The Creativity Network of Long Beach and LongBeachCulture.org sponsored two community forums to engage in a meaningful dialogue toward building a Cultural Master Plan for the creative community of Long Beach. The August 2nd meeting at Koos Art Center solicited a lengthy list of issues. On September 6, the second forum was held at Second City Council Art Gallery and Performance Space to prioritize the issues important to Creative Community.
The link below will take you to a PDF version of the final report. (You can copy and paste the link on your browser for ease or you can go to LongBeachCulture.org and The Press Room to find the document)
http://blog.longbeachculture.org/docs/Creativity_Network_Forums_Final_Report.pdf
Now What?
The Arts Council for Long Beach is the process of updating its Strategic Plan. That plan holds the key to setting priorities for itself and is an opportunity for the Council to assume a more visible and proactive leadership. That, in turn, could set the stage for updating of the City’s Cultural Master Plan. However, this goal can only be accomplished with Community involvement. Forum attendees were encouraged to reach out to community organizations to talk about the importance of the arts. The Creativity Network, in cooperation with the Creative Community, will continue to network and dialogue with artists, small and large arts organizations, reach out to the Media as an advocacy mechanism and to establish a dialog with the Arts Council for Long Beach, the City Council and Community Leaders. Over the next six months, we hope to sponsor and organize workshops around the three major priorities that would include representatives of the City, the Arts Community and experts in various fields of Live/Work Space for Artists, Arts Education and Advocacy and Government. Most importantly, we will continue to advocate for an updating of the Long Beach Master Cultural Plan.
For more information, please contact:
Antonio Pedro Ruiz
The Creativity Network
562-430-8637