Park Commission - Regular Meeting

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for being here. I'd like to call the meeting to order the Dane County Arts and Cultural Affairs Commission. May we have roll call, please?

Chair Richardson?

I am here.

Vice Chair, Kaleo Meier? Here. Commissioner Clare?

Here.

Commissioner Clare? Commissioner Thoref? Here. Here. Commissioner McKinney.

Here.

Commissioner Pham.

Here.

And then, missus. Here. Alright.

So we do have quorum. And we have quorum. Thank you very much. K. Our first order of business is the approval of the minutes from 01/20/2026. Hopefully, everyone had a chance to review them. Can I get a motion for approval? Grant, it's been moved that we approve the minutes from January 20. We don't need a second. Any corrections, revisions bearing none? All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Motion carries. K. And next, for those who, who are interested, the executive committee mid minutes are on the Registar. On LEGISTR. Australia. Yeah. Sorry. Our our own LEGISTR for those who are interested in reading them. Next order business is about is about LEGISTR and the the ways to access information. And I'll turn it over to Augusta.

Yeah. So I just wanted to take a few minutes to refresh you on Legistar, which is the legislative tracking system. It's the platform that the county uses for public meeting agendas and minutes, and this is where we store our meeting agendas and meeting minutes. And it's been a while since we've gone over that. So I just want you to know where it is so you can see the minutes at any time.

Dates back many years, so you'll have plenty to look at if you're interested. So I'm gonna share my screen. And so if you're interested in accessing the minutes through Legistar, you can just go to the Danaert's homepage and click on the contact us tab, and there's agendas and meetings right under contact us. So you click on that, and that brings you to the legislative information center, and we call it Legistar for short. And if you scroll down, you'll see under body name, we have arts and cultural affairs commission, and we have the list of all the agendas and the minutes.

And it defaults to the current year, but you can go back to different years. You want to look.

Don't go back to before we got Augusta.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. I no. I I was sure how the minutes have improved.

Since Augusta. Yeah.

But you'll see that here we have each meeting date. We have the agenda, the official minutes, and then we also have a video recording. So if we have a hybrid meeting, we are required to upload a recording of that meeting. So if you really don't have too much to do, you could watch past meetings. Also, if you go to the top under body name, click on it. You can click on executive committee. Right. It's right under commission. So the same thing.

But we don't have videos from, like, 2014. No. Yeah. Okay.

This is just since the pandemic.

Okay. Oh oh oh, okay. Videos.

Can't we live the fights we have?

No. No. This is But

are those minutes somewhere, though, back in '15? Are they archived somewhere?

Oh, I can see

how Oh, well, I I I don't mean now, but but it'll I it'll be interesting just to take take a look back at Yeah. It just take us thirty, thirty minutes to even approve the minutes if if if there was enough there to approve. So, anyway, that's just a little flashback.

Okay. So this is how this is, like, the one source of truth for the minutes. This is where they are. And then Fran has set up let's see, the shared drive. And I have a link to Legistar in the shared drive as well. So if you go to the shared drive under Danarts, Day and Arts Commission, agendas, and minutes, there is a document here with instructions and a link to Legistar as well if it's easier to navigate from the shared drive.

So, obviously, we're asking you to do this ahead of time so you're you're up to date on what's going on related to the minutes coming up for any commission meeting. Certainly easier to go to the website and do that as we'll guess I'll just walk you through.

And any questions?

So our two principal means of information will be Legisstar and our shared drive and not necessarily the portal anymore. For for those of you you who may may not be aware, we we have a portal, but the portal is not interactive. So we are gonna deemphasize using a portal. There won't be any more updates really to the portal. It's a registrar and and a shared drive. Anything further, Augusta?

No. Unless there's any questions. Or

No. No questions?

No. Just thanks for the overview. That's really helpful and the access tips. Really appreciate it.

Thank you. And just reiterating that this is all available to the public, so you don't need to have a password or any you're all set already to access it.

Okay. That's all. Next, six month commission priorities. You noticed that it's can put that on the screen that, it just says six months. And the reason it says six months is because my my term ends, in June and when the election will take place in June.

And so the next chair may have his or her own priorities. So that's why this simply says six months. But, again, these these are suggested priorities. I'll run through them, and feel free to add, subtract, delete, whatever. So conduct a smooth cycle one grant review and allocation process.

Again, we, we seem to get better at this, every year. Of course, we wanna stay within budgets. And this year, we will be testing, based on the comments from the survey. One of the comment was to, to have grants with a set dollar amount in there. Again, based on the survey results, fund fund funding recipients were excited to receive a grant, but when they found out that they were only getting a portion of what they asked for, the enthusiasm level went down somewhat.

So one of the suggestions was to think about having grants with a specific dollar amount. And so what I'm suggesting here is that and and we talked about it at the executive committee meeting that we can test this on a smaller scale and do the capital grants. The reason that we're picking the capital grants is that we know what the dollar amount that we'll have to work with, and that we passed a most of a while back where 5% of our total budget will be allocated, to the capital grants. So let's just pick a number. Let's say $5,000 is what we have have to work with.

So we can say we will have four, for example, only, four $1,000 grants and two $500 grants or three $1,000 grants and, you know, and four, $500, grants. So in the past, it's been we we've had a set amount budget for capital grants. And based on the number of proposals, the grants amount would vary up up and down based on, what the the total amount of the grant request. So in this way, when someone applies for a thousand dollar grant, again, as an example, they'll know that if they are the winning recipient, funding, then they will receive the entire thousand dollars, not a portion of the thousand dollars. So I believe we are in a position where we can test that in cycle one.

To this cycle? I I I thought that that's what you at at executive meeting, you said said that we could do it. I'm not saying we should, that we could implement it as soon as cycle one, or do you wanna wait until cycle two?

Don't we wanna have the applicant know in advance if that's the case?

I guess they would be better. I'm I'm just going by I know what you said that we could do it as soon as cycle one. I

But I was misunderstanding the fact that you wanted to know beforehand that that's the amount they'll get.

I I think that that would be fair to let the proposals know that we are have that we are doing a change in that instead of everyone everyone applying and not knowing what they're gonna get, they will be applying for a specific dollar amount. So, yeah, we can let them know in advance, and we can set it up for cycle Two. Two. Right. Is that did Sean?

Well, that was gonna be my my question and and comment, which is simply how we're communicating the change to the community. And I think that that is not only for this, but any changes on we're talking about a lot of changes right now on the commission. We're talking about the mission and vision. We're talking about branding. We're talking about how we allocate grants in general. And I think that for what any changes that we decide upon, we should have a buffer period where we're communicating clearly to the public public and they have enough time to adjust to that change because, you know, it is substantial for a lot of arts organizations. Any of these changes, they have to think about, okay. Now where am I getting the other funding from and things like that? So that was my only comment. Just make sure we build in a buffer period to effectively communicate it.

But is there a consensus that that that we test the concept of of of specific dollar amount grants starting with the capital grant in cycle two? Any opposition to that? Okay. So I guess there is none. So let's work toward let's work toward that, for cycle two.

Can you put the priorities up again? K. Another, we don't need number I guess we are doing okay on the the panel cheers for our grant panel review session. I guess we have been getting enough participation so that number two does not need to be a priority. So we'll move number three, continue to align our grant categories with our Dane Arts mission.

If you recall, we we started the realignment in of the great categories to align with our mission, history, culture, and so forth. So I we have started to do that or that, again, is a cycle two.

Yes. So we implemented in cycle two. Just needs we need to actually rebuild the application form

to have those categories. Okay. Does anyone understand or recall when we went through the with Am, we went we went through that process of of, recategorizing, our great categories to match what I'm what's in our mission. So we want to continue to move toward that. And, so, hopefully, we can complete that in the first six months for imp implementation, fully fully implementation, for cycle two.

Then number four, approve new overall grant allocation models and implementation timetable. We'll start that discussion today and, hopefully, by May, we will have what we wanna do so that the the the commission can approve, what the the new model or models will be based on, the comments result from the survey. K. Number five, support increased commissioner business of art participation. I'm hoping today that all those on the call today can commit to do one thing at the business of arts conference that is coming up, in April.

And, again, just one thing. So check with please check with Mark and Augusta to determine what that one thing can be for you based on your time commitment. It can be as long or as short as your time permits, but I'm hoping that everyone on the call today will have 100% participation from those on the call today, again, to do one thing at for the business of arts conference. And, again, check with Mark and Augusta on what, would work best for you. Any questions, discussion about that?

Provided, of course, that you're in town. I know that, one or two of you already noted that you're not in town during that conference.

Those who are in town. If we can get you to make that commitment and those who are not on the call, we will also make their their request to them as well. But I think the events that we sponsor, that we put on, we need to be there in some form or fashion. So that is the request that is being made. Lastly, conduct a smooth election process.

Again, we will have elections in June on June 16 where a new chair and vice chair will be elected. So we wanna have make that a smooth process as well as a smooth transition. Also, based on counter administration 15 o four general provisions, it says that that, yeah, for all board and commission, the terms of members shall be established as hereafter provided. Unless otherwise provided by law, citizen members shall serve staggered three year terms, which shall end on the third Tuesday in April. So based on, what the current executive, determines, all our terms may be ending now in April as opposed to, like, this year.

There are several terms that are ending in in June. There are there's someone whose term is ending somewhere in the fall, but based on this directive, all terms should be ending in April, which will impact when it when the next election will be held. So that's not something that is up to the account executive to make that final determination to either stick with the expiration dates if we have them now or to revise that, and they all will end in April. So that will be up to the new chair to follow through on that. So, Margo, that that you're working with the account executive not only on on on assisting with new commissioners who come on board, but to get a final determination if she wants to end all expiration dates, in April.

K. Any question on what we've covered so far? The last thing which is not on the list is, is to continue with, the fiftieth anniversary planning, which, again, that, of course, is is a twelve month, priority. Is there anything else that, any of you want to add to the six month priority list? Doug, does it your is your hand up? No. Okay. Yes. No? Okay.

Anyone else? So, hopefully, we can commit to those, if if it is nothing earth earth earth shaking, but let's let's make a commitment to to achieving those, those six or seven, priorities. K. Moving right along. Discussion on new great No. Sorry. The apartment priorities, goals, and plans.

Mark. Business, Mark, do I do you want me to express plans for 2026? I did that last commission. I did I do the executive commission?

The executive. Yeah.

I'm sorry. I don't have that in front of me, but the notes indicate the business of art conference, the poster and calendar anniversary. We're trying to rethink how we do that because it's the fiftieth anniversary next year. The, rebranding that we're doing with the with Fran as well as the anniversaries, committee for 2027. Those are really the priorities right now and how we move forward in that second grant cycle.

So really, we're thinking how we do the poster and calendar. One idea that we came up with was perhaps we target various departments within Dane County and do a do a poster for each of those four or five county departments representing what they do is one idea. But we're still trying to figure out how we celebrate the poster without it being 2,000 posters of one image that we try and distribute throughout the community. So the priorities, business of our conference, poster calendar, call for art, the the mapping that Ives has been doing for visual artists now moving into more than just visual artists, theater, dance, film, literary, performance, and the grand cycles, plus the rebranding and the anniversary of celebration. Can

you also talk about the what you mentioned before, your your longer range plans as far as, like, DAMA, creating an entity and event or something that will be managed by Dana Art for the first couple years until it's up and running and to spin it off. So, like, the DAMA, the Biz of Arts Conference Right. It it it seriously, what what what you kinda

That was my hope before the federal government and all that's been going on is that another arts organization would take over the conference itself, but that's kind of I hit a point right now because funding is so desperate in all these communities. I don't know if there's an arts organization in town that's capable of taking over the business of art conference. And it's quite possible we may have reached the end of the business of arts conference, but I hate to say that since everybody I've talked to, and they all could be just giving me a line, they really appreciate the arts conference. Maybe what we're thinking is no longer a business of art. It's basically a conference that's getting about community.

Like, this this year is community education and business. And business doesn't mean running a business. Business means how do you manage your art in a community? How do you lead your arts in a community? Go ahead, Jennifer.

Yeah. For the state, they kinda house that within tourism. So I I imagine you've you've already connected with the Ding folks working in Ding County and Madison tourism. But that's instead of business like, just generally business of arts, it it tends to like, it's very specific about arts tourism. So just sharing that in case that's helpful. The state has at least I haven't looked in a while, but in the state department of tourism, there was a section on arts tourism. So there just might be some ideas that you can get from thinking about it that way.

That's a good idea. I should talk to Ellie Westman who's runs Destination Madison as a possibility. It's a great idea.

So the arts board's under the Department of Tourism. Right?

Yes. So I don't know.

Is that somebody we've talked with over there with what's that? Karen?

George, Karen. They're really small and overwhelmed, but I haven't approached that. But that's possibility as well. I don't know if they'd have the manpower to do that. Although we're getting greater interest outside of Dane County for the conference. We have a professor who's part of Wisconsin Arts Board for many, many years, Jim O'Connell, who's a professor in Stevens Point, wants to bring 30 of his students to the conference. We've got Green Bay, a person out of Green Bay who runs arts programming, who's also gonna be at the conference. So we're starting to see a wider reach. So it's possible with the arts board. I haven't thought about that, but

thanks. Mary?

I know you've thought about this, Mark, but, if Dean Haddix, the school of ed dean at UW Madison, can come, She's really focusing on integrating the arts into education. So and they Erica Halverson I mean, you've got so many connections with UW, and I wonder if that's if that's something they would be interesting in interested in partnering around in hosting.

Well, we talked so much about climbing over that wall from the UW to the community. That's a good possibility as well. I just got a note from her yesterday. I think I I don't know if you saw your email this morning, but

Yeah.

She can't make the conference because of her conflicts, so we're certainly gonna get together, and that's a possibility as well. So thanks. Yeah. Great ideas. Doctor. Halvison did confirm her, participation in the panel as a facilitator. So I want

And we also have doctor Amy Lewis and then Tracy Bong. They're all from UW Madison, so strong strong connections.

Are they all confirmed, Mary? There's more than one Yes. Okay. Great. Thank you.

Yep.

Jennifer?

Sorry. My Internet is slow, so I didn't mean to talk over Mary. The I can check with my colleagues at the State Department of Tourism to see if there are any counties or other cities that are doing this kind of work and doing it well just to kind of get some ideas from. So I'll I'll reach out to them today.

Yeah. Because it it may have been necessary. It have to be another arts organization to take it over, but another entity that specializes in running events. And that it could be turned into a a fundraising event. The group that that does it would have to, of course, make somewhat of a profit, but it will still be called the Dane Arts Bins of Arts Conference or whatever you wanna call it.

But it could be another entity that puts on events that would take it over and see an opportunity that they maybe can make a profit from it, or it it will be it will be beneficial for them, to take this on.

Can you refresh our memory where we landed on that profit loss for business of arts?

We made $3,000 last year, over the cost. So that would

be good.

We make usually, make a couple thousand over, which goes into the next conference.

Yeah.

That's great. But, yeah, we we should be planning on it at a minimum to breakeven on the conference. Yeah. Okay. Well, no. I I didn't realize that. That that's good. Any other, discussion on the department's, priorities for the immediate future? K. That's good.

Just so you know, any money that comes in this year for the conference goes to the budget for '27. So I can't use any money that comes in for the conference for this year. Everything has to be raised before the '20 before the year. So what happened last year is we had $20,000 that got moved into this year from the conference, which which $3,000 was the extra revenue that we made. So it's a little different kind of thinking because we can't just assume money that we get in for this year can be used for this year. Everything gets tabled to the following year.

So do do you get to okay. So let's say we we make $3,000. So doesn't mean that your budget for 02/2027 will be whatever it is, plus $3,000 or that '3 that you'll lose something else, and just get the 3,000 to keep you hold.

Well, we got the 4% cut that will be ongoing, so we've already matched that for this year. I imagine it's gonna stay the same for next year. But any money that comes in for the conference, there's a line item express deliberately for day and arts by local, which goes into that line item for the following year. So I'll care two two or three lines in my budget carries forward, and that's one of them. Okay.

And that's another something. The a day not buy local is something that you started that maybe that also yeah. It is it is an ongoing function event. I'm not sure if if it's self sustaining yet, but something else to think about if you wanna pass that along as well.

Right. And that was basically the pop up markets that we started in 2015. That's what's was Dane Arts by local, the pop up markets. There seems to be a saturation of pop up markets, so I don't know. Yeah. Now at the Farley Center, two leads are retiring. There'll be a new leadership at

the Farley Center, so I'm not quite sure if the buy local pop up markets need to continue. Or we join someone else's, and then we invite our artists to attend someone else's pop up market, and we do we have advertising along with their advertising to get more people

to come. Which is what we've done with Allvergyne, the new gallery space across from Willy Street. It's combining us with the posted calendar event that they're allocating the partnership in which we use their space, which is why we've had it there the past two years. So kinda slowly happened. That's happening Mhmm. But not fast enough for me. K.

K. Discussing on new grant allocation models based on the survey results. Again, this would be one of many discussions with hopefully, we'll have something to approve in May. I'm not sure if you or Deshaun is taking the lead on this one.

Sean, do have anything?

No. I mean, I shared the everything last time. I I I sent out the presentation, which is the breakdown. The only thing in additional that I would add just to put things in a digestible context for folks, the things that really stood out that people were interested in is some sort of segmentation likely based on operating budget. That's the one that meaning that people would like kind of separate application categories based on operating budget where I would be if I'm let's say over 200,000 I would be applying with other organizations who have an operating budget over 200,000 and that's a set amount of money for that and if I'm under I'll be applying with organizations who are under.

So that's and that's something that really resonated with people and then the legacy kind of application model that some of these other granting bodies within the state and within the county have. Those are kind of the two things that really resonated with people most in terms of potential changes and so that's something for us to consider. Of course there were some other things on there as well that people resonated with, but that's the the quick and dirty of it. So those are the only things that I would add. Otherwise, I think is I think we can open it up for discussion. And I know you had asked Mark and Augusta to take some time to think about some suggestions, but I think now is just the time for us to hear everybody's thoughts.

Right. And I think we need a separate line item for the individual artists that apply. So I I agree. I have written down notes, professional community separation or as you noted under budget of 200,000 or less. This category of 201,000 above this category. We only have about 200,000 as you noted in my notes, but it's doable to separate them all so at least there's some balance. And the other idea that we really need to consider is not funding everybody that applies. And that could be the legacy component that you mentioned, Deshaun.

Well, I will say the idea of not funding everybody was not particularly popular amongst the community. So just take that however people wanna take it, but the idea of having less grants and, like, less grants of larger amounts was not particularly popular with the community from the folks that responded.

Okay. But, again, with with the understanding that everyone who applies is not guaranteed to be funded. So, again, we we do try to fund as many as we can, but there is no get no stated or implied guarantee that for those who apply for grant doing one of the grant cycles, there is no guarantee that they will be funded. Because they now there have been, you times when we have not funded some no. Based on various criteria that we have not funded a particular applicant.

So to they wanna make it clear that they're you know, that that they are no guarantee that because you apply that you will be funded.

And I think that the only thing caveat I would add to that is while true, I don't know if culturally that's true for the community. Like, I I I think people have the impression that if you apply, you're gonna I think it just happened that way where people and people may have that impression. As we if we make a change, we may wanna also restate something like that in in some language or other just to make it clear that it's never been policy that everybody gets it. So that's not a shift necessarily, but, you know, I think people have some sort of expectation that if I were to apply that I would get something.

Okay.

Everybody wants 500. Right?

Well well, no. The the 500 comes in for those who are funded. The minimum that they would would receive would be $500. That's where the $500 come come into play. K. Anything anything else on the grant allocation models? K. So this will be an ongoing ongoing discussion with with the goal of being able to have something to present to the commission for approval, at our May meeting.

Well, can I ask what is the how is the discussion happening moving forward? Where is that happening? Who's involved? How are we getting to that voting point in May?

At a prior meeting, I think it was January or November, when we when we when we as commission members submitted, I think we had 15 ideas to consider, and then, it was suggested and there was a consensus that we give those ideas as well as now that we have the survey results to to Dana's staff to mold it over, and then they will come back to us with their recommendations for us to consider.

At the Commission meeting?

At the May Commission meeting. So so, again, so if so this is part today is part of the ongoing discussion. And I suspect that next month, we may have another tidbit of something to toss out and and discuss what the hopes of May will be when it'll all be brought before the the commission for for approval. Anything further on that? Okay. Branding updates. Brandon.

Yeah. So I think, actually, we were gonna table this discussion probably more in detail in the next meeting, but just to give an overview of kind of where we're at. So in the chat here, I'm putting the target audiences. Sorry. That's a lot of text.

But, essentially, the group working on this is Deshaun, Am, Mark, Augusta, and I, and Rod has been, looped in and offered also, his thoughts on things. And so the first thing we did was have a discussion on target audiences and who Dane Arts specifically is targeting with all of the activities that they do. And so these three defined segments is kind of what was parsed out. Oh, and, incidentally, we keep calling this a rebranding exercise, but it's really not. It's just a branding exercise.

Just kind of identifying the work being done, how we can organize it, and put it all together in a uniform way so that Mark and Augusta have things to reference when they're moving forward and trying to think about new programs or how to structure the work, that they have on their plate. So just taking the work that they're doing and identifying what are the target audiences, these are the three that that clearly bubble to the top. So program partners, which is a pretty large bucket, can include arts organizations, vendors, businesses, could include sponsors, donors, could include advisory organizations, nonprofit leaders, towns, school administration, municipality leaders. So that's could be a very broad group of people, right, and program partners. The second defined segment is program beneficiaries or customers.

So that would include the taxpayer. Right? Very front and center and top of mind for us. Residents, artists, arts orgs, people who attend the events certainly are program beneficiaries of Dane Arts, and then also, of course, the grant applicants. And then the last piece in terms of target marketing, these are the groups that make the work possible. Right? So, again, the taxpayers and the residents, the Dane County board, the county executive, municipality administrators, and also our new friends group we put in there. So this hopefully just helps as Mark and Augusta are thinking through the work that they're doing. Like, hey. Who are we targeting this book to?

Which of our target audiences is aligned with the work that we're doing? So it just helps them make better decisions as they move forward with the work that they're doing. So that was one of the first things that we did. So thank you for that group to that group for coming together. The second thing that we are working on right now is just trying to track the mission and vision statements.

We have done an assessment of all of the iterations of those that are out there on the various sites that Dana Arts has. We've collected those, and we have been parsing out words and trying to come up with what we think would be a great mission statement and a great vision statement, also doing some analysis of what is a mission statement, what is a vision statement. So at the next meeting, we will come with some suggestions for the commission to take a peek at. So we're excited to share that with you. Yeah. That's all I have to report on that so far.

One, comment. The, communications aspect, I think, is also going to be important. For example, in the survey, one of the comments was, is Dane Arts a funding entity or a programming entity? Well, the Dane Arts department is more or less the programming entity. The Dana Arch Commission is the funding entity, but Dana Arch is both.

So it's so we're not a funding entity or a programming entity. It's both. So that's that's what I meant by part of the communications. We need to better communicate that it's not an either or. We are both of those.

Thanks, Rod. I've made a note of that. Thank you.

Any questions, comments to Fran? Thank you, Fran and Deshaun and Am for your work on that and Mark and Augusta, of course. K. Fifth and anniversary planning. Back to you, Fran.

Alright. I'm gonna share my screen if my computer will cooperate. Alright. Can everybody see this?

Yes.

Yes. Thank you. So we had a wonderful meeting, a planning meeting for Danart's fiftieth. And, at the top here, you can see the folks that are involved. These are connections of Mark's and Augusta's, a couple of, people that I know in the community.

And so Mark came in and gave a great introduction of Dane Arts to these folks. Talked a lot about the business of arts conference, which was great. We all did introductions, of each other. And then, I appreciate Mark supporting me on the idea that we really should lump this into sort of three buckets to kind of organize the discussion and try to see where folks' strengths align. And so we really talked about three bucket areas for the fiftieth, and that is a branding story and messaging around the fiftieth.

So what will PR and marketing look like essentially for the fiftieth, and what will our message be? The second bucket are the activities and events, which is gonna arguably be the most labor intensive. So we need to make sure we're thinking countywide. We could certainly talk about the calendar and poster with the theme that would lump under this. Would we have a signature event or mini events tied to the fiftieth, and could those be tied to business of our conference or something else?

And then a few activity ideas were thrown out there. And then the last piece is this impact legacy and fundraising opportunities. And this sounds much bigger than it is. I think it's just kind of what will we walk away with after the fiftieth. You know?

Will we have points of pride essentially for Dana Arts that is like a tangible piece we'll walk away with to remember the event? And is there a chance for any fundraising in the process? So I guess that's kind of that third bucket area. So you'll see that the committee here divided up, their areas of strength and kind of volunteered for the areas that they felt best aligned with them. So that being said, any commissioner who's looking to jump on the bandwagon here, we'd love to have you.

There'll certainly be opportunities, I'm sure, with activities and events as we get closer. But if you're interested at all, our next meeting is Monday, February 23 at noon, which is this coming Monday. Let me know if you wanna join. If you can, I'll send you a link to the meeting. And the last thing we discussed in the meeting was just the purpose of the committee because, certainly, committees can kinda get distracted and fall off the the goal the main goal.

So we put the purpose here, is to generate, shape, and execute ideas for a small number of meaningful activities which honor DayanArt's history, celebrate and share its impact, and support its future while remaining aligned with the mission capacity be capacity and available resources. And so we're talking specifically about fiftieth anniversary stuff here. Nothing nothing more. So, yeah, any any questions or thoughts?

Six I

can't see the full screen. I so I can't see there if there are any hands up.

Oh, here. I'll stop sharing. There we go.

Any comments, questions, Fran?

I think it's great. You've accomplished a lot. I think it's very clear in terms of the past. That's great.

Thanks, Sam.

Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Frank.

Yeah. Thank you.

Executive director's report, mister Mark. You got my

notes from yesterday? I'm trying to get into you earlier. I'm sorry. I'm getting them a day late. But the biggest thing right now is the conference and setting up the poster calendar call for art. We just got a thousand dollars in from Park Bank for the conference, which is great. We've met with a number of folks related to volunteers. We hope they have volunteers for every session this year to help the facilitators. We've reduced the number of workshops and presentations. We got the visual that just came out last week from Bernie and Zuzu, which is a fun visual if you haven't had a chance to see it.

We've got a new young person on board who's handling the social media. We're gonna have her present to you today, but we didn't have it on the, agenda, so we couldn't, allocate time for her, because it wasn't on, Legistar. But her name is Maggie. She's a musician. She performed the other night at Cargo Coffee.

She's really talented. She works for audio for the arts, but she's handling the, social media. We just got an intern from, the UW Community Service Program artist Angela Johnson leads, and she's with us through the end of this semester. And she'll be working on a visual for the she's a graphic designer for Middleton, a nice young kid who will be working on a visual image for the artist directory and helping us with the business conference. We have a team that's in place for the conference that's been with us now three years.

So we've got a pretty smooth process going on. Registration goes live this week. We finally got that completed. And we're starting to promote the conference, but there seems to be a great interest. At ArtsLib and starting Block Madison for the conference.

Again, working on the close to calendar and trying to decide what we do for the fiftieth that makes us of any value rather than something fifty fifty fifty. We quite I know Augusta is getting pretty frustrated that we're trying to figure out what we do, to to honor the fiftieth anniversary as well as opposed to calendar. So we're working on that. But a number of activities, the Social Rx program is ongoing, and that's the our pharmacy, now called Social Rx, in getting doctors to prescribe the arts as a wellness prescription, with health insurance companies coming in to support that. That's in process, as well as the Greater Madison Music City rebranding they were doing with Greater Madison and Downtown Madison Inc.

And branding music and Dane, Greater Dane Greater Madison as a music city. So a lot going on. Again, we're trying to pull back and doing so many things, so we can manage everything we're doing. But right now, we're off to a good start, and I'm very excited, for '26 and what can happen. We did I did meet with the county exec February 3, and it looks like a pretty dim 2027 in terms of the county funds.

So we don't know what that means. She said to me directly, we are already scraping by with cuts, so we don't know what the next cuts may be. She's gonna fight very hard not to make it personnel or staff, but that could be a possibility as well. And we all know the outcome of what happens to the arts in these times, but I'm I'm hopeful with all we've done, that's not gonna be such an issue in terms of cutting the cultural arts, especially when the twenty seventh coming up. I mean, the fiftieth coming up in '27. That would be a that would be a wonderful way to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary. Right? Yeah. That's on my report.

The county executive wanted us to, focus a little bit more or do see how we could participate with each of the communities around Dane County. One thing to think about, you know, if we if we still have an intended focus on supporting individual artists, There are many pop up markets, art fairs, exhibits, whatever, throughout Dane County. If we could be a part of those so it's like our devil. There are little devils going on around Dane County, and we could be, a sponsor, be connected with them. In that way, that would, help to, for us to align with the current executive goals of of of being more involved with each of the communities around Dane County.

Yes or no?

Yeah. Yeah. And another idea we talked about through around was town meetings. You know, two or three of us go to a community and hold a town meeting session to alert people to what we're doing. So and, you know, a lot of these cities, towns, and municipalities are pretty small. I have met with the town association, last year. I did a presentation, so I need to revisit them because they have access to all the towns, around Dane County. And there are a lot of little towns like Dunn and Burke and, know, where there are 20 people in that town, but we still need to make some kind of connection.

Yeah. So I've just put a link in the chat to the presentation, that we worked on, for those, the idea of going around to the various communities. So I don't know if anybody ever had a chance to look through it, but this is the presentation that we put together for those very specific presentations focused on the smaller communities around Madison.

But I would require some of you to, you know, be a part of this because it's almost impossible for it to be me or me and Augusta, trying to make this happen.

Is it not possible to just put one a week on the calendar and maybe a commissioner go with you?

It's certainly possible. Yeah. Yes.

Any other questions or Mark, comments? Hey. Future meeting, next is the events calendar. Mary.

We've got our events calendar up and running as usual, And we've got a lot of events from February through June, a lot of youth events, if you're interested, Opera for the Young, Whoopin' Soccer, which if you've never seen is hilarious. Children's Theater Madison, a couple different performances, Suzuki strings, music makers. Those are fun to attend. Some take place at schools, and some at community venues, and you see a lot of kids and families at those. We have music events, theater events, dance events, a couple tour markets, one coming up in Mount Horeb, one in Waunakee.

And, again, your role is just to go, enjoy yourself, shake some hands, say hello, tell them you're from Danarts, thank them for the work that they're doing, and then we ask you just do a really brief little report in right on this form. Things to look for, you know, column c and d tell the dates and times. A couple of these things have different dates or a number of different dates. And then in column g and h, the location and the description, and, also, you wanna check if it's ticketed. If it's not ticketed, you just show up.

If it's ticketed, we talk with Mark and Augusta to make to get a ticket available a comp ticket available. Welcome to bring a plus one. And, yeah, there's there's a nice range of things going on. We also on the events calendar, we've got the, panels listed for the grant cycle, and, that is on let's see. It's down at the bottom.

You look at the the tab that says grant review panels, and it's got six. We've got six different panel dates and are encouraging people to sign up. If you're new to the process, we're happy to cochair with you and walk you through how that works, and we have a script. We'll set up I don't Augusta, I didn't do it, but I doubt you did yet either. But we'll set up a tab for the business of arts where people can sign up. Yes?

Oh. Or do we want

them to use sign is that separate from the sign up changes we have?

It is separate from the sign up changes. Actually, yeah, that's possible. Otherwise, it's not that many commissioners to let me know. Just let me know verbally or an email. Okay. But if you wanna go back are you were you done, Mary? I'm sorry.

Yeah. No. I'm done. I just wanted to remind people this is here and that there are some great events coming up.

Can I, just make a comment too? And, Mary, thanks so much. This is, like, a lot of work keeping up, so I really appreciate all that. I have to say tonight at 05:30 at WISO, Rachel Barton Pine is working with Suzuki Strings talking about black composers. Rachel Barton Pine, if you don't know her, is a violinist who, I, way back in the day, was working at the CSO in Chicago, she is the violinist that played with the Civic Orchestra who got her I think it was, like, her coat got caught on the metro train, and she got pulled under the train.

And it caught, like, her legs. And, I mean, it was a huge, huge deal in Chicago because everybody knew her. She was a a gigging violinist that played all over the place. And she has just her career took off, started touring nationally and internationally. She is an inspiring person for sure. She's gonna be there tonight at 05:30. I would like to go. Would anybody wanna go with me at 05:30 tonight? I have choir at seven, so I can't stay long, but I just was gonna go for an hour. If anybody's available to go

presenting for me, or is it ticketed?

It looks like she's doing a master class, like a mini master class with them tonight. I know it's really short notice, but if anybody wants to join me, I'm gonna go at 05:30 over there at Wise Soap, just at the building on East Wash there.

Let me think about that.

And then the other thing I wanted to plug is on March 3 is Chrysalis doing their shared threads story. Again, that's kind of like a quick after work deal. You know? It's like an hour, hour and a half, something like that. This is the company, Shameless Plug, that my son works for.

He's an employment specialist for Chrysalis, and people coming out of recovery, coming out of homelessness. Chrysalis helps them get back on their feet, and my son, Auti, helps them find jobs and then mentors them on the job for success. Shared threads is them, the the the participants in Chrysalis, telling their stories of how they've overcome homelessness, how they've overcome, all kinds of obstacles in their life, a lot of abuse stories. It's fantastic. It's like the moth storytelling.

And some of these people, like, they just bring tears to your eyes. Please go. Like, please go support this. I will be there. Let me know if you wanna join me tonight, and hope to see you March 3 too.

And Dana, I supported that after last year, but I didn't hear from them this year.

Oh, really? Oh. Well, you could you know what? You can go and write a check there when you go.

I wonder if I was the one who supported like, they got the award for this event.

Oh, is it for this event? Okay.

It might be. I'd to double check. It

might Yeah. I thought they applied through the grant program this year.

They did. Yes. Oh, okay.

Might be this event. I know. It's such a it's so far in advance for some of these projects.

That's so I

have to double check, but it's possible. Okay. It's possible.

I also wanna just add that we've got two columns, but as many of us who wanna go can go. I think we had a little pack of people for the Madison Opera premiere last week, and it's fun to see other people there. But don't feel constrained by the number of boxes.

K. Next go hang on. Me.

Right on. Let me go back to the grants. I wanted Augusta to talk a little bit about the grant cycle this this year, this first cycle. I know she had some data she wanted to share with you.

Actually, I was gonna have it on our next meeting, our next

I just wanted her to show the graph of the Okay.

Oh, it's just a quick, like

So they have an idea of Just so you

can see. So right now, we've received all the grant applications, and I'm going through and checking them for eligibility to make sure they're ready for review. As you can see, we received a 102 applications this cycle and nearly 350,000 in requests. And it's a rec as far as I know, record breaking short order requests at 23 short order. So different trends kind of emerging the cycle. But that's all.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't recall ever receiving over a 100. 80 something was was the most

I think the the big push has been the short order at 23. So we do have to figure out mechanism for this process. Because as I as I presented this to the county executive, we have about a 100,000 to give this cycle and 342,000 in requests. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's like something's gotta give, and I I would hope it would be taxpayers wanting to give $1 each to Dana Arts, which is why we gotta get out there so they know why they wanna why they would give because people give to what they believe in. They don't know anything about us. They don't. So I'm not I'm sorry. Go ahead.

I'm good. I'm share your sentiments, Mark. K. Our next meeting, is March 17, 08:30. And let's shoot, for our May meeting. Let's shoot for, getting one of our funding recipients to come and make and make a presentation like we used to always do. I know that, from now through the business of our conference, you'll you'll be tied up. And April is the grant review. So maybe May, we we can bring in a funding recipient to make a presentation. Anything else?

Any announcements anyone wants to make before we wrap it up? Doug, we need to get you your commissioner pin. I'm not sure if we if we have it yet as well as some cards. Anything else that anyone wants to share?

And, Mary, will you will you share with Doug the commissioner process for sharing?

Yeah.

Please. Thank you.

Okay. Yeah. So, again, we we need people to sign up, to be chairs for, the panel and also volunteer for the business of arts conference. At this point, can I get a motion?

Oh, wait. Before that, sorry. You you just asked Mary to share information about sharing with Doug? Is that what you just saw?

Right. Yeah.

Because I already met with him, and I went over everything.

Okay. Alright. Thank you. Forgot. Alright. Thank you. Yep. Okay.

Excellent. Alright. Motion to adjourn. They're all going once. Mary, thank you. You've been moved, and we adjourned. Nine