Seattle City Council Community Economic Development Committee 72021

Good, okay, well, good afternoon, everyone.

The July 20th, 2021 Community Economic Development Committee meeting will come to order.

It's 2.02 p.m., I'm Tammy Morales, Chair of the Committee.

Darzel, will you please call the roll?

Council Member Juarez?

Here.

Council Member Lewis?

Present.

Council Member Peterson?

Here.

Council Member Salud?

Present.

Here.

That is five here.

Terrific, thank you.

If there's no objection item 12, the appointment of Rachel Morowitz as member of the Seattle Women's Commission will be removed from the agenda due to the appointees availability.

Is there any objection?

Hearing no objection, this item is removed.

If there's no objection, today's agenda will be adopted as amended.

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted as amended.

Colleagues, this afternoon, we have several commission appointments for the Seattle Music Commission and for the Women's Commission.

First, we'll hear from the Office of Arts and Culture, and they will be presenting their annual report on our public art program.

I should say first, sorry, we do have a public comment period.

I want to confirm with IT that we do not have anybody signed up for public comment.

There are no public comment registrants.

Okay.

In that case, we will proceed.

Public comment period is open and closed.

So, my apologies.

I'm really excited about the presentation from Office of Arts and Culture today.

They'll be presenting their annual report on the public art program.

We all know that our local artists provide important opportunities for us to connect.

provokes us and makes us think about how our society is or is not functioning.

And as an example, I had the privilege of attending the AIDS Memorial Pathway opening at Cal Anderson Park last month and had an opportunity to listen to the artists who were sharing their stories about their own experiences during the AIDS pandemic.

And just being in that setting, in that context, hearing their stories again reminded me of my own friends from high school and college who were terrified of contracting AIDS.

I still have several friends and family members who are gay, and I just remember the palpable fear at the time that people were going to contract it.

So that conversation reminded me of a friend who was brutally assaulted due to homophobia, really just made me reflect on how different the outcomes are now for people who are living with HIV today.

And just being able to say that, right, people who are living with HIV today, something that we couldn't say in the 80s.

So I've had several discussions with friends and family since then, and all of these memories and all of these conversations were really jarred by a public art project that was supported by the city of Seattle.

So I'm excited to hear about what we are doing in general with the public art program because it really is an important way for us to connect with one another, to sort of humanize the built environment, and to really think about our society and the reflection of artists on our society.

And it's free, which is maybe just as important as all of the other pieces of that program.

So we will be hearing today from Calandra Childers, and I don't know if there's anybody else coming from the department.

Amy Nguyen is here.

Yay, I'm excited.

All right, so Let us continue and Darzel, I'll ask you to please read item one into the record.

Item one, public art annual report for briefing and discussion.

Okay, so I already gave my introduction.

I'm going to hand it over to the Arts Department and hear what you all have to say.

Thank you so much Council Member Morales and thank you to all of the council members.

We are really pleased to be here today to share about the public art program.

I am joined by my colleague Amy Nguyen.

And yeah, we're going to do several things today.

We're going to talk about what has happened over the last couple of years in the program.

We're going to share a little bit of data about both the folks who we have been commissioning, as well as kind of what our partnerships look like going forward with our capital departments.

But I did want to reflect just Some of the pieces that Council Member Morales, you were referencing around the AIDS Memorial Pathway, and that is a project that we are going to talk a little bit more about.

But I do think that public art is this opportunity for us to have a public conversation about issues that are important to the community.

And it, you know, art gives us an opportunity to share things in different modes.

It allows people to engage in different ways.

And I do think that something like the AIDS Memorial Pathway allows us to have that conversation about something like health and well-being and which communities have been impacted the most in ways that, you know, sometimes reports aren't able to have the same sort of impact.

Those spaces that, you know, we do public art in public, it happens in all of the spaces that we walk through every day in our parks, on our streets.

And it just gives us that opportunity to stop and reflect and take a moment.

So it's a program that is very important to our office.

We're actually, the Office of Arts and Culture is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.

So we have been here for 50 years.

We've been doing this work for 50 years.

The city of Seattle actually has one of the oldest public art programs in the country.

We have the second oldest program, which means we have this incredible collection that we maintain.

So along with the generative work that we'll be talking about today, along with the projects that have come into fruition over the last couple of years, we also have this amazing collection that we have the responsibility to maintain and keep looking pristine and make sure that we can continue to be in conversation with our past, especially as we go forward.

I'm just realizing that I don't think I introduced myself so I'll just take a moment to say hello.

I'm Calandra Childers.

I'm the acting director at the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture.

Along with the public art program that we're going to be looking at today we also do grant making.

We have a relationship with Seattle Public Schools on arts education and everything that we do is done through a racial equity lens and really investigating who is benefiting from these programs.

where in the community they are situated and who exactly we're engaging when we have these opportunities.

I'm joined today by my colleague, Amy, and I'm super thrilled to introduce Amy as the new Public Art Director to the Community and Economic Development Committee.

She joined us in the middle of the pandemic, so she's very new on our staff, but is not new to the city.

She's worked in the Department of Transportation, the Department of neighborhoods and also worked in a city council members office previously.

So she has a wealth of city experience and brings in a lot of really relevant experience in the ways of urban planning and participatory processes that are going to be hugely beneficial for the program.

But I'm excited to have her share a little bit about her vision about where the program is going from here.

And then just to make sure everybody is a little bit familiar with how the program is situated.

So the city of Seattle has a 1% for art ordinance.

And that means that every time we build a capital project, whether that be a fire station or a park or roadway, 1% of that capital project is dedicated to public art.

And so that funding comes through our office and we work with those capital departments.

Those are our key, key partners in this to co-develop projects that meet the needs of both the capital department as well as our goals that are really centered around how do we integrate the artist's voice into the civic landscape.

And those things can look really dramatically different.

We can be talking about big, major sculptural pieces.

We can also talk about community of practice where people are engaging in conversations and it might be something that's very transient, something that is a pop-up thing that happens in just a moment of time.

that speaks to that sort of moment in time approach is the Created Commons event that just kicked off this last weekend in Hing Hay Park.

We had two days of dedicated programming from 11 a.m.

to 7 p.m.

We had artists performing.

We had lots of different kinds of engagement.

That's what public art can look like.

And I think I will pass it off to Amy, because I think that's where you're getting started with this.

Thank you, Calandra.

And thank you, everybody, for the opportunity to just share just a bit of context on why we're here presenting today.

This is in response.

Council asked us after twenty eighteen to report back on an annual basis.

Today, we'll be sharing with you information from specifically twenty twenty and twenty nineteen.

We weren't able to present to council last year.

due to COVID-19, but we wanted to also just take some time to talk about the exciting work that we're doing in 2021. So, when you hear when we define new projects, public art is complex and what Calandra was saying there as we kind of pinpointed that year as when that project started, recognizing that you'll see things labeled as 2019 that have yet to be constructed yet, but that's just the nature of how our work goes.

And this is just a shameless plug.

If you love all of the images that you're seeing on this PowerPoint today, please go to our website.

We have a wonderful archive.

Our registrar and the public art team has maintain this e-museum, so if you ever want to just see this artwork yourself, take some time and look through our art catalog.

All the images are taken from the e-museum.

All right, we're gonna, let me just jump into Creative Commons as Colander mentioned there.

We're really excited about this.

And, you know, if you kind of stepping back and thinking about taking from this presentation, I think what you'll hear in 2020 is really the amazing work that this team has done to really pivot and meet the needs of COVID-19.

And that's really what you'll hear in these stories.

How did we respond to the racial reckoning in 2021?

It's really about how is public art a part of that recovery?

How are we responding to this cultural moment?

Creative Commons really started out of this question around, we saw so much innovation in public space in 2020 and what we've been able to do for our small businesses, our retailers, our restaurants.

How can we use that same principle within applying that to our artists and creatives that also function as small businesses.

So we were lucky enough to be a part of the Welcome Back Weeks programming the city is doing in July, but we'll be continuing on through August and September in partnership with the Seattle Department of Transportation, with parks, really taking an intentional curator model.

So really excited we'll be in neighborhoods like Othello, Rainier Beach, Westwood, just really fabulous programming.

So please check us out.

Also this weekend, we'll be in Occidental and Westlake, lots of really great things.

And I know that Audra is going to be appointed later on the Music Commission.

Audra has been hosting these events and doing an absolutely fantastic job.

So shout out to Audra.

All right, 2020. This is a project that, you know, as we were all hit in this, how do we do our work?

How do we pivot to virtual?

How do we prioritize artists that have lost work?

So in April 2020, public art in partnership with the interdepartmental work of Seattle Together developed public art in your front yard.

And if you kind of remember during this time, there were people in cities around the world making a joyful noise at night.

And we were thinking about what's the visual response to that.

And so the product that was produced was actually commissioning 12 artists, majority BIPOC artists, that created unique designs that were then printed on choreographed yard signs.

And these yard signs were distributed around the city, specifically in target neighborhoods that we know that we're communities of color that have been hit the hardest.

So we layered using our OPCD's equity index just to make sure that we are putting this art in communities that are hit the hardest.

We've had a great response for it.

I'll tell you anecdotally, I think we saw people trying to steal these signs.

We're like, come on, man, you can't take those home.

These are artwork for the people.

But just to give you that sense of how very quickly this team was able to pivot and get money in the hands of artists, but also spread that joy across Seattle.

And so these are just three of those designs that are featured, but all of them are absolutely beautiful.

And artists were selected, not only thinking about how to prioritize BIPOC voices, but also artists with connections to specific neighborhoods like Lake City, like the Chinatown International District, so that art was relevant to those neighborhoods as well.

Building on that, another public art project, this is really an effort across many departments.

Shout out to SPU, City Light, the Fire Department, HSD.

This was really about, again, in that vein of how do we create jobs and opportunities for our artists, but more importantly, how do we showcase and document these essential city services?

And I'll have to tell you, the collection is absolutely beautiful.

When you look at all of All of our colleagues, all of the tireless work that they did, these are just a sample of some of those faces of our frontline workers.

And this is art that we're going to have to remember just really all of the challenges and really what got us through this.

And it's these folks here.

So really excited for essentially Seattle.

And you'll see this work kind of more featured across our partners as well.

Another big part for 2020, and these are familiar images, I think, the Black Lives Matter mural, which was really the genius of Vivid Matter Collective.

Arts and SDOT really supported this work in really memorializing this mural.

We were just there even two weeks ago for the touch-up, but it was really important, kind of pivot in our work and how we work.

Also just shouting out the business murals arts partnered with the Office of Economic Development to commission artists to create murals on boarded up businesses specifically within the downtown core CID Ballard and Lake City neighborhoods.

And some of the kind of other work, and I can't emphasize enough, I know this isn't exclusive to arts, but just really, we were able to do so much work in 2020. And while I think that the narrative is that we really rose to that occasion of the virtual being challenging, but that it didn't really slow down how we could continue to meet communities and community needs.

One of the projects that started is our public art roster.

This is also featured online.

This is a really great collection.

Artists submitted their work.

We put together this roster that serves as both an internal tool but also externally so the public can use this as well.

This is a method for opportunity to select artists for upcoming public art projects.

And, you know, generally our processes, we go through kind of a more traditional panel process.

This is an opportunity to kind of expedite.

This is also our first year.

You can go online that it is, you can see all the artists' work.

It's external facing, and it's just quite lovely.

The thoughtfulness that went into this roster, our panel was majority BIPOC panel that I'll tell you had weeks of discussion reviewing this, really asking those difficult questions around what is What is public art?

How do we create these opportunities around what does it look like?

And when you look at the artists that were selected for this roster, it just really leaves you with a sense of the future of public art is very bright.

And public art boot camp.

This is one of this is a, this is not a new program for us but I think 2020 was quite exciting.

It was really a pivot.

And again sticking that vein of how do we create opportunities to get commissions out there, public art boot camp the genesis of it is really our, our Our answer to that, public art is a very elitist field.

You often need a commission to get a commission.

We also recognize that in the whole life cycle of public art, there needs to be support on understanding those questions on how you work with fabricators, installation, understanding community engagement.

Public art bootcamp is where we provide that kind of hands-on knowledge base and sharing and project management support with our office.

And what was unique about this year that's really exciting is the 12 artists that selected all actually bootcamp is resulting in a commission.

So through our partnership with Seattle Center, next month, they'll be installing temporary public art pieces, many of them their first public art commission in Seattle Center, and also in the Lake City neighborhood through our partnership with Eston Art Interruption.

So another great opportunity to get out and see really fantastic emerging artwork.

shortly here.

And this is another kind of focal project that's just fantastic.

It's our Estop Bridge Artists in Residence.

We had two really fantastic artists, Roger Fernandez, E.T. Russian.

These are beautiful comic graphic novels that you'll actually see in the Seattle Public Libraries and being distributed there once libraries are reopened.

And this is just one of those great projects that continue to give so much delight to the public.

And I'll pass it over to Calandra.

Thanks, Amy.

So I'm going to talk about for these next two projects, I'm going to talk about two projects that were a little bit outside of our normal sort of mode of operations.

within the city.

Both of these were sort of special partnerships that we created and they definitely took several years to develop.

The AIDS Memorial Pathway that Council Member Morales mentioned is a project that was actually dedicated just about a month ago after six years of working.

And this was a project that was brought forward by community members.

It was really important for the city to have a space to reflect and remember the AIDS epidemic within the city.

A lot of other cities have this kind of space.

Seattle did not.

And so these community members brought this idea forward and we spent several years identifying a location.

We ended up at the the transit development station up on Capitol Hill right around the light rail station and created this this partnership with Sound Transit as they are the property owners as well as the development that was developing that property around the station.

And then the city came in because we have the Cal Anderson Park property across the street and we were taking over the ownership and maintenance of these artworks long term.

So we created this partnership.

We were responsible for the commission of the art plan for the site.

And for that, we worked with Horatio Law, who's a really incredible visionary artist who put together a plan for the site that called for an additional three commissions.

And so we were able to bring on Chris Paul Jordan for the amazing piece that you see on the left there that's called And I'm Gonna Miss Everybody.

It's made up of these boom boxes and really recalls sort of the era of house parties.

In underground gatherings civilization that did the piece on the right that is called we're already here that's a series of protest signs reimagined and there's several of these sort of stations of protest signs kind of throughout the whole park.

Stormy Weber has a really amazing piece on the inside of the building that's called In This Way We Loved One Another that memorializes the history and the Seattle players who really moved this movement forward early on in the early days of when people were dealing with the crisis.

And then Horatio Law has an additional piece that he's doing on the north end of the park that's called Ribbon of Light.

It's a little bit delayed, but it will be installed within the next couple of months.

And it's a really beautiful space of sort of reflection and really just sort of allowing people to take a moment.

But this was a really pretty incredible project that was sort of unprecedented, that we've never really done anything like this before.

We're just so pleased to have been able to unveil it this year.

move on to the next slide where we'll talk about the future ancient.

So this was another sort of unique opportunity.

This was a partnership that we had with Seattle Art Museum.

The project that they were doing at Volunteer Park to expand the Asian Art Museum in that space generated some 1% for art funding.

And so we partnered with them to think about what would it look like to really celebrate the Asian art collection that's in that space.

And so we put out a call for a curator and Chase Seun put forward his proposal around future ancient that really brought together this idea of, you know, how do we celebrate contemporary AAPI artists here in the Seattle area?

So he had more than 30 contemporary curator, sorry, contemporary artists that came through for this project where there was a whole series of presentations around the reopening of the Asian Art Museum.

that all happened in February of 2020 right before the pandemic hit.

And so immediately we then had to transition all of these plans into a virtual online format.

So he really kind of went with us as we went through what everybody was going through in terms of taking things that were intended to be in person and moving them into an online space.

But the lasting legacy of this project is that there is actually an AAPI artist roster that came out of this that is available for the public to use.

So that's a great resource that will last even after these events have concluded.

Right.

And, and back to me flow is a really exciting project that is actually we're in our next iteration of installations is in partnership with Seattle Public Utilities in the ship canal water quality project.

We're really excited about this, our flow of flow is really an opportunity to showcase the magic and power of temporary public art projects and opportunities.

And we really kind of geared and catered this to our emerging artists, predominantly BIPOC artists.

And it's a great way of thinking about how do we apply art along the ship canal as a means to really mitigate construction fencing throughout Ballard, Wallingford, and Fremont.

And I've gotten really great, really responses and feedback from Flo.

So more art coming up, kind of continuous project.

And now I'm going to shift into community engagement.

I just want to, before I jump into some of the projects, if folks are interested in knowing more, we submitted an embarrassingly long report that has much more detail for all of these projects.

Calandra and I kind of hand selected some that we wanted to talk about, but really can't emphasize enough how this team how much work that this team produces and continuously does.

And so even asking, responding to how do we do community engagement, community engagement is really embedded within public art throughout the life cycle.

How do we get from scoping to the end product or the installation to how people engage with that art kind of ongoing.

So with that, I'll just kind of center one really exciting project.

This was a partnership with SDOT and the Maynard Alley Partnership and several small businesses.

This is in the Maynard Alley.

It's a ground plane mural by artist Akira Oishi.

It's gorgeous.

It's all different kinds of noodles, noodles as kind of stepping stones that invite you through the alley.

There's so much community energy that's been going on over for years, and they've done it themselves on how to activate these alleyways.

I wanted to bring up this as an example.

A lot was learned from SLURP.

We actually wanted to install this last summer.

We just installed it really at the start of this summer because it's a really great reminder and example that Sometimes you have to slow down an art project to move at the right pace for our community partners to feel good about this work.

And watching how the artist is actually fantastic, really engaged, heard the feedback, said, okay, let me come back and adapt this design and make it something that everybody's going to want to love.

And the organic programming that emerged around this, coloring books, stickers, promos, it's just a really great way of showing you how we as a city can partner with already the energy that's happening there to create something quite beautiful.

And wanted to uplift, oftentimes within public art, we focus in on the impact of our large, our gorgeous, permanently cited works and new projects, but again, shameless plug for our civic collection, our fantastic collections management team.

There's some very cool work that happens.

We wanted to uplift fresh perspectives.

Fresh Perspectives 2 is a unique departure for us in that we actually brought on young people to be the curators.

So young people actually were a hand in purchasing nearly 60 portable works.

They served on the panel.

They reviewed the digital submissions and made the purchases, also supported by our staff and that kind of curriculum with planned field trips to the Wing Luke Museum, the Foster White Gallery.

It's something that traditionally portable artworks are selected by a panel of art professionals.

And as you can see, just with these three examples, seeing their eyes and what they gravitate to is such a wonderful way of that kind of cultural moment.

And you can also check out the full-fledged perspectives too online.

It's really, really quite cool.

This is a project that is actually not going to go into construction until 2022, but started in 2019. This is for the new little Saigon Park.

We're really excited about this.

This is one of those examples of a public art project that really centers community engagement in the scoping of it before the artist selection.

The committee is very clear.

Applicants need to demonstrate a connection to the CID.

Through the process, Kleana Chung was selected.

We're very excited.

And Kleana has been doing so much fantastic community engagement and has dedicated so many hours meeting with community groups, everyone from Skipta, Friends of Little Saigon, Nhi Sai Vets, to kind of really get at this design.

And we're really looking forward to when this is installed in the new Little Saigon park.

This is another example, and we so much love all of our city partners.

Seattle Public Utilities is such a really fantastic, thoughtful partner in this work.

Taylor Creek, the artists Olelekin, Jayafas, was such a wonderful, really came into this community, met with RBAC, Vietnamese Friendship Association, so much different outreach efforts.

And this is really about highlighting for in this work with SPU on salmon habitat and creating opportunities for the public to engage with the space.

So really thinking about how do we create a space for BIPOC to engage with the natural area.

And.

Great, now we'll be shifting into the last section of our presentation, annual data.

Okay, so this table here is there's a lot going on in it as I kind of mentioned in public art we.

We track several different metrics, but recognizing that projects can often take years from scoping into install, that's a part of what you're seeing across these variations.

I just also want to note that in 2019, you'll see a significantly larger budget range, and that's because, Kalendra alluded to this at the beginning, We've really had a crazy busy couple of years between the work that's happening at the waterfront, the AMP that really magnifies our budget.

So that's why you're seeing a little bit kind of these anomalies with 2019 and 2020. And just to that kind of first line, when you're looking at what does that mean, for example, 2020, when you see 61 versus 144. With our artists, and I think this kind of came through with 2020, working with so many subcommissions, so artists that work across artist teams, that changes our ways of tracking as well.

Calandra, did you want to add anything?

Yeah, I'll say that, you know, 2020, we really turned up the focus.

I think public art has a tendency to, because it has projects that are aligned with the civic schedule, the civic, or I'm sorry, I didn't mean civic there, I meant capital project schedule.

things tend to take a while to develop.

And that's good in some ways.

It's great to get artists on board early so they can actually influence a project and really be fully integrated and not just sort of added on at the end.

But one of the outcomes of that is that projects often take several years.

And we knew coming out of 2020 and coming through 2020, the deep impact to artists and cultural workers Was that many of their gigs dried up overnight and we knew that that opportunities needed to be provided immediately and so we kind of shifted gears.

And we created a bunch of opportunities that still met the civic needs of the city, while also being able to respond to that need within the artist community and so.

You know, seeing that 144 in parentheses, that really indicates like we were able to contract with a lot of artists to do a lot of work that was much faster turnaround time than what we traditionally do.

And that was very intentional to respond to the needs of the community in the moment.

I just wanted to, we have a pretty comprehensive appendix in the report that we submitted by our fabulous Impact and Assessment Manager.

I wanted to call out a couple of our kind of data points that's really quite cool.

We, you know, in 2020 we nearly doubled the number of BIPOC artists who were commissioned.

And as you can see here, we continue to be in the 400, 500s for applications received.

That's a part of the kind of outreach and work that we do to promote our calls and opportunities.

We've also increased the amount of, in 2020, really what that kind of direct select opportunity is, which was able to really allow us to prioritize BIPOC artists as well.

I'm gonna, I'm just being cognizant.

Oh, go for it, yeah.

Yeah, I just wanna stay on this slide for a second because if I'm following all the numbers, you had 592 applicants and you were able to fund 21 artists.

Is that right?

Well, so, I'm sorry, where's the 21 figure?

The first bullet point?

Yeah, the the twenty nineteen.

So it's the twenty one individual artists is looking at working slow solo and then there's artists teams working within that as well.

So, yes, that is accurate.

OK, I just feels really like there's a lot of people interested in applying for these funds and

I think that that number might be particularly high this time around because I believe that that reflects when we do so there are calls that we do to bring an artist on to an active project.

There are also calls that we do to increase our civic collection.

So when we do call for work that's already been created.

Those calls often result in hundreds and hundreds of folks because they, you know, it tends to be two-dimensional work that's already created.

So that may be why we're seeing some of the discrepancy in numbers right there.

But yes, I will say that a lot of these projects, we do see a high response rate.

People are very interested in being engaged in these types of opportunities.

This is a kind of a look at our demographics and we've included both here the kind of what both early stage candidates and what ultimately results in the commission.

I think something that is.

I think really quite compelling about 2020 is we've, our demographics-wise, we are at 70% BIPOC-identified artists.

And if you note as well, Kalendra, did you want to talk a little bit about the waterfront, specifically Native American, Alaska Native Indigenous artists?

Yeah, I think this is this is a trend that we've been keeping an eye on for a while.

And we're we've gotten to the stage where we are able to share a chart like this with you all.

So one of those numbers that I'd call your attention to is about halfway down native Alaska, native and indigenous.

And you'll see that the commissioned rate from 2019 to 2020 jumps pretty dramatically from just under 5 percent to 17 percent.

And that, you know, I think we've been intentional about creating specific opportunities for Indigenous artists.

Some of those opportunities have happened through the FLOW project that Amy was talking about earlier.

We also have several specific opportunities on the waterfront.

We didn't talk about the waterfront art today.

I think that would be worthwhile to bring in the Office of the Waterfront team to talk about the project as a whole, because the artwork is very integrated into the the whole concept design, but we have quite a few projects going on down there and strong, strong Indigenous artist representation.

And something that I think is really important is that we're also seeing a number of Indigenous artists successful in these commissions that are not specific to Indigenous culture.

And I think that that means that we're getting to be more successful in integrating Indigenous artists into our standard practices and that we're seeing them be successful within the commissioning process.

So that's something that we've been focused on, and I'm happy to see movement in that direction.

We have a couple of data points that are just missing from this that I also just want to call and name out.

In these figures in the table, it does not include the Black Lives Matter mural artists, nor does it include Spruce Street Mini Park, which is a really exciting project that we're working with Seattle Parks and Recreation for the Central District, really actually kind of shifting and pivoting our model we brought on artists, Damon Brown and Hassan Kirkland to actually do the kind of community engagement the pre scoping work before even going straight to artists selection, and it's a model that is going really quite well and really thinking about how we can intentionally create opportunities more like that to bring BIPOC artists in earlier at different stages than just the artwork itself.

And yeah, anything else, Calandra, on your side?

I don't think so.

I know we just sort of sped through a lot of information, a lot of projects, we wanted to leave a couple minutes here at the end for any questions.

Oh, we didn't get to our last slide.

Yeah, so this is also again, a part of the The 2018 council ordinance for us to provide a balance of our unprogrammed funds for you on an annual basis.

I just want to call your call folks attention to some exciting work that we're have with Seattle City Light right now.

We in 2020 issued a call for an artist in residence and the artist in residence is actually going to be working.

CLC light has just been such fantastic partners in this, establishing a steering committee and the artist in residence will really be developing a plan for strategic investments for City Light 1% funds.

And so that artist was all just selected and this work is really starting.

The Artists-in-Residence model has been, it's not new by any means, it's one of our kind, one of those really effective ways of embedding an artist within our partner agencies that can work across capital project managers and really thinking creatively about how public art can be stewarded in the process.

So we're really confident that those unprogrammed dollars, just with the excitement of Seattle City Light, will be spent pretty shortly over the next couple of years.

Also, Seattle Public Utilities, you'll notice a pretty significant jump there.

That's because of the ship canal.

So Ship Canal has kind of infused our coffers with quite a bit of money there.

We've been in really thoughtful discussions with SPU.

They have a design and innovation lab where their staff are really building on their fantastic environmental and equity work.

How can we use those dollars and think about strategic investments in equity areas so that even though that money is coming from Ship Canal, what does it look like for that investment to be felt outside of Wallingford Ballard?

So we're really excited to work through that because of the success of Flow as a kind of It's a great indicator for that.

You'll also notice for Seattle Department of Transportation, a rather large balance.

That is from the Move Seattle levy dollars.

And we are working with our partners at SDOT now.

They're actually our primary supporters of Created Commons.

So they've been doing some really fantastic work around what they're calling a reset focus geography.

So layering the priorities of the city's racial and social index with COVID rates.

And really they were the ones that generated their kind of focused geographies and using Creative Commons as an entry point to engage with the community, to have that conversation around what they want for the future investment of 1% in our right of way.

So we're really hopeful in thinking about the next couple of years is how do we do our work a little bit differently?

And this isn't just for us as the Seattle Public Art Program, but I think what you're seeing nationally is understanding that public art to be responsive to this to the cultural times that we're in, we have to think differently about our work.

And so I'm confident to say that we are, all of our city agencies, that's kind of how we're leading with this.

How do we not immediately kind of come into that with a pre-scope project, but reevaluating where those investments go.

Calandra, did you want to add anything?

No, I think, yeah, I think you hit the hit all the points in terms of sort of our planning and strategy around partnering with our capital partners within the city and continuing to work on moving the public art program forward.

Fantastic.

Thank you so much.

I have a couple of quick questions before I open it up to my colleagues.

The first one, just really quickly, is if you could give an example of I mean, when I think about SDOT, you know, a partnership with SDOT, it's really easy to imagine that's art painted on the street or, you know, on the sidewalk.

What does it look like for City Light, if you have some example of something that's already been done there?

But then I'm wondering if you can talk just a minute about I want to understand the economic impact of the public arts program, not necessarily exclusively in terms of the city and what it means for attracting people to come visit the city and all of that, but really about the impact that you're actually having on commissioning individual artists.

Because I think, as Amy said, they are very often small businesses.

you know, some of the artists I've known, performers, musicians, don't necessarily understand the need to also be a business manager.

You know, they'll give away their art and not really understand the need to run your art program like a business so that you can actually try to make some kind of a living off of it.

So can you talk a little bit about that and if those are the kinds of resources that you might have available?

Yeah, those are great questions.

So I'll start with the first one.

So we do have some slightly different requirements when it comes to our utility funding, our utility 1% for art funding.

So our other 1% art funding that comes from parks or comes from SDOT really is very much about proximity to those physical spaces.

So it's art that happens on streets or in parks.

And there's a pretty strong, you know, just proximity sort of requirement there.

When it comes to Seattle City Light and Seattle Public Utilities, we have the ability to have proximity conversations, but because those utilities are often underground or above ground and not sort of suitable as a platform for artwork, we have an additional requirement that is really related to the nexus of the agency.

So it's really related to those organizations work in educating the public about the utilities, about the function of power and water, and about how rate payers are engaged with those purposes.

And so we go through a little bit of a sort of additional layer of review and additional layer of thinking through what projects are appropriate there.

And we work with those agencies to figure that out.

And so when I would say from a proximity standpoint, you might look at something like the Denny substation that was unveiled in 20, I believe that was in 2019. And we had some large scale public art projects that happened physically on the space of Denny substation.

that really had to do with being on the substation property and certainly speaking to the ideas of energy and electricity, but the proximity on the property was a big deal.

You might contrast that with something that happened on 23rd Avenue that was really about wastewater and was about water management and really spoke to a little bit more of the nexus of the project.

and how the community there engaged with those services.

And that was really a community engagement project that doesn't necessarily have a physical life after the ending of the project, but really was able to bring community members together in conversation.

Amy, I don't know, would you add anything to those examples?

Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I, I think I love our utilities and there are so many ideas that are coming from folks that, you know, I, one of the things that we, when coming up with Creative Commons, it was actually the work that happened even before Denny's Substation.

It was a project called All Rise when it was, when it was effectively a vacant lot that became, program with temporary public art and performance and visuals and all rise actually ended up saving Seattle City Light, something like 600,000 and security fees over that time just to give you a sense on that inter intersection between when we when we think differently about secure what those costs would and then rather shift that thinking entirely because SPU and SEL actually has a portfolio of land as well.

So really thinking about that, that different use, I think All Rise is a really fantastic example of that.

And just to your other really thoughtful question around the kind of economic nexus, you know, I think what we're really kind of early data we're getting in from just this last weekend in Hing Hai was, you know, over just the July work that we're doing with the Welcome Back Weeks, we're hiring over 200 artists and creatives just with that kind of period of time.

And we've heard from small businesses in the CID that they felt a rise in across the weekend programming and sales.

And I think that that's a great kind of way kind of circling back around what I would like to do as the new public art director is understanding how we track metrics more closely to tell that narrative and story around how art creates that place because, you know, you you can feel it, you know it, but that's something that we're interested in being able to tell our story further.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any other questions for our panelists here?

I'm not seeing any raised hand.

Okay.

Great.

Well, I want to thank you both for being here and sharing so many great examples of the work that you're doing.

It's really inspiring.

And, you know, I think really a really important part of what our city is doing for many different reasons.

So welcome aboard, Amy.

Nice to see you again.

And we look forward to hearing more.

Thank you so much, council member.

And if I can just add a quick plug, also part of the public art program is the arts at King street station gallery.

And we are reopening since we've been closed back in March of 2020. That is actually reopening this Thursday.

So it's going to be reopening with a brand new exhibition called close to home that features works from the civic collection.

So some of those pieces that you saw throughout and we're just really thrilled to be able to welcome folks back in to see art for free.

and showcase that space.

So we hope to see you all there.

Sounds terrific.

Well, thank you so much.

Y'all enjoy the rest of the afternoon.

Okay, we will move on to our appointments.

I believe the Music Commission is next.

Darzell, will you please read items two through eight into the record?

agenda items two through eight appointments 1970 through 1976 Appointments of Audra D. D. Boo and Bunny Marie Moore as members of the Seattle Music Commission for terms to August 31st, 2024. Appointments of Denise Burnside and Casey Anne McKay as members of the Seattle Music Commission for terms to August 31st, 2022. Appointments and reappointment of Jason Clackley, Eric Lillevois, and Sue Ennis as members of the Seattle Music Commission for terms to August 31st, 2023 for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Terrific.

Thank you so much.

Great.

So I'm glad we've gotten these folks here today.

I know it's been a very long time since the music commission was fully seated.

So I'm happy that we can get a little closer to that today.

And my understanding is that by the next meeting on August 12th, we'll be able to complete seating the commission by the end of the summer.

So with that, I'm going to pass it to Alex Rose from OED and Reese Tanimura, the chair of the Seattle Music Commission, to speak briefly about these appointments.

So please go ahead.

Thank you, council member.

Hello, everyone.

And I'm very excited to be here to welcome some new commissioners on to the music commission.

I'm going to pass it over to Reese, who can just speak as chair of the commission.

So there you go, Reese.

Hi, thanks, Alex.

Thanks, Council Member Morales.

Rhys Tanimura, and as I said, the Chair of the Music Commission and also the Managing Director of Northwest Folklife.

If it's okay, Council Member Morales to speak a little bit about our priorities and a little bit of an update on the commission.

So first I want to really thank you and your staff members for bringing these appointments to bear.

It has been a few years since we have been fully seated and really it's a crucial time for our industry and our sector to have these voices at the helm of representing their respective industries and communities within the scope of recovery and rebuilding in both music and the larger creative industries as well as the city of Seattle.

Um, you know, we, uh, have, uh, for the past, I would say since 2017, been working with, um, our colleagues, uh, at the Seattle Arts Commission and Arts Office, as well as within our, um, uh, adjoined office, Film and Music, to work on initiatives that, um, bring a larger scope, both in policy and in opportunity to our communities.

Those things include the study that was done through the Office of Film and Music that was also a co-design process of road mapping, an inclusive creative industry and ecosystem within the city of Seattle through 2018 and 2019. And more recently, during the pandemic, working on digital equity initiatives.

Thank you to Council Member Peterson's office for being close, you know, a champion of those initiatives.

I think what's really important to note is that our industry had you know, it's issues before we went into the pandemic.

It was an industry that, you know, was, I think, suffering a lot of the same kinds of gaps and also problems that we saw magnified through the both social and health pandemic.

I think that also we understood and still understand creative industries to be a place of great opportunity for economic and strategic development for the city of Seattle in our ability to bring creative innovation, jobs, new opportunity, and equity to our city.

You know, we're really excited to bring forward the slate of folks, not just today, but again on August 12th, a really intentional group of folks that had been nominated through a community involved process.

um an open call for nominations and a panel of folks from the film task force and the music commission along with our city staffers to bring these folks to this uh this this appointment process um i think one thing i would like to mention in that you know this is I'm gonna say a little bit fangirlish, that this is a powerhouse group of people that is sitting before you.

And I hope that each and every council member here takes the opportunity to sit down with some of our membership in the coming months to both get to know about the initiative and priorities of these folks' businesses, and also the enormous opportunities available, as well as our unique challenges.

in our industry that we are facing as we climb back in recovery.

And with that, I will also say that I hope that this council, this committee particularly, but the council will be our partners in ensuring that the Office of Film and Music and the Office of Economic Development continue to steward the community-built processes that have been designed and developed over a series of years and actually got underway in 2020. And, you know, when Bobby Lee left the office at the beginning of the year, we have seen some things slow down.

We have seen some things get off track, and we're hoping to make sure that with an eye to bringing those things back on track, including the hiring of the Inclusive Creative Economy Director, including making sure that our partner OED restaffs its entire Workforce Development Department that is now gone.

In the recent months, as we had been creating some very exciting programs, as you were asking around professional workforce development with those offices, They were, you know, not only looking at really interesting and unique parts of Seattle, like including the maritime industry and trades, but really looking at creative industries as a place to provide a future path for our young people and for professional development for folks already in the industry, as something that you were asking about, Council Member Morales.

So I would like, to just, you know, make sure that the council members present here are aware that we are ready to move forward.

The film task force, our partners also within the office and community, volunteers that are stewarding from the film side are ready to move forward.

We have a very good partnership with our Seattle Arts Commission and the Arts Office.

And our industry is, needs, this support and needs this moment to imagine and rebuild.

And so I...

Well, I think we lost Reese.

Okay.

I often am the one freezing, so I wasn't sure if it was me or Reese.

Alex, do you want to Over here.

Sure.

Yes.

So thank you.

I think now is just a great time to turn it over to our candidates and have them introduce themselves.

Darzell, did you want to go in that particular order that you you mentioned?

Yes, please.

And so I believe that's Audra and then Bunny.

That's right.

All right.

Audra, the mic is yours.

All right, hello, I'm Audra Boo.

I am born and raised in Seattle, Washington, and I'm currently actually located in West Seattle, but that's just the photo.

I have been performing locally since 1997. I started with Rainier Valley Youth Theater at the Rainier Valley Cultural Center, when it was still called that, technically.

and I have performed with Fly Moon Royalty and with Hotels, so you can find that music on the interwebs.

I also do a lot of MC work, and as Amy mentioned earlier, I have the privilege of being the MC for July's Welcome Back Weeks, so hopefully you'll come down and hang out with me Saturday in Piner Square and Sunday at Westlake Park, just a little plug, Digable Planets will be there.

So if you're grown, you know who they are, come, come, come.

But I'm excited to be a part of what the commission is doing and excited to just be a part of how I can keep the community and our creatives connected to opportunities.

I know that being connected and connecting people is my ministry in life.

And so I'm excited to just kind of keep that going however I can as a part of this commission.

So thank you.

Thank you all for having me.

Thank you, Audra.

I just want to chime in here for a quick second.

Alex did get to hear you this weekend at Hing Hay Park and was also really thrilled to hear get to get to listen and watch the performances of Gray Violet and Young Fuego, who brought his own mosh pit with him, which was great.

So thank you.

That was fun.

Thank you.

Thank you, Audra.

Bunny.

Hello, hello.

Hi, my name is Bunny and I'm a recent graduate of Shoreline's engineering program.

I want to, first of all, thank Reese for starting out with the fangirling.

So now I feel less bad about fangirling about all the people that it looks like I'm going to be lucky to work with.

I am an engineer, and I also write songs.

And I'm born and bred in Seattle as well.

And I love the music community here.

And one thing that's really important to me is collaborations and also and mentorship.

During my work with the Recording Academy and with the Grammys, you know, I specialize in running the mentorship program and also in just making sure, filling in gaps, basically, of education programs for our Grammy U membership there.

And I am really excited to be working with you all.

Thank you so much, Funny.

Darzel, I'm sorry.

I lost the rest of the order.

No worries.

Next, it's Casey.

Come on, Casey.

Hello.

I have to say what an honor it is to be here with you, everybody today.

My name is Casey, AKA Miss Casey Carter.

I was not born in Seattle, but I was raised here and I went to Rainier Beach High School.

I've been a supporter of the local and independent music scene for over a decade.

I have tons of experience in events and digital media.

and have just always been a person to root for the independent.

I'm currently the host and founder of the Glow Up podcast where we highlight art and entrepreneurship.

And then I also served as a host on the local radio station Cube 93 for over a year, which is really fun.

Being a part of this commission would allow me to continue to serve my community, allow me to be a voice for some who may feel like they're voiceless, continue providing support be a resource to others, and more importantly, just be what I needed coming up in this industry.

I could go on and on about my passion for wanting to help everyone and all the amazing things I want to do, but I'll just say it'd be an honor to serve on this commission.

Thank you, Casey.

Yes, next we have Denise and then Jason.

Hi, I'm Denise Burnside.

Thank you so much for inviting me to join the council.

I was born in Seattle, but grew up in Bremerton.

Found my way to Scoochies and Gorilla Gardens in my youth, but I ended up in Montreal studying contemporary dance and I started playing music there.

I toured in some dance companies.

I toured in my band and then back up in Seattle in the mid 90s.

I was working at the Pike Place Market, and I met the people that were starting up the Showbox as a music venue again, and I joined that team, became the general manager of the Showbox, and essentially worked with the team there to build it out to pretty much what it is now.

After that, I joined KEXP, and became its director of business and operations, and I built its new home, partnered with the Seattle Center, and building concerts at the mural, and KEXP's events team, et cetera, anyway, did fun stuff there.

I am the founder of the Clock Out Lounge in Beacon Hill.

I got my executive leadership MBA at Seattle University, and I am now the executive director for SMASH, which is Seattle Musicians Access to Sustainable Healthcare.

I believe in the Seattle music scene, I believe it's important to our culture, and I'm really worried about musicians not staying in our city, so I joined SMASH to try to bring resources to limited income musicians to try to help them thrive in this region.

I'm excited to work with all of you to build some great, thriving music industry, music culture, music business for the future, because I truly believe it's important that our region doesn't lose our music scene.

So that's why I want to work with y'all.

Thank you, Denise.

Jason.

Hi, Jason Clackley.

I use he, him pronouns.

Thank you for the invite.

I've been kind of an at-large member helping out with our digital equity work.

So it's been a privilege and honor to be able to roll with some of the music commission folks working on that project during COVID.

I come here from Hawaii, but I grew up for middle school, high school in Bremerton too.

Woo, woo, Denise.

Got out of there as soon as I could, moved to Seattle, huge advocate of all ages and DIY music.

So I've been a part of a lot of different warehouse spaces over the time, working in a lot of different community spaces, also doing social work on the side, playing dance, tour, record, some other things, but yeah, and I've done youth development work for ages.

That's me.

I work at the Vera now.

I'm the artistic director.

So cool.

Awesome.

Thanks so much for having me.

And last we have Eric.

Hello, everyone.

Really grateful to be here with you.

I'm Eric Lollivois.

I am a musician, songwriter, music producer, owner of London Bridge Recording Studio, president of our Pacific Northwest chapter of the Recording Academy.

and an advisor to Totem Star for their King Street Station Recording Studio build-out.

I'm a passionate advocate for the arts, for music creators, and for the creative music economy.

And I just believe that with my appointment to the Seattle Music Commission, my service will be of great value to our diverse and talented city.

I bring with me over two decades of experience in the music industry.

and a strong desire to always connect the past, the present, and steer the future in a positive direction, always with empathy and kindness and diversity, equity, inclusion at the forefront of my thinking.

So, I just look forward to working with you all.

Music has the ability to bring people together in the most positive ways, and it's here to help us unite, celebrate, grieve, heal, touches on every emotion of the human experience.

So, it's paramount that we advocate and we care for the people who create it, and the vast network of businesses, gig workers, venues, industry professionals, and beyond that make up our valuable music community.

So with that, I greatly appreciate your consideration, and I'm looking forward to working with all of you.

I just want to say amen after that.

Thank you, Eric.

Well, we don't have Sue Ennis here to have her reappointment heard, so I'll pass it over to Reese again to tell us a little bit about Sue.

Thanks, Alex.

Sorry, I seem to have gotten booted out of Zoom right in the middle of that long thing.

But yeah, I would love to talk a little bit about Sue, who's served her first term.

Sue is an amazing musician herself, composer, also teaches music business at Shoreline.

College and is an amazing national advocate through the Reporting Academy, helped spearhead some advocacy that brought some of the Music Modernization Act to bear at the national level, which, you know, benefits our musicians through actually making sure that they get paid for their artistic products in these new digital times when everything is a little like the wild west.

So we really appreciate her long industry knowledge, her thoughtfulness, and love her and our youth and community committee around her excitement about education and Again, back to your comment, Council Member Morales, about professional development and making sure that folks have tools to be competitive and good business stewards of their own products and they value their work.

I think that she has been doing that work for a long time and will continue to and continues to be an asset as she is reappointed to the commission.

Terrific.

Well, thank you all so much for being here.

And I do want to just acknowledge, Reese, what you were saying.

I do think it's important.

We've had a lot of transition right now in the city, and that shouldn't be a reason to slow down the really important work.

that all of you have been doing and I know I've been talking with folks at OED since before I got in office about all of the work that you're doing with creative economy and trying to make sure that work is really focusing on BIPOC artists and making sure that we use the tools of economic development to create a vibrant community for all of us.

So we'll definitely follow up with you on that particular conversation, but I just want to acknowledge some of the things that you're talking about here.

Colleagues, do we have any questions or comments for our Music Commission appointees?

No.

Very good.

Well, I do want to thank all of you for your willingness to serve.

There's a lot of work to do.

And as a commission that has not been fully seated for a long time, I'm sure that you will have a lot of things to try to catch up on.

So I want to thank you for your willingness to serve in this capacity and to help the city move forward.

Okay, well, with that, if there are no other comments, council members, I move that the committee recommends the confirmation of appointments 1970 through 1976. Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of the appointments.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Juarez?

Aye.

Council Member Lewis?

Aye.

Council Member Peterson?

Aye.

Council Member Sawant?

Yes.

And Chair Morales?

Yes.

That's five in favor, none opposed.

Terrific.

Thank you very much.

The motion carries.

The committee recommendation that the appointments be confirmed will be sent to the July 26th City Council meeting.

I want to congratulate all of you and look forward to working with you very soon.

Thanks so much.

Thank you, Council Members.

Thank you.

Okay, we will move on then to the Seattle Women's Commission.

Darzel, will you please read items nine through 14 into the record?

Sorry, technical difficulties.

One second.

All right, agenda items nine through 14, appointments 1977 through 1982, appointments of Morgan Cain, Kyla Evans, and Vinanti Mamidala as members of the Seattle Women's Commission for terms to July 1st, 2022. Appointments of Ophelia Parker and Gemma K. Turk as members for a term to July 1st, 2023 for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Terrific.

Okay.

Can you all hear me?

I want to, okay.

Rizal was kind of fading out a little bit, so I want to make sure we're, still working.

Terrific.

Well, thank you very much.

I know we have Marta Itawu here from the Office of Civil Rights.

I'm excited to hear more about our mission appointees and to allow all of you a little bit of time to introduce yourselves.

I will just pass it over to you, Marta, to get us started.

Okay, thank you and good afternoon.

My name is Marta Itawu and I'm with the Seattle Office for Civil Rights and I'm the Civil Rights Advisory Commission liaison for the Seattle Women's Commission and also the Human Rights Commission.

I will present some background information about the work and structure of the Seattle Women's Commission and then turn it back over to you for any questions you have for the candidates for appointment to the Seattle Women's Commission.

The Seattle Women's Commission is composed of 21 accomplished individuals who come together as volunteers to search, analyze, make recommendations, and advise the mayor, the city council, and city departments on issues facing women in Seattle.

Eight are from the mayor, eight are appointed by the city council, and four are from the commission.

One additional member joins the commission for a one-year term through the Get Engaged program, which is a leadership development program for youth 18 to 29 years of age.

commissioners are appointed for a two year term of office and they slurred without pay.

The Seattle Women's Commission meets monthly to address broad range of issues including economic opportunity for women, race and social justice, women's health and disparities and health outcomes for low-income women and women of color, affordable and high-quality child care, women's roles as caregivers, violence against women, gender equity, and the unique challenges immigrant women face in our community.

With that, I would like to add that the candidates today have been attending meetings and actively participating in the commission work by helping with our recent five commissions renters' rights forum that we had in June and the current commission candidate forums that are currently happening this month.

The five commissions putting on these events are Women's, Human Rights, LGBTQ, Disability, and the Immigrant and Refugee Commission.

It's so nice to have the commissions collaborating and doing amazing work together.

And at this time, I would like to have Darzell, if she would go to each one of the candidates and ask each, you know, name, call them name, and then give them prompters who is next, so they can tell you about the work that they would like to do, tell a little bit about them and what they hope to do on the commission.

Again, we've had our challenges with COVID-19 and a lot of turnaround on our commissions, but through a great recruitment process, we were able to get all the folks that are here present today and some others that will be coming on to get on the commission and do the great work that the commission has done in the community.

So again, I'll turn it over to you now to have each one of the candidates tell about themselves.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Marta.

First, we'll hear from Morgan Cain and then Kyla Evans.

Hello, everyone.

Thanks for having me.

I'm Morgan Cain.

I've been a resident of Seattle for 10 years.

I work in supported employment for folks with intellectual disabilities, and I've worked really closely with NARAL Pro-Choice Washington in the past.

I'm excited to be able to join the Women's Commission.

My priorities kind of as stated lie in disability justice, reproductive justice, specifically the intersections with LGBTQ plus healthcare access.

You know, it's been a hot topic around the country the last few years.

I'm really looking forward to working with this wonderful group of people locally to help ensure that we're prioritizing the health and safety of all of our residents, especially as we come out of the pandemic.

So thank you again for having me.

Very, very excited to be here today.

Hi, everyone.

My name is Kyla Evans.

I use she, her pronouns.

I was born and raised in Brewster, Washington, a very tiny town in Eastern Washington, and moved to Seattle in 2018. Prior to that, I worked for about 10 years in various capacities in health and human services, both in the United States and abroad.

worked at various levels of advocacy and direct service.

I currently work as a clinical social worker at the Harborview Outpatient Mental Health and Addictions Clinic.

And in my role here, I work with individuals who are, you know, are working to overcome mental health and substance use disorder.

And I think my work at Harborview is one of the reasons why I was enthusiastic about applying for an appointment on the commission.

Issues around mental health care, particularly during the pandemic, substance use disorder with the sharp increase in overdose deaths that we've seen, in addition to the housing crisis in Seattle, are all ideas and stories that we see.

And they're often these thinly you know, layered stories.

And what I see in my office on a day-to-day basis are these really actually expansive narratives of what people have gone through, what they're hoping for, the resources and the intelligence that they bring to the table to try to achieve that.

And so, you know, I often say, like, I don't see myself as having the authority to speak for the people that I work with, but I am hopeful to be sort of a conduit between what they have to say and what their experiences are, um, and the commission and and, you know, through the commission to to the city as a whole, um, so that we can we can see people as people and their their problems of their problems and not erroneously conflicted to.

Um, so I, um, I'm honored to join the commission, and I'm thankful for your time today.

Thank you, Kyla.

Next, we will hear from Vinati Mamidala.

Then we'll hear from Ophelia Parker.

And lastly, Gemma K. Turk.

Hi, everyone.

Great to be here.

My name is Vinati Mamidala.

And I was born and raised in India.

And I moved to the Pacific Northwest some 30 years ago.

I'm here more than I was in India.

So I work for a nonprofit, a local private foundation.

I've been working there for the last 18 plus years.

And there's a big focus on women and women's issues all over the world and bringing equity to women.

and gender equity overall.

And I – to say a little bit about how I felt when I moved to Seattle from India, I was really surprised that women's issues are not very different, even in a country as the United States.

I saw a lot of areas where women could be treated equally.

you know, economic empowerment, education, and pay equity, and, you know, overall gender inequalities.

I was a little, you know, taken aback, but just understood a lot over the years that I've been here by involving in lots of community activities.

And I've been a big volunteer with Mary's Place, Prayer Start, and Vital Voices, and many other organizations.

So when I found out about Seattle Women's Commission, first of all, I was so glad, I was so grateful that there's a commission that looks into women's issues, focused on women's issues, and I think from my participation in the monthly meetings, the great work they're doing about, with the recent COVID related burdens that have been placed on women.

We all know and we all have understood how difficult it has been on mothers and families and women loss of jobs and having the extra work of, you know, taking care of the education, homeschooling their children, and just having all that extra burden on themselves leading to mental issues and, you know, which they're not able to say to anybody and, you know, often go unnoticed.

So there are challenges, you know, that they're going to face getting back to workforce again.

finding the right kind of jobs and with a huge deficit of childcare and having to pay three times more for childcare, looking at that potential problem.

And then, so I know that the Women's Commission is really, you know, looks into all these issues and submits their recommendations to the city council and the local advocacy programs.

And so I'm so grateful to be applying for this commissioner's role and then to be able to participate and contribute in so many ways and to be able to work alongside so many talented women that care about our communities and our women here.

So I'm really looking forward to that.

And thank you for the opportunity to speak today with all of you.

It's a great honor.

Thank you.

Next, we'll hear from Ophelia.

Hello, everyone.

Thank you so very much for having me here today.

I'm Ophelia Parker.

And while I'm not a native Seattleite, I have been residing in Seattle since 2017, first in Capitol Hill and currently in West Seattle.

My work in service includes my time in the U.S.

Navy.

I've sat on the student council, the National Student Council for Student Veterans in the U.S., and this year completed an inaugural program for women of color in winter sports.

For years, Seattle was a place I dreamt of moving to, and now that I'm here, and have been here for a while, and hope to stay for a while, I want to be of service and get involved locally to work on the things that I'm most passionate about.

I think Seattle is a city with many unique challenges.

There's so much work to be done, especially to represent and help the women in our city.

I'm looking forward to working with the Women's Commission in various capacities because I find the work the Commission is doing to be extremely important.

And to me, public service and serving my community in impactful ways is paramount.

in my life.

And in my life, I found that it isn't merely enough to want to see change and to talk about it.

Stemming from my military career to today, I've always felt that I have to show up and contribute something of value and be that change and make those contributions that I so desperately want to see everywhere, but specifically in my new home of Seattle.

Audra Lorde said, I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from mine.

I believe that fully, and I'm truly looking forward to being a commissioner with the Women's Commission.

I'm looking forward to working with my fellow commissioners over the next few years to the best of my ability.

And thank you all so very much for this opportunity.

Hi, I'm Gemma Turk.

I also use she, her pronouns.

Thanks for having me and the fellow commissioners here today.

I'm really excited to be a part of the Seattle Women's Commission.

So I thank you all for the opportunity.

I'm fairly new to Seattle.

We moved here two years ago, my family.

I'm a social science researcher and focus on labor policy and women's health.

I'm currently the Director of Evaluation for the Ryan Residency Training Program, which is a organization that helps train OB-GYN physicians in family planning and abortion care.

So I'm really interested and passionate about reproductive health justice and policy and childcare issues now that I have kids and I'm a working mom.

And through the pandemic, it was, extremely difficult for me, even with a lot of privilege on my side.

So I really sought out ways I could connect more with the community and the Women's Commission seemed like a great place for me.

And I'm just really excited to become more connected with the community and start really digging into some of these issues that need help and I want to be a part of.

So thank you for having me.

Thank you so much.

Marta, any closing comments from you?

No, just want to present them all to you for confirmation.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, thank you.

Well, thank you all again for your willingness to serve.

And I know many of you have been serving already even before you're officially confirmed.

So really appreciate the work that you're trying to do.

I was a human rights commissioner myself for a few years, and I know how hard it is when you don't have your full board members with you to help carry the load.

So thank you for participating.

Any questions or comments colleagues for these appointees?

Okay.

Well, I am excited for all of you and excited for us to be adding you to the Women's Commission so that you can continue bringing your gifts and talents to the work that the commission does.

So thank you.

Council members, if there are no other questions, then I move that the committee recommends confirmation of, wait, let me see, am I on the right numbers?

Yes, sorry.

Confirmation of appointments 1977 to 1982. Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of the appointments.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Juarez?

Aye.

Council Member Lewis?

Aye.

Council Member Peterson?

Aye.

Council Member Sawant?

Yes.

And Chair Morales?

Yes.

That's five in favor, none opposed.

Terrific.

Well, congratulations everyone.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the appointments be confirmed will be sent to the July 26th City Council meeting.

If there is no other business before this committee, then that concludes the July 20th, 2021 meeting of the Community Economic Development Committee.

Thanks everybody for being here.

We look forward to working with you in the future.

It is 3.34 and we are adjourned.