A group of consultants hired to lead the city of Santa Clarita’s arts master plan — an effort meant to guide the city’s role in supporting the arts for the next 10 years — explained the steps for its one-year contract during a Tuesday afternoon meeting at City Hall.
Keen Independent Research has a 12-step process for “a very equitable community-engagement process throughout the entire time we’re with you, as well as consideration of the marketplace and a data-driven approach,” Roksana Filipowska, an arts, culture and equity consultant for Keen, told the Arts Commission during a City Hall meeting Tuesday.
The firm, which works with clients throughout the country and the region, including Lancaster and Corona most recently, explained its strategy and how it will approach the process for soliciting input and discussing its recommendations.
“We don’t pick winners and losers,” she said, adding that the talk of venues, for example, uses language that looks at the arts culture as an “ecosystem” rather than identifying ideal locations. The topics might include potential performing arts spaces on local campuses instead of specifically looking at the Santa Clarita Performing Arts Center, she said.
After a question-and-answer session, Filipowska led a brief explanation of the “strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats” exercise for the plan, ahead of a community-engagement meeting Tuesday evening at California Institute of the Arts.
Jenni Shadl, the arts administrator for the city who is leading the effort on the city side, said there were 90 attendees at the CalArts meeting.
“They updated the audience on the plan they will be implementing in the goal to evolve the Santa Clarita arts community,” Shadl said in a phone interview Thursday.
She described Keen’s data-driven analyses as the starting point for the process, and now the process is looking for residents’ feedback with an online form the consultants have developed.
The survey asks residents questions like what they think of the city’s current vision and what kinds of art they would like to see more of in Santa Clarita.
The survey will be available until June 15. Keen expects to have its recommendations for the Arts Commission in February, based on the one-year timeline discussed by Filipowska on Monday.
The form, called a “Virtual Workshop Survey,” is available on the city’s arts website here: bit.ly/4dr8MkW.
