Guest: Housing in the Trans arts district or you know, A API artists in the Asian Arts District or [00:04:00] whatnot. If that same sort of consideration is possible, um, being considered, et cetera.

Kathryn Reasoner: I think for the reasons we were discussing earlier, it's hard to do it with state housing regulations, but you know, that's a longer conversation about ways to try and do that.

Kathryn Reasoner: It's definitely something we've been spending a lot of time talking about.

Eric: Coming up next are the voices of Richard Raya, chief Strategy Officer for the Mission Economic Development Agency of San Francisco, Fernando Pujas, deputy Director of Mid-Market Business Association and Foundation, Jacob iff, manager of the Economic Recovery Initiatives, office of Economic and Workforce Development, and Laura Pty.

Eric: Deputy Director for the Center of Cultural Innovation from our economic development through the arts panel.

Richard Raya: Yes. Hi everyone. My name is Richard Raya. I'm the Chief Strategy Officer at the Mission Economic Development Agency. We're based in the mission. We serve about 10,000 resident a year in the mission.

Richard Raya: We focus on the Latino immigrant community and we're celebrating our 50th anniversary [00:05:00] this year, and we started off by helping residents start small businesses. Help entrepreneurs get off the ground, helping families do their taxes. But about 10 years ago, as we were seeing our population displaced, the working class immigrant population, the artists being displaced for the past 20 years, beginning with the.com boom, we lost about 10,000 Latino residents to displacement.

Richard Raya: So seeing that we knew that we had to do something more than just provide services. To folks. So we actually ventured into the affordable housing world, the world of commercial real estate, and we did that by joining with our community and organizing and advocating. A big thing that we did is we flooded City Hall about eight or nine years ago, along with many other organizations.

Richard Raya: And many residents just letting the powers that be know that there's a tremendous displacement crisis in our community. As a result of that type of advocacy then and ongoing advocacy, the city created new funding opportunities for affordable housing as well as new policies to support that, to align with that funding.

Richard Raya: So as a [00:06:00] result of that, our organization has since then bought 38 apartment buildings and prevented the residents from being evicted. We've also built six large sites, so 10 story buildings with a hundred percent affordable housing. So one of the first persons in our small, what we call the small sites, the apartment buildings.

Richard Raya: One of the first persons that we saved from eviction was an artist, um, Yolanda Lopez. A long time Mission district resident and just a leader in the Chicano Civil Rights Movement, which was the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement. And so she was able to stay in place, stay in the neighborhood as a result of us buying these apartment buildings.

Richard Raya: And another artist that was helped through this process and who was saved from eviction is Ani Rivera, who the executive Director of Galleria Deza. So that's just an example of the type of folks that we help to prevent being evicted. But there's more to the work than that with our large sites, our large buildings, and actually on our small sites too.

Richard Raya: We put murals on all these buildings working with local artists, but we also [00:07:00] reserve the ground floor retail space for artists, for our galleries and for nonprofits in general in the neighborhood that have been serving the neighborhood. For a long time. So one of those organizations that got placed in our ground floor retail is Gallia Deza.

Richard Raya: And so I wanna talk about the murals though, because this might be one of the most impactful parts of what we do. So again, we work with local artists, we work with the community to select the local artists as well as to select the topic of the art on the walls. And one of our buildings, our most recent building, 2060 Folsom, it's 127 units of affordable housing.

Richard Raya: But on that wall is a nine story mural of the artist Yolanda Lopez, and examples of her work, including kind of showing how the Chicano movement interacted with the Black Power Movement and the American Indian movement, and how a lot of this work was taking place in the Mission District and a lot of this alliance building.

Richard Raya: And that how, that's just part of the legacy of that community. And I think what's really powerful about that nine story mural of Yolanda [00:08:00] Lopez's face. And her artwork is that when you enter the mission district from downtown, you see that you're entering a community with a legacy of art, of organizing, of making change.

Richard Raya: And I just love that. And you may not know, but Yolanda Lopez passed away about a year and a half, two years ago, right before the building was finished. And in part that's why the community chose to have her on the building. I think what I wanna say last is that this work, I don't want to go deep on how this is part of just a comprehensive community development initiative that we're part of.

Richard Raya: We also work with the schools. We also work with small businesses to make sure that they can also afford to stay in the Mission district. But I think what we're seeing is that when the community comes together and organizes and advocates and makes noise and has a plan, we can change systems. And we've seen that happen in the Mission district.

Richard Raya: That work that I just talked about is actually now a national model. We're hosting folks from all over the country, and so there is something that is working and there are folks on this panel and folks on earlier [00:09:00] panels that are also talking about kind of similar success stories. So it's good for us all to be here together.

Richard Raya: It's a much needed coming together of voices because we can make change. So thank you.

George Koster: I'm joined remotely by the Deputy Director of the Mid-Market Business Association and Foundation, Fernando Pool Gels. Welcome back to Voices of the Community. Fernando,

Fernando Pujals: thank you for having me. Really delighted to be here today and looking forward to talking

George Koster: and staying with that.

George Koster: Fernando, you've also been in the field and been doing this in, you know, an area that's, you know, sadly for decades, a containment zone, right? When you consider. Mid-market, some to some degree. Of course, you know, the Tenderloin, you know. What are some of the things that you and your team have discovered that are working, networking, and then what would you like to see?

George Koster: You know, community support for government, support for philanthropy foundation slash corporations to help.

Fernando Pujals: I would love to see, you know, continued philanthropy, of course, and putting money directly in the hands of creative businesses and artists. [00:10:00] They know how to spend it and it will return. And I think that we're at a space where diversifying the economy here would be a really good step.

Fernando Pujals: And finding other sectors beyond tech and tech was great. I am not going to at all disparage the Twitter tax break because. It did drive an a significant level of investment. Here we have renovated hotels, renovated class a office, but the world has changed. People aren't working from home the same way we're boots on the ground 'cause we're a neighborhood organization.

Fernando Pujals: Of course we're here, you know, we're really building for residents and visitors and we think office will come when the neighborhood, you know, begins to show its potential again, but. Positivity is happening here. And what we saw through the pandemic was just the absence of positivity and it made the things that were negative, that were here much more visible.

Fernando Pujals: And again, the fentanyl and the drug market has really done a number on many of our cities, but we're really feeling it here and it's something we've really gotta grapple with. But if you were here this last weekend, there was a art walk. There was an amazing hip hop festival in Un Plaza with an [00:11:00] incredible B Boy, B Girl Break Dance Battle.

Fernando Pujals: And it was a space that was welcoming to everyone. You know, folks that are down and out that are here that I recognize from my daily time. They were here and they were happy, and there was this moment of hope and joy that you could see on their faces. And I think that would really go a long way in maintaining the positivity that's happening on the sidewalk.

Fernando Pujals: So, would love to see, you know, the, the public sector has been supportive of this plan and our efforts, and we love to see more of the private sector foundations paying attention to midmarket. We've entered a place in San Francisco where all the downtown core has vacancy, woes and challenges. But I would position that the international reputation of our city is very much coming through the heart of our city, and that an investment in mid-market really floats up all the boats in the tide.

Guest: Okay. I'm Brenda Berlin. I am a longtime arts person here in the city. Since the sixties. I founded the [00:12:00] Julian Theater with my ex-husband and now deceased. Richard Reis, founder of the Cultural Centers and all kinds of other things, which we can talk about at some other time. So what I wanna do is talk to you about what specifically, besides what you're talking about for the arts.

Guest: In mid-market and downtown, what's going on with the housing conversions, with the empty spaces in the high rises? Can you talk a little bit about that?

Jacob Bintliff: Sure. I could touch on that a little bit. Yeah. You know, obviously we don't expect the same amount of office demand to be there anytime soon, so we got a lot of buildings.

Jacob Bintliff: It's actually, you look at that as an asset we have in San Francisco. It's a lot of infrastructure that we've built over the years and how do we make use of that space for the things that people, uh, need to do and want to do now. So in terms of converting to housing specifically, actually, we just passed some legislation yesterday that the Mayor and President Peskin on the board introduce to just go through the planning code, go through the building code, get everything outta the way that needed to be done to make it really as easy as we can.

Jacob Bintliff: To do those conversion projects. [00:13:00] You know, we have a lot of really beautiful older buildings in San Francisco and all through this area as well that were designed at a time before air conditioning. They have natural ventilation, they have good lights so they can lend themselves to that kind of conversion.

Jacob Bintliff: You know, the issue really is primarily economic at this point, and you know, Richard can tell you about that as well. You know, building any kind of housing or any kind of anything right now is very challenging. Interest rates and so on. But you know, what we've done so far of the city is make sure that we've gotten ourselves out of the way and that we've really rolled out the red carpet for doing that.

Jacob Bintliff: We've put out a request for interest just last week as well to invite anyone that might be a property owner or a developer, or have a concept to come forward and tell us what they need.

Richard Raya: The very same question was asked in a previous panel and Josh Simon from Cast. I thought he had a really useful answer.

Richard Raya: He said, it's doable. The conversion is doable, money is needed. But if the community can come together and organize and advocate, then we can make it happen. And so I agree with him because that's what [00:14:00] allowed us to do what we're doing in the Mission District, is we had to go to City Hall, we had to advocate, and our elected leaders put a bond, a housing bond on the ballot that passed.

Richard Raya: And that's the money that we used to buy apartment buildings and preserve their affordability. So it's kind of a smaller scale example, but. I just wanna put that out there. I don't know how we would pay for it, but I know it would cost a lot of money and it would take advocacy, I think, to make that happen.

Laura Poppiti: I think if you really want the community to advocate, I think you also have to provide some channels and encourage their participation as well, because artists need space and need affordable housing, so the need is definitely there. But also, you know, they have their practice to take care of, probably other jobs potentially.

Laura Poppiti: So it's there. Give them a vehicle.

Eric: We're halfway through our powerful conversation at the 2023 State of our Arts and Cultural Organization Summit. You have heard from the voices of Joshua Simon, senior advisor for community arts stabilization trust. Katherine Reasoner, executive consultant for Vital [00:15:00] Arts.

Eric: Richard Raya, chief Strategy Officer for the Mission Economic Development Agency of San Francisco. Fernando Pujas, deputy Director of Mid-Market Business Association and Foundation, Jacob Benli, manager of the Economic Recovery Initiatives, office of Economic and Workforce Development, and Laura Pty, deputy Director for the Center of Cultural Innovation.

Eric: Thank you to our incredible sponsors and donors like you for supporting voices of the community. Stay with us more. Highlights ahead. Voices of the Community is made possible by generous support from the Zeller BCH Family Foundation dedicated to ensuring vibrant work is created. New voices are celebrated, and diverse communities have opportunities to thrive.

Eric: Learn more at ZF. DOT org Voices of the Community is also supported by the Peaceful World Foundation, fostering a culture of global peace through hosted conversation and education. Discover more@peacefulworldfoundation.org. Welcome back to [00:16:00] Voices of the Community, where today's conversation at the 2023 State of our Arts and Culture Organization Summit focuses on how arts organizations have bounced back from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Eric: Let's continue the discussion.

George Koster: I'm joined remotely by the co-founder and COO of Building 180, and the managing director and co-founder of Paint the Void, Meredith Winter. Meredith, welcome back to Voices of the Community. Thanks. So Paint the Void was, you know, kind of birthed, if you will, during, during Covid and you were, you know, doing these amazing, you know, pieces of art on, you know, boarded up buildings, if you will.

George Koster: Sadly, there's still a lot of boarded up buildings here in San Francisco. What are some of the things that you've seen come out of it for I think both the arts artist and artist workforce, as well as the community at large.

Meredith Winner: Sure. It's, it's actually a good timing 'cause we're, we're in the process of publishing or self-publishing, uh, paint deployed retrospective book.

Meredith Winner: So it's very top of mind for me these days and it's been really amazing to read past input from [00:17:00] artists that we worked with that say that a lot of the work that we have helped facilitate with them has really jump started their career so that they have been able to go on and do bigger projects and actually maintain.

Meredith Winner: Careers as, as living and working artists, which I think is an amazing outcome. I think that a lot of, a lot of the difficulty in making public art often comes down to permitting processes and where you actually can place artwork. And even with funding that can be quite difficult. So kind of navigating through different stakeholders and different.

Meredith Winner: Entities that have some sort of say in the process is really important to make those personal connections with people so that they know who you are when things are coming across their desk. You have to get really good at doing budget tracking, which is a big thing that we provide for artists that are working on a UN on large scale projects, particularly with sculptural [00:18:00] artists, that it's.

Meredith Winner: A lot of materials to track and crew and transportation and things of that nature. I'm trying to think of other lessons that I've learned. I think really being open-minded and also really trusting artists is a really big important factor because artists know what they're doing, at least when it comes to making the artwork.

Meredith Winner: That's why people hire them and allowing them to have the most creative freedom as possible really usually allows the project to be. As best as it can be

Eric: or as good as it can be. Coming up next are Joe Landini, founder of Safe House Arts Vinne Patel, executive Director of the Asian Pacific Island Cultural Center, and Denise Pate, director of Community Investment for the San Francisco Arts Commission from the Proposition E Workshop.

Joe Landini: So get to 2017 and we start organizing Proposition S. S 2016. 16. Yeah. Proposition S, which then was one of the spear headers and we failed [00:19:00] miserably. No we didn't. No, we didn't. My version is so much more interesting. You're, your version is always darker than what they are. The real version there. Another then will tell you the truth.

Vinz (Guest): Uh, so in 2016, the Arts Alliance with support from a huge coalition of other organizations created Prop S, which was in line with a coalition on homelessness. It was taking these issues of arts and homelessness, putting them together as two core issues for our city. And that legislation, I think missed passing by like 3%, 4%, something like that needed two thirds to pass.

Vinz (Guest): That's not damn my short. It was, there was other bigger failures on that election cycle in 2016.

Joe Landini: Yeah, that wasn't, that wasn't the biggest gut punch that night.

Vinz (Guest): But also I think from that legislation as well, it, that legislation took a big portion of the hotel tax fund in a way that worried. City administrators and other agencies that also drew upon that fund.

Vinz (Guest): Oh yeah. So in 2017, prop S 2.0 happened, which was the same coalition, and that [00:20:00] just fizzled out. It didn't work. It didn't happen. 2018, we came back with Prop E, which was really a city led effort. From my understanding. It was folks met with city officials, said, Hey, we want you to lead this proposition. We want this to be in line with what you think arts funding should be.

Vinz (Guest): We don't wanna ask for more than our fair share. So it was a lot less than prop S, but it was still a huge windfall for San Francisco Arts and specifically because it reconnected that hotel tax fund directly with arts funding. So you know, nobody knew the pandemic would happen. So it's like short, like an earthquake.

Vinz (Guest): We would just continue to grow and grow and grow. Nobody knew this other thing would be coming. How's that for a little cat?

Vinay Patel: That is great. So

Zacc (guest): something I'm kind of hearing from you then. Is that there's a lack of transparency right now with the hotel tax fund and what's going on. What is the percentage, what are these brass tack things?

Zacc (guest): And I'm just wondering, does anybody here, and it can be a wonderful panelists or anybody else know, or you know, especially with grants for the arts, they've had a complete changeover of staff in the last two years. [00:21:00] And so what they used to have are these docket meetings where the community was allowed in to get to see decisions and get to see the advisory group.

Zacc (guest): Make those decisions in real time around who was being funded and why. I loved those docket meetings. I went to every one, even virtually, because the things that people would talk about were fascinating and I was also incredibly worried that the organizations I represented would be cut out, which was never really an issue.

Zacc (guest): That was just my anxiety speaking. And so when our new team came in. Those docket meetings were completely taken away. It was replaced with one last year, but all the decisions had been made, and it was essentially a congratulatory meeting saying, oh my gosh, we did all the work. Isn't that fabulous? And it was on Zoom, and it was presented in such a way where you couldn't even see.

Zacc (guest): See the other, I used to be able to go to a meeting and see folks from La Pena or [00:22:00] from Hope Moore or from anybody in the room. And afterwards we would step outside and we would have a conversation of like, how are you doing? Like, that conversation was intense. But we couldn't even see who was there. And so I'm raising this, if anybody knows of any transparency such as like an annual report or a breakdown of grantees, like it's just, I'm sensing a lack of transparency that's troubling.

Zacc (guest): And I just wanna raise that. And if anybody has any information, well, that's a really good segue.

Vinay Patel: Well, just to be the professor here again about this stuff. Just one more point, and then I think that we're gonna go the rest of the time talking about, you know, what's happened, what's going on. And Denise can talk about, you know, the programs over the Arts commission as well.

Vinay Patel: But one of the things that happened right after we hit the pandemic immediately, right? You know, like we're all celebrating and everything's gonna be great. The tourism was on a sky high. We were gonna see a 10% bump every year. And that was gonna be fantastic. We were on cloud nine, right? But the pandemic hit and we had written in a 10% floor and ceiling, and it was done by the city [00:23:00] attorney.

Vinay Patel: We thought it was ironclad. And then all of a sudden we hear, oh, there is no such thing as a floor. There's no money. There's no money. And basically we're right back at the general fund again. That's pretty much what it was. You know, and so we had to go back in there and start advocating, right? And so a lot of people were advocating again, hey, this cannot be what's going on here.

Vinay Patel: And we have a mayor that, you know, comes from the arts, understood that. And so what City Hall ended up doing was what they called backfill. They found other money and they filled it. So what that didn't do was fulfill the promise of the 10% floor. It just said, Hey, we're just gonna come and try to salvage what's going on over here.

Vinay Patel: Right? So ever since the pandemic, we have not had enough funds in the hotel tax. Is that how you understand it too, Denise? No. Okay. But city hall and the supervisors have been backfilling to make sure that we don't have that. And so we actually saw a bump, I think last year. The mayor was able to put a bump into it.

Vinay Patel: So I think the first year there was a slight decrease in the funding for the arts, but since then, the supervisors have been backfilling it and [00:24:00] in this year. They said that the hotel tax is gonna be level in terms of, and it might not be need for backfilling. There's enough funds in the hotel tax for it.

Vinay Patel: So, Denise,

Denise Pate: well, in terms of the hotel tax, I don't know what's going on at chance. The arts, I, I mean, I do, we worked a little bit with them in their transition. I worked with them on their guidelines and we worked with, um, figuring out a scenario, kind of like the same Actually, Jason who was there before actually started that kind of like the Robin Hood.

Denise Pate: Kind of scenario took from the larger organization so that the smaller organizations could have an entry point, like the $10,000 grants. And so we worked on it. But the challenge was I'm the Arts Commission person. We have a cultural equity, we have this transparency, and then the grants for the arts, which is a different organization.

Denise Pate: So I helped. Them to write guidelines. And then also we hired a program officer to help them work on, you know, reviewing the grants. And right now I'm reading grants for Grants for the arts, a small portion of them. And what we're doing [00:25:00] is, um, we're helping to advise them on creating, um, a rubric that focuses more on community engagement.

Denise Pate: And so it's a strange marriage 'cause it still grants for the arts, the symphony, the opera, the ballet. And then also some smaller organizations, whereas we are this like really groovy, you know, cultural equity and we're looking at inclusion all the time and we are transparent. And so when you were talking about that there was no meeting, we couldn't see what was going on.

Denise Pate: That totally bypassed me because I was focusing on Arts Commission and all our stuff that's almost too trans. I mean, it's like we're so transparent where people are always like calling me and saying, you know, this. Panelists said this and it hurt my feelings and that was not fair. So anyway, but in terms of like the hotel tax fund, what I was told with budget this time that the Arts commission we're in good shape and I was told that the hotel tax was the only tax that's growing.

Denise Pate: Despite all the talk about that, you know, the [00:26:00] tourists are scared away and that the fund and I looked at each year and the growth that's happening. And so we're good and we have an increase and, but of course we have multiple funds. That are coming to the Arts Commission, but property is good and we have money left over last year and so that, we'll, you know, move forward to the next year.

Denise Pate: But I'll just say this, you didn't ask, but in the CSAP process, I happened to have been there part of the steering committee or whatever you call that committee, where we all got together and talked about the buckets of money like arts and capital and space. Core support and individual artists, and the team decided like what percentage of Prop E would go towards those types of program needs.

Denise Pate: And for this year we did the Arts Impact Endowment and we did a first time grantee initiative. Now, I knew about the other ones the years before and the controversy around that, but this time we just focused on first time grantees, which we had a time because there were. It's like what is a first time [00:27:00] grantee?

Denise Pate: Uh, if you were with an organization, can you appear as an individual now, even though you got a grant as the leader of an organization?

Joe Landini: No, they wouldn't let me.

Denise Pate: And there were all kinds of things going on, but what we found is the CSAP plan said that only a small percentage would go to individual artists.

Eric: That concludes part two of our highlight episode of Season One of Where Arts Meets Impact in partnership with Arts for a Better Bay Area. A special thanks to our summit attendees and our panelists. Joshua Simon, Katherine Reasoner, Richard Raa, Fernando Pujas, Jacob iff, Laura Ty Meredith, winter, Joe Landini Patel, and Denise Pate for their insights on arts advocacy.

Eric: Visit voices of the community.com and go to season one where Arts Meet impact and explore more about our guests, their work, and take action in your community to support the arts. While you're on our website, we invite you to visit season two with California for the Arts. Stay tuned for our next series [00:28:00] Making the Invisible Visible as we amplify the voices of our unhoused neighbors and the people and organizations that support them.

George Koster: Today's episode was made possible through our co-production partnership with Arts for Our Better Bay Area at their 2023 State-of-the-Art Summit. Special thanks to our technical crew, audio and video Wizard, Eric Estrada and our co-production partner, bay Vac Media and their wonderful team, Paula Arni, Andy Konami, Sivan Giles, and Clay Go.

George Koster: Thanks to Casey Nance from Citron Studios for the graphics magic. A special thanks to our broadcast partners who help share these important conversations. K-S-F-P-L-P-F-M in San Francisco. K-P-C-A-L-P-F-M. And Petaluma. Petaluma Community Public Access tv. Bay Vac Media's SF Commons, and PEG Media's Public Access TV exchange.

George Koster: Thank you for your commitment to amplifying diverse voices and perspectives. Please support these partners and our mission by [00:29:00] tuning in and spreading. The word Voices of the community is made possible by generous support from the Zeak Family Foundation dedicated to ensuring vibrant work is created.

George Koster: New voices celebrated and diverse communities have opportunities to thrive. Learn more at ZF. Dot org Voices of the Community is also supported by the Peaceful World Foundation, fostering a culture of global peace through hosted conversations and education. Discover more@peacefulworldfoundation.org and we'd love your support to continue to make shows just like this one, go to voices of the community.com and click on the donate button to help us continue to bring you unique voices from our community.

George Koster: Take voices of the community with you on the go. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app, enjoying the show. Please rate and review us on your favorite app. It helps more people Discover these important stories. Go to youtube.com forward slash at [00:30:00] Geo cluster. To watch or listen to all of our past and future episodes, and you can always go to voices of the community.com and listen and watch our five series and from our archives have feedback or ideas for shows.

George Koster: We'd love to hear from you. emailGeorge@georgekoster.com. I'm George Koster from San Francisco. On behalf of our team, thank you for joining us. Until next time, remember, your voice matters.

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Voices of the Community is supported by a grant from Zellerbach Foundation, dedicated to a California where all low-income workers have the power to advance economically.

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We are fiscally sponsored by Intersection for the Arts, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, which allows us to offer you tax deductions for your contributions. Please consider making a donation to help us provide future shows just like this one. If you want to send us a check, please make checks payable to Intersection for the Arts and write [Voices of the Community] in the memo line of your check. This ensures that you’ll receive an acknowledgement letter for tax purposes, and your donation will be available for our project.

1446 Market Street | San Francisco, CA 94102 | (415) 626-2787