Machine transcript, names and spellings corrected. Click a time to play from that point.

0:01 Kinsee Morlan All right, thanks everyone for being here. We’re actually going to start things off with a quick video to set the stage.

0:14 ABC News Reporter It was 11:32 PM when the first calls came in. A party at this Oakland warehouse, an artist collective was exploding into an inferno, flames ripping through windows. Firefighters could be seen breaking in with pickaxes. By daybreak, the devastation was beyond what anyone expected. The entire roof collapsed.

0:34 Shelly Mack You could never tell how many people were in there because there’s too many places for people to be.

0:38 News Announcer 2 For about five months, Shelley Mack was one of the residents inside Oakland’s ghost ship.

0:43 Shelly Mack There were some people that paid $1,500 a month.

0:45 Bystander How much did you pay?

0:46 Shelly Mack 700. Derek rented it from the owner. He collected rent money from us.

0:51 News Announcer 2 And for that money paid to Derick Almena and his wife, Micah Allison, anywhere from 10 to 15 residents were given their own quarters inside the warehouse. An entirely improvised living and event space described as a tangled stack of musical equipment and makeshift utilities.

1:07 Oakland fire official (Redmond Health and Safety Symposium) The exposures here that we had, and this was the way they were going to have to get through here. So you can see the pianos, and for some reason these individuals had an affinity for pianos. There was pianos everywhere. So you can see just out of the gate with how much smoke conditions and the survivability profile and how difficult the task was going to be. Through here through the front, you look at this big log jam of people up front. It’s because there was a large amount of art. And I don’t know if you can see above the front door, but that was a fender. So the individuals had an automobile fender over the front. And if you can look to the bottom of the purple vehicle there, that’s a makeshift bomb. It looked like an old airplane bomb. So that was also log jamming up the front.

1:45 So for us to be able to stretch hose and hose lines to get through there made it extremely difficult. So this is a general footprint of what the building looked like. So you had two floors and the initial fire started on that first floor, but above the wooden staircase, like I said, you can see the main staircase on the right there, which was constructed of pallets. One of the biggest issues was that the floor wasn’t a sealed floor. The floor was a wood constructed floor, but it wasn’t completely sealed. So as soon as the fire started on that bottom of that building, they started to get smoke coming through the floor. So even if the individuals got low, like we teach people to get low to crawl out, even if they were low, they were still in the worst possible area they could be for that fire.

2:27 So this is the general footprint of the building. You can see there around the blue squares that that 1315 was the main part of the ghost ship and 1305 was the Bravo side, which had just a ton of materials. And from my initial arrival, could see that I was worried about this building, but I was also worried about the potential of possibly losing the whole block.

3:29 Fire scene audio All right, let’s get these out of the way. Get out the door. Get out the door. All right. Conditions on U engine four and engine 17.

4:04 Oakland fire official (Redmond Health and Safety Symposium) As we switched into that defensive attack, that emotional roller coaster kept coming. Now when we get fires in Oakland, we get multiple law enforcement agencies and we get Alco Sheriff, we get OPD. And so I’m sitting there and we’re trying to maintain and run the fire, run the fire. And an OPD officer comes up to me and he hands me a list and he goes, “Chief, I got a list.” I go, “Okay, great.” He hands me a list and ladder pipes and bells and whistles and everything going. I look and I look at it and I go, “Oh, 15 names.” And he goes, “Yeah, this is 15 names.” And granted, we had corralled everybody into this Wendy’s parking lot. He goes, “Okay, 15 names.” I go, “Okay, so that’s what we’re thinking. That’s what we’re looking at, 15 names.” And he goes, “No, chief, you got to flip the list over.” And I flipped the list over and there’s 45 more names on there.

4:46 So now I’m thinking, I was like, “Oh my gosh, we’re looking at 60 names, 60 people that are lost in this fire.” So trying to keep myself focused, keep my crews focused so that they can do what they need to do and finish the task, but then also thinking about how are we going to process this? How are we going to get through this? How are we going to deal with the loss of possibly 60 people in the city? We brought the incident under control at 0436 hours and over the next six days, the Oakland Fire Department and many surrounding law enforcement and fire agencies worked tirelessly to overhaul and respectfully remove the 36 bodies that were lost that evening. Thank you.

5:39 60 Minutes Host A week after the deadly fire at an artist warehouse space in Oakland, California, known as the Ghost Ship killed 36 people, fire departments around the country are investigating so-called live work spaces. These are places often inhabited by artists and low income residents. There’s ever less affordable housing today in many metro areas, pushing people to new measures and extremes. And again, Dehari, who has been working with our team on this story.

6:11 Rachel Saxer (Artist) Everybody’s watching us and all of the other cities. It’s like becoming a national crisis.

6:16 PBS News Hour Reporter In art warehouses across Oakland, people are anxious. Their way of life is under threat.

6:21 Rachel Saxer (Artist) All of the survivors live in warehouses or occupy warehouses and we’re all grieving and people who are survivors are now at risk for losing their home.

6:30 PBS News Hour Reporter Fears of a backlash from city inspectors and property owners are beginning to materialize.

6:35 Angela Scorvani This week, my lease holder told me the landlord was scared of people living in our space and has asked anybody living there to move out by January 3rd.

6:45 PBS News Hour Reporter Painter and photographer Angela Scorvani has been living and working in this Oakland art studio for the past eight years. She’s asking city officials to differentiate between a dwelling that’s unsafe versus one that’s just not permitted properly.

6:58 Angela Scorvani A lot of the spaces that I’ve been in where we didn’t pull permits to build the areas in which we live and work, we built them to code. It’s such a desperate situation that we were willing to take the risk and hoped that it wouldn’t come to this.

7:17 PBS News Hour Reporter Oakland is not alone in cracking down on buildings not zoned for residents. LA, Dallas, Nashville, and New Haven have all put landlords and tenants on notice to clear out buildings that might be substandard living conditions. Baltimore is taking it a step further. Kate Pecano is a multimedia artist. He’d been living in this building known as the Bell Foundry until earlier this week. On Monday, the city evicted him and nine other artists without warning.

7:48 Kate Pecano Bell Foundry is just an example of what’s going to happen to more spaces like this, not only in Baltimore, but in different cities.

7:57 PBS News Hour Reporter Artists could live, work, and party at the Bell Foundry. It was also a sanctuary for the LGBTQ community and artists of color, according to Pecano.

8:05 Kate Pecano My next move hopefully is to find a new safe space for black and brown artists, for black and brown people in Baltimore from Baltimore.

8:13 PBS News Hour Reporter The Bell Foundry was never zoned for residential use and it was unsafe, according to Kathleen Byrne, who’s responsible for permits and code enforcement in Baltimore’s housing department.

8:23 Kathleen Byrne It was an accident waiting to happen. There were tons of flammables and combustibles as well as debris located and it warranted imminent danger. So it wasn’t just a matter of not getting the proper permits.

8:37 PBS News Hour Reporter Even with the wake up call in Oakland, these safety issues are nothing new for Baltimore.

8:42 Kathleen Byrne It’s probably every code enforcement official’s worst nightmare what happened in Oakland, but these are things that we deal with on a daily basis. They’re just not in the public eye.

8:52 PBS News Hour Reporter The Bell Foundry’s closure has put other Baltimore artists on high alert that their spaces could be targeted next.

8:59 Stuart Watson I’m terrified. I feel like someone’s going to take it away.

9:02 PBS News Hour Reporter Stuart Watson owns area 405, a massive mixed use space converted from a 19th century factory. Watson spent 14 years getting the building up to code.

9:12 Stuart Watson The sprinkler system happened pretty quickly. The firewalls in the stairwells was within the first couple years, but the other things have taken time. The updating electrical and things like that has taken a long time.

9:28 PBS News Hour Reporter It’s a process she says must be done to keep artists safe.

9:32 Stuart Watson Not providing safety for the people who entrust their lives to you is unconscionable. People trust me with their lives and I don’t take that lightly.

9:49 PBS News Hour Reporter Because many artists lack the resources to operate safe spaces, the greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance advocates on their behalf. Executive Director Jeanie Howe.

9:59 Jeanie Howe One of the most frequent calls we get is a search for space of some kind. We’ve put together a couple of tools that help match folks with available space. We value this community tremendously. We value these artists and we value their contributions to the city.

10:16 Robbie Cowell This is the time we brought Janelle Monáe to a downtown city street.

10:20 PBS News Hour Reporter Robbie Cowell has been producing major outdoor music parties in San Francisco for 19 years. He says that if cities are serious about retaining their artists, they need to recognize that art spaces are critical.

10:32 Robbie Cowell These warehouse spaces are the only places where they can afford to not only live, but pay that second rent to actually have a studio to create their work.

10:42 PBS News Hour Reporter And he warns that regulatory effort could drive artists into more dangerous spaces.

10:47 Robbie Cowell Artists will find another place to make art, so I would just advise the public officials to concentrate on harm reduction over code compliance. It’s a very big difference.

10:58 PBS News Hour Reporter That’s what San Francisco does when it comes to regulating live performance spaces. Jocelyn Kane heads the city’s entertainment commission.

11:05 Jocelyn Kane We’re much safer than other cities where people are somewhat scared to come to government and we have tools that we use in our toolbox to allow people to consider using an out of the box crazy space to do an event that would be unique or different, and then we can sort of guide them through in a way that feels safe to them.

11:25 PBS News Hour Reporter Cain says that since many artists rely on income from live performances, it’s important they have easy access to spaces where they can safely host these events.

11:34 Jocelyn Kane I’m sitting in city hall. I’m a part of government and I’m trying to be an advocate as much as possible within the confines of what we call responsible hospitality.

11:44 PBS News Hour Reporter Stuart Watson, owner of Area 405 in Baltimore, hopes more artists will also be able to invest in safe spaces.

11:51 Stuart Watson I want artists to buy places. I want them to fix them. I want them to think that living in places that are not fixed up is okay.

12:03 PBS News Hour Reporter And that’s just what Kay Becano is climbing toward. For the PBS News Hour, I’m Hari Srinivasan.

12:15 Kinsee Morlan All right, so here we are. Thank you all for being here. Thanks to our panelists. I’m Kinsee Morlan from Voice of San Diego. I write the Culture Report. I’ve been covering arts and culture in the region for over 10 years now. And of course here in San Diego, we’re experiencing the same issues artists everywhere are facing. I’m going to take a quick moment to introduce you to our panelists. We have Beryl Forman, Ms. Boulevard. She works for the El Cajon Business Improvement District. I probably didn’t say that, Boulevard. She’s an urbanist and an arts advocate. We have Kotaro Nakamura. He is an architect and also the interim director at the School of Art and Design at San Diego State University. We have Kathleen Mitchell, who’s an artist who lost her studio space at Glashaus, which is an art space just a few blocks from here.

13:15 We have Jennifer de Poyen who is a visual artist and she’s also the director of Space 4 Art, which is a nonprofit that’s working to build permanent affordable housing in the San Diego region. We have David Malmuth. Raise your hand, David, you guys following along here? He’s a developer, also an arts advocate who often involves art in his projects. We have Alan Ziter, who is the executive director of the NTC Foundation, which runs 26 city-owned buildings in Liberty Station that are set aside for cultural use. And we have Sam Lopez, who is an artist and curator who makes experimental music himself as well. So big hand to our panel. A big hand to you guys for coming out. Thank you to Xavier Vasquez who actually organized this event. He’s a tireless arts advocate and artist himself and a big thank you to James Brown who could not be here tonight.

14:16 His father is ill, but he runs this space and graciously let us all use it. So big, big thanks to Jim.

14:30 So the struggle to find affordable space in San Diego to live, work, perform. Perhaps the struggle has never been so hard. We’ve seen, I’ve had the, I guess, misfortune to report on Glashaus being closed down by the city called the Fire Trap. I’ve reported on another space in Barrio Logan that was closed down, not by the city, but by landlords who, as you saw in the video, got frightened about potentially getting in trouble with the city and similar things are happening all over the city. So I wanted our panelists, and feel free, speak up. These first few questions are for all of you, so go ahead and grab your mic and answer the question. Be respectful if you’re pass the mic, basically. So what do you think should be done? Is kicking artists out of these unsafe spaces the best answer or should we be thinking about working with getting them up to code or changing the permitting process?

15:31 What are other cities doing and what should San Diego or could San Diego be doing instead of kicking artists out of these warehouse-like spaces? Kathleen? I don’t have close to it. You can grab it or bring it towards you. Yeah. Yeah, there you go.

15:50 Kathleen Mitchell One of the things I think the city could do and maybe the state could do is I’ve spent countless hours pouring over the use and occupancy classifications.

16:02 Kinsee Morlan Sounds fun.

16:03 Kathleen Mitchell Oh, it’s a barrel of fun. And while there’s classifications for funeral parlors and pool halls and barber shops, there’s not a single classification for an artist space in this. So what the bureaucrats try to do is plug you into a space that doesn’t exist. So there’s one for art galleries, but there’s no classification for somewhere where you’re making your work.

16:35 Kinsee Morlan Right. Does anyone have anything to add to that? Another problem is that artists who, like yourself, have a kiln and require things that have fire, you’re considered light industrial use, right? So that limits your ability to rent many spaces. Right. Right. So that’s another issue. Anyone else? Permitting. David, you know a thing or two about permitting.

17:02 David Malmuth I do, and I know how difficult it is. I mean, I don’t think it’s radical for me to suggest that we shouldn’t have people working in spaces that are unsafe.

17:09 Kinsee Morlan Sure.

17:09 David Malmuth I just don’t think that’s a good idea. And I know in the case of Glashaus, he was cited a couple of times. I know they tried to work with him to resolve the problems, and I kind of think the way that I read between the lines, they sort of looked the other way until the fire in Oakland, and then they couldn’t look the other way anymore because everybody was so exposed. But I’ll just tell you a little anecdote. The first time I walked into Glashaus, which is like eight years ago, and I was talking with Matt about the space, he was basically bragging to me that he just did it, that he didn’t try to get it permitted because that was the only way he could get it done. And I get that, but there’s the potential for tragedy if you don’t take care of some of these things, particularly when people are working with fire or other kinds of things.

17:56 So I don’t think the answer is to try to look the other way. I mean, we’ve got to come up with more creative solutions to create space that can be used by artists that is not going to go up in a fire.

18:10 Kinsee Morlan Alan?

18:10 Alan Ziter Well, I kind of agree. The code is code and it’s pretty black and white. It’s there for a reason. And you look at some of the nightclub fires or the fire in Oakland, those things happen when there’s not code compliance, but code compliance is expensive. So what’s the balance between what was called harm reduction versus code compliance until you change the code or have some gray areas in the code. I went to Glashaus. I went to the union place and it looked pretty safe to me. But I know that whenever we do anything out at the arts district, the city owns those buildings, so I can’t get around anything out there. But I think in the meantime though, let’s find a way to fund what it takes to get some of these spaces up to code. Maybe there’s some route through the community foundation or San Diego grant makers to help make that happen.

18:56 How can the Commission for Arts and Culture or the county of San Diego put some line items in their budget that would allow for code compliance expenditures, capital expenditures basically, to help bridge that gap. It’s basically gap funding, the difference between what it’s going to… Because every dollar you spend on architectural designs that need to be done by the architect and then get the permitting, we just put up a simple wall dividing an office. It was $12,000 by the time it was all said and done, but it was up to code and it was the only way we’re going to get the approval to do the construction and the space. So if there was some gap funding that existed somewhere, and it gets back to just making the case, why are these spaces important to neighborhoods? Why is it important to the cultural life of the community?

19:37 And then see somebody who’s got the pockets that can help close the gap funding.

19:40 Kinsee Morlan Right. You and I were sharing an article about there is good news in Oakland. There’s a big movement. A foundation has been started and just yesterday they got a boost of $3 million and this organization exists solely to build a hundred thousand square feet of affordable space for artists in the next few years. So I think that’s what you’re getting at. Did you have something to add?

20:04 Kotaro Nakamura Yeah, this is heavy. I’ve been practicing architecture for 40 years and architectural code always become tougher, more difficult to comply. We used to be able to build a house with three sheets of paper. Now we have to draw 24 sheets just to satisfy the building department. So this is a kind of balance between the life safety issues and I agree that we have to create a safe place, but then what degree? And that’s something that the community has to discuss.

20:44 Kinsee Morlan I think even city leaders would agree that DSD needs a big overhaul department. Yes, girl?

20:52 Beryl Forman Okay. I was after the conversation that just as our city is trying to figure out this homeless crisis, we’re trying to look to opportunities where we house people. It was a reactive decision that every city’s taking out right now to analyze where these maybe unsafe art spaces are. But as soon as I saw an article about Glashaus closing, I thought to myself, well, everybody at the city, I say everybody, but at the city we look to where arts and economic development come together. So a more proactive approach would be like, how are we sparing these spaces or how are we creating other ones? And just recently as it relates to housing homeless people, there was an article about the old downtown library and sort of excuses that were coming up for why it’s not a livable space for people to move in related to getting water and things like that.

21:47 So let’s take those opportunities. I think it really comes down to setting priorities for the city and being proactive about wanting to nurture and provide for the artist community.

21:58 Kotaro Nakamura Are you comparing homeless people with the artists?

22:02 Beryl Forman Well, at a bigger level, this is a societal issue around affordability.

22:09 Kotaro Nakamura I’ve been working downtown for 40 years and we have a lot of homeless people and we had the restrooms, you had to go underground near the Horton Plaza. City’s policy was just take all those amenity away to push the undesirables or the global rules or whatever it is. Anyway, away from the city center and now we are seeing the result.

22:38 Kinsee Morlan So we brought up earlier the situation in Oakland. There’s some silver lining on that cloud with the nonprofit there that’s taken a lead. Is there a similar nonprofit in San Diego that exists, which could take the lead on getting money and finding affordable space for artists to live and work? If there isn’t a regional nonprofit in existence, what steps could be taken to get one going? So Jennifer, since you’re a nonprofit doing –

23:10 Jennifer de Poyen Nonprofit in the business of providing affordable housing for artists, yes. It’s a tricky proposition. Space 4 Art is sort of blessed with its origin story, which it was founded by artists, two of whom are in the audience, Bob Leathers and Cheryl Nickel. Bob is a licensed architect and in addition to being a licensed architect who can draw plans and comply with city codes, he’s never taken a dime for his work at Space 4 Art. So is that a model for affordable housing? It is right now for us, that’s what we’re doing. I got to tell you, even with all of that, it’s still how are we going to pay the bills this month? It’s hard to persuade people to give money to give artists housing. That’s the bottom line. And at a certain point, and we’ve sort of reached this point where we have earned income.

24:10 We have tenant rents and we used to have a gallery space and performance space that provided substantial income to keep things going. And now we don’t have the ability to earn the income from the spaces, from the galleries and from the performance space. So we’re back to the model of trying to find generous donors and write grants and that kind of thing. So it’s a challenge to keep it affordable, but that’s what we want to do. And the philosophy is, well, if it’s not affordable, it’s not worth doing. That’s the market. That’s what we’re trying to do. It’s not that it’s not worth it overall, but we want to provide spaces for emerging artists. We want creative spaces where artists can be in contact with each other, share ideas, learn from each other. And in addition to Bob and Cheryl’s efforts, hundreds of volunteers have always been involved with Space 4 Art to build the original space, in our recent downsizing, to move the space, to rebuild the space to –

25:16 Kinsee Morlan But you’re talking about one project. If and when this project is successful, do you think Space 4 Art is poised to be that regional arts nonprofit that works toward building more a hundred thousand square feet of affordable space for artists?

25:32 Jennifer de Poyen I think Space 4 Art exists and has that mission. The question is whether the donor community and whether the city are going to support the mission enough to make it happen.

25:44 Kinsee Morlan Okay. So that gets to, I saw a lot of you earlier this year at City Hall when the mayor proposed to cut the arts budget and the arts community found themselves in a similar situation where we had to make the case for why people should care about art, especially when there’s a hepatitis A public crisis guy. I mean that wasn’t even going well known at that point. So what can artists and arts advocates and leaders do to better make the broader community of potential donors just of your neighbor value art?

26:27 Sam Lopez I don’t think you can. I mean, this sounds like we’re going to be waiting and waiting, right? I mean, this type of thing isn’t going to happen overnight.

26:38 Kinsee Morlan Right.

26:38 Sam Lopez You got to wait and wait. I think everybody needs to get off their fucking ass and do something. Get out there and open up the phone book. Just do it. I mean, here we go. I mean, back in the day… Hold on. Stay Strange is a noise music collective. We curate, which is a fancy word I learned from Nathan Hubbard. I curate noise music shows, right? Okay. But back in the day, coming from a hardcore punk sort of background, you would go and rent a hall. You’d rent the fucking VFW hall or something like that, or you’d go and rent the Polish whatever hall. You have a show. That’s what you got to do is you got to get out there.

27:19 Kinsee Morlan Hey, let’s show that video of what you do when you get into an art space. Can we do that, video people? Yo, video. Cue the video.

28:22 Josh (Helmuth Productions) It’s been great running an art space in San Diego. There’s a lot of great people here. The support’s been amazing. We originally started doing it because there was a lack of places to show. And since then, the energy of the city and the people involved, the artists, curators, people that came in here, the bands, it sort of just kept it going. So it’s going on six, seven years and it’s been awesome. So we’ve been here for about five years. Before that, I was downtown in the Library Lots in a smaller place, and before that a garage. And before that, we were curating each other in our houses. So I guess that’s essentially been our thing is do what you do no matter where you are. Even if you have to paint out a room closet white and post shows there, you can do it. So this whole thing about getting kicked out and development stuff sucks for sure.

29:17 And I saw it happen in San Francisco and it’s happening here, but I also just kind of feel like we’ll just go, just keep doing what you’re doing. I don’t know where that’s going to be next. It’s complicated. I don’t know, because I know sometimes as an art person, you’re displacing other communities because you go where it’s cheap. So it’s definitely a complicated thing. But it’s also a conversation I’ve usually kind of stayed out of because I get a little weary of when it starts becoming like it’s up to the developers or the city to make something for us. I know it’s a cliche thing to say, but we’re pretty DIY, do it yourself. Go find your place and your people, your set. Could happen. I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s weird though, for sure. I do remember San Diego in the 90s. It was super different, but I think that’s happening everywhere.

30:10 It’s just the way it goes. Warehouse districts are not really a thing anymore, so we are lucky to find this. And when this gets tore down, we’ll go do it somewhere else. I don’t know where that’s going to be. My name’s Josh. I’m the facilities resident at Helmuth Projects.

30:28 Kinsee Morlan All right. So Helmuth Projects, we’re probably preaching to the choir here, but how many in the audience have been to that space or known about that space?

30:33 Sam Lopez Helmuth. Excuse me, can I say something real quick? Last year, right where those lights are, I had a guy play broken glass with his face right over there and there was blood and phlegm and piss everywhere. I’m saying it because Jim’s not here. He won’t be mad, but that was an awesome show. And we’re no stranger to danger either. I mean, when we first started doing noise shows, we did them at a place called the Smog Shop, which was literally a smog shop by day. And then by night it was a noisy. And we would make fucking noise all night long till the cops came. And talk about danger. I mean, fire or something would’ve happened, we all would’ve been dead and you would’ve been reading about us there. But I think you really just got to get your butt out there and make contacts and talk to people and hit the street and beat the pavement and just fucking really go out there and say, “Hey, here I am.

31:26 Can you help me out?” And I’ve been real lucky. Space 4 Art. We did some shows there.

31:32 Kinsee Morlan Okay. So speaking about getting out, finding people, finding spaces, is there a comprehensive… In this space alone, we have ice gallery right over there. We have a tiny, not an exit gallery right here. We have the Athenaeum art space over here. There’s probably some of you in this room who don’t know about any of those galleries and have never been to a show there. So is there a comprehensive list anywhere where people who are interested can find the space that already exists for artists? If not, who’s going to build it? Sam, you seem like you’re – It’s called Byspace.

32:04 Sam Lopez Oh wait, that was 2006.

32:05 Kinsee Morlan I’m going to task you with things tonight since you’re the doer, but does anyone here know if a resource like that exists and do you think it would be valuable to have something like that? Comprehensive?

32:17 Alan Ziter Yes, absolutely. Back in 86, there was something called the Arts Resource Directory and they would print it once a year. Now it’s so much easier to do it online. But you referenced the mayor cutting the arts 31%, that’s through the Commission for Arts and Culture. Well, the same thing happened again back in 1989. The city defunded the arts 100%. And the result that came out of that was the city’s San Diego Arts and Culture Coalition, which is an local arts advocacy group that works to increase public support for the arts. Well, it was a crisis situation. We’re now in a crisis situation and now it has to be the artists and the arts organizations coming together again, but now talking about space. And that’s been around since 89 and this is the group that galvanized getting those funds restored. After all these years, they’re still working tirelessly to keep public support for the arts as strong as it can be in San Diego, which is not always easy.

33:10 Kinsee Morlan So that’s the San Diego Regional Arts and Culture Coalition. You guys can Google it and join.

33:17 Alan Ziter Since I co-chair the coalition, I’m going to suggest that, and Victoria Hamilton is the other co-chair. There are no artists involved in the activities of the coalition. It’s primarily the nonprofit arts organizations. If there were more artists actually involved in advocacy efforts through the coalition at least, we can maybe work through some of the channels through the government agencies at the county and city level to try and get some of these space challenges higher up on the agenda. The coalition just held a fundraiser for one of the city council members who’s been very supportive of the arts and it just happened to be Lorie Zapf who’s not always on the democratic side of the aisle. So the arts are a nonpartisan issue and space is a nonpartisan issue. It’s a matter of getting everybody on board with this being a crisis situation.

33:58 Kathleen Mitchell But I’d like to bring up the big disconnect at the city between nonprofits and the individual artists.

34:06 Kinsee Morlan Sure.

34:07 Kathleen Mitchell I wanted to reference the article that Rachel Fernandez wrote in the September 20th CityBeat where she quotes Dana Springs, the executive director of the Commission for Arts and Culture. We know there’s a gap in our service where that awareness exists, finding ways to fairly and equitably service individual artists and emerging nonprofits is definitely on the table. Every time you see money being given away or being allocated, it’s being given to nonprofits that already have massive, massive donor pools.

34:44 Kinsee Morlan Okay. Yeah. And in other cities, actually San Jose is one, for example, they do fund arts entrepreneurs and that allows individual artists to get funding. And so it is happening elsewhere. It’s not an unachievable thing. Yes.

35:00 Beryl Forman About San Jose, their economic development department within their city also funded creating spaces, more like workshop spaces. I think they looked to their port that it was sort of a blank empty space and wanted to add some economic development energy there and did put money behind creating these types of spaces. So that’s why I said the city of San Diego, if they took the priority to want to create housing or create economic development opportunities for artists in our city, they can look to examples like San Jose.

35:34 Kinsee Morlan There is actually a policy in the city’s public art policy, if you take time to read it as I have, and it’s developers who can either build public art as part of their project, a certain percentage, pay an in lieu of fee, a certain percentage that goes into a public art fund that the city can use for public art elsewhere, or they can build cultural space inside their project. This is a part of the public art policy that has never ever been enacted. It might be a good opportunity for the city to look at policies that exist on the books that aren’t working. Is there anything else that you guys can think of?

36:13 Kotaro Nakamura County as well. They have a one person for arts.

36:17 Kinsee Morlan What is that?

36:18 Kotaro Nakamura County of San Diego.

36:19 Kinsee Morlan County of San Diego. Yes. I’m glad you brought that.

36:21 Kotaro Nakamura They have a program, just nobody’s reinforcing it. So when they built the maintenance facility in Claremont, the project manager of the county decided to use it. So that’s how they got the public art in their buildings.

36:40 Kinsee Morlan Right. Yeah. Everyone always forgets about the county supervisors. Who here knows who your representative is at the county supervisor level? Anyone? One person, two? They have lots more money than the city, so might be time. At one point there existed a county arts council. Was anyone here when that was in existence? Of course. All right. Was it useful? Yes. All right.

37:08 David Malmuth Can I just make a brief comment since you’re talking about leadership?

37:11 Kinsee Morlan Yes.

37:13 David Malmuth If you look at cities like Denver, Philadelphia, other cities that have had enlightened mayors who have supported arts and been willing to put money into arts and willing to advocate for bond measures that raise money for arts, we have the power to either vote or withhold votes from people who are running for office. And there’s a number of supervisors that are going to be running over basically the next three or four years. All the county board’s going to turn over completely. So I think it’s really important, back to your point, getting off your ass and going and getting engaged, go ask candidates where do they stand on the arts? What are they willing to do to try to support an artistic community? Because it’s a good economic proposition. It isn’t just good for the soul, it’s good for economics and that’s been proven across many different dimensions.

37:56 So I think we should be demanding from leaders that they can articulate what their position is vis-a-vis the arts and what are they prepared to do to try to enable more artists and more arts to happen in the community. And we should be pressing them on it. If we don’t like the answer, we shouldn’t be voting for them.

38:10 Kinsee Morlan Or artists could take a page from the playbook of the cannabis industry. There’s citizens initiatives. What if artists piggybacked on one of the three housing initiatives that’ll be on the ballot next year, set aside some TOT, that’s the hotel tax money to go to homeless services because I mean, let’s be honest, artists versus homeless services would not go over well. But what if there was one bond measure, one citizens initiative that asked the city of San Diego to set aside some of this hotel tax money for homeless services and for artists? So there’s a lot of creativity. The cannabis industry has done an amazing… I mean, seriously, we could learn a thing. Yes.

38:53 Kotaro Nakamura We had the meetings for IDEA1 when you are planning the district. We talked about the critical mass issue. We don’t want to have the warehouse and the artist studio in the middle of nowhere. We need a critical mass to create the artist space. So I’d like you to talk about the IDEA1 and I want to talk about the Liberty Station, what you’re doing to create that critical mass.

39:24 David Malmuth Just briefly, thank you for bringing up IDEA1. So we opened a project a couple of weeks ago.

39:29 Kinsee Morlan Let’s show that video. IDEA1, video guy.

39:53 David Malmuth So that was the opening. We commissioned six art pieces and two art installations and we also commissioned that dance piece from a dance company called Art Motion. That space in the middle is called The Hub. That is a performance space. We’re not charging anybody to use that performance space.

40:07 Kinsee Morlan Hey, that’s space for artists.

40:09 David Malmuth It’s to inspire the community and we want it to be a place that is constantly changing. And as the building fills over the next year, we want that community to start to bring their friends so that there’s more really cool stuff, interesting, surprising stuff happening. Our hope… Oh, by the way, the A in IDEA stands for arts. Our hope, as Kotaro said, is that we sort of set an example and other developers, other enlightened people in the community say, “Wow, this is really cool to have this around. We really like this.” And they start to imagine ways that they can incorporate art into their projects. It’s excruciatingly difficult, speaking from a developer perspective, to figure out how to put the pieces together for affordable housing for anybody. And by the way, I’m a big advocate for affordable housing for not just artists, but for teachers and for cops and for all kinds of people.

40:56 We need that. So we need to do that, period. This project wasn’t intending to try to make that sort of housing. We were trying to create opportunities for artists to display work and all the work is impermanent. We’ll all be rotated. We also have a gallery that will be changed out every three to six months for smaller scale work, and the hub is a space where performance art can happen.

41:17 Kinsee Morlan But you haven’t cracked the code for… Your rent starts at 2,700, so you have not cracked the code for providing –

41:23 David Malmuth We haven’t on IDEA1, but let me just briefly make a pitch for the next project, which we’re trying to create what we’re calling attainable housing. The projects has onsite affordable and that’s 11%, but the rest of it, we’re trying to bring the cost of a one unit in downtown down about 20% through being really smart about how we build it and getting a great ground lease. The site is owned by the San Diego Community College District, working with the city to try to put some of those fees, which are high, trying to put them in the project so they actually add value. And we think if we can do that, we can figure out ways to create units that are affordable for people between 50 and $80,000. And that’s a really important, right now, underserved market as well, because there are a lot of people downtown that are in that salary range and they can’t afford to live downtown.

42:08 So that’s what we’re trying to do, but it’s a market project and I think that’s important because we need to create examples that show we can use the market to be able to create housing that’s affordable to people in that range.

42:21 Kinsee Morlan So are there other cities like National City, Lemon Grove, from Lemon Grove, so we’re very earth friendly there. La Mesa, National City, Tijuana. Are there other cities nearby? Should we just give up on that? Kathleen, I know you and other artists from Glashaus and from the… What is the Barrio Logan space? The union. Union. The Union, sorry, met with city leaders and didn’t get anywhere. So should we be moving to other cities?

42:53 Kathleen Mitchell And I have. I’ve met with the arts and culture in Chula Vista. I’ve met with the Chamber of Commerce in National City. I’ve looked at spaces in National City. So yeah, we’re starting to look other places that may possibly be more affordable. We haven’t found one yet, but we’re still plugging away at it. And we just decided we had to –

43:20 Kinsee Morlan Broaden your search.

43:21 Kathleen Mitchell We had to, yeah. People are also looking in industrial parks.

43:28 Kinsee Morlan Beryl, you just spent a month in a self-imposed residency in Tijuana. What are rents these days? I lived there and my rent was $200 a month, and that was in 2006 to 2009. So I know rent has gone up. The space I used to rent in Tijuana is now $400, so it’s doubled in that time, but it also was approved. So I don’t know, what are you paying in rent in Tijuana these days?

43:49 Beryl Forman Well, a couple of months ago, I took the opportunity to teach at a architecture school in right downtown Tijuana, and it was on Monday morning. So I preferred to, instead of beating the traffic on the trolley to get down there on Sunday, and it was very affordable. It was $25 a night. So it’s also, as an artist, I think it’s a unique challenge to live down there and really see yourself as more of a person who embraces this cross-border community. If you look to artists like JR’s piece, Highway Way has taken an interest in the border region. I definitely do think that local artists should take the opportunity to see Tijuana and San Diego as a unique environment, and Tijuana is a lot more affordable. It’s also on the trolley line, so crossing can become a simple opportunity.

44:39 Kinsee Morlan Anyone else have anything to say about that?

44:42 Jennifer de Poyen I just want to say, I feel like artists are always beggars at the table, and David sort of beat me to it, but I mean, there are studies that show that the arts have an enormous economic impact on communities much greater than football stadiums. Why do people not care? I don’t know, but maybe if we all just keep saying the same thing over and over to the right people or to everybody –

45:08 Kinsee Morlan Maybe if artists started tackling each other.

45:10 Kinsee Morlan What’s that?

45:10 Jennifer de Poyen We should start tackling each other.

45:12 Kinsee Morlan Wearing spandex.

45:13 Jennifer de Poyen I think Sam tried that.

45:16 Kathleen Mitchell We could make it a contact sport.

45:18 Jennifer de Poyen But yeah, I mean other cities, sure, artists can always move somewhere else. Is Manhattan a lesser place because all the artists are living in Brooklyn? Kind of, but it’s nice if you’re a tourist. So the question is, are we trying to appeal to tourists or are we trying to build a city that we all want to live in and benefit from? I mean, we work with students, at-risk students on our community projects, and we give them meaningful opportunities to engage with the arts. They’ve shown that even passing engagement with the arts helps improve civic engagement across the board. It improves communities. Cities should be begging artists to be in their centers, creating economic opportunity and improving the lives of citizens. So how do we keep saying that to the people who matter, getting the right people elected? David Alvarez is a big supporter of the arts.

46:23 He’s on the city council now. He is running for county supervisor. That would be someone you might want to talk to, find out where everybody else is. As we said, they’re turning over. This is historic actually.

46:36 Alan Ziter San Diego is a city of neighborhoods and there should be arts organizations in every neighborhood, but it’s not always intuitive to the people doing the planning in the neighborhoods and doing the community plans or even the businesses in the neighborhood, why having arts in your neighborhood matters. And I think having somebody write the case statement about why the arts matter in San Diego, why it should happen in your neighborhood, why it should be in your school, you’ve got to tell these people this and you got to keep hitting them over the head to the point where finally they’ll start repeating back some of the things you say, but it’s not intuitive to these politicians. These politicians are not generally at the opera or the symphony or even going to any of Sam’s performances.

47:16 We got to find other pathways to have the arts message resonate with them and getting back to this, figuring out this asset inventory of what does actually exist out there and what’s needed. I think the business improvement districts are good portal organizations because they’re so locally based and you can sort of tell what kind of buildings are in some of these neighborhoods that could be ripe for development. There is a group up in Toronto that’s been around since 1986. I think it’s called Artscape and they’re basically real estate developers for the arts and they’ve been building a lot of different creative spaces and I’m not sure about the affordability of it. I have to do more research, but they’ve been around since 86 and being a real estate developer for the arts, they’ve made a go of it.

47:55 Kinsee Morlan Okay. I’m going to do some house cleaning.You guys in the back, I reserved these seats for you actually. I’m not kidding. Come on up. I reserved seats for late comers because I’m rad like that. Also, we handed out a survey at the beginning of the talk. So please, please be sure to take some time, fill that out and hand it into the volunteers at the front table.

48:22 Kotaro Nakamura Can I comment something? Yes. Kind of following up the value of arts. Because I’m running a school and I have 700 students, art students in my building, I’m very sensitive about the health of art education. Something happened in 2008. Economy crashed and everybody became very conservative and parents are hesitant to send the young students to art department because they don’t see the occupation on the other side of the school. The other thing happened was the ISIS and all those conflicts and everybody became very scared and the society itself… So I feel that the artists are under siege right now and we have to do something about it. One thing that we are doing is the art entrepreneurship and creating the path for students to succeed after they graduate. It requires some kind of a changing philosophy that make something and the sell business model into the we are in the business of creating culture.

49:48 And so that includes the objects, paintings and glasswork and such and so forth, but also includes the placemaking and the business activity and all those other things. So I think it’s time to rethink what art is.

50:06 Kinsee Morlan All right, let’s talk about our schools because San Diego is a place. We have San Diego State University, we have UC San Diego, we have USD, we have all the city colleges and depending on who you talk to, the San Diego art scene actually started out Southwestern College. Anybody here is into the long time San Diego art history. So a lot of the art that happens is happening on campus. However, these campuses exist in a bubble. I hate going to them because I can never park and I get lost. Let’s show the UCSD video video guy. Sorry, I’m just throwing left hardballs at this guy. You can do it though. I have faith. So Kathleen, do you want to tell us what we’re looking at here?

51:05 Kathleen Mitchell Yeah, you’re looking at the UCSD Craft Center being demolished in August of 2015.

51:18 Kinsee Morlan Okay. So UC San Diego has had a complicated relationship with the arts, especially lately. Last year, the art gallery was almost float, the University Art Gallery, which has been around for over 50 years. The school itself has an international reputation for performance art in particular and conceptual art. How can we involve leaders at deans and people who are pulling strings at the campuses to help this cause?

51:46 Kathleen Mitchell Just can I give a little history of how this came about? Yes.

51:51 I taught at UCSD Craft Center for more than a decade. I taught glass blowing there. I started going to the Craft Center almost 30 years ago, initially taking a class and ultimately teaching there. The administration always thought that the Craft Center was just a little too funky for this austere campus. And so they really wanted to get rid of the Craft Center, which had existed for 40 years and was really a very soulful place on a really barren campus. So there was this window of opportunity where a new chancellor came in on Monday, September 22nd, and on Wednesday, September 24th, I got a call from my teaching assistant saying that the Craft Center had been closed down. They told all the students before they told any of the instructors and overnight we all lost our jobs. A memo was put out that said it was going to be closed for an academic year.

52:56 That was in 2012. It sat empty for three years and in 2015 it was demolished and there’s nothing there now.

53:05 Kinsee Morlan Ooh. You guys can boo. Those are so… I promise at the end of the night we will do Q&A, so hold on to your questions and I promise we will get to them. So again, what can universities do to help this? Beryl?

53:24 Beryl Forman Well, with that list of universities that you just mentioned, I just want to say that I happen to work with students and faculty from every one of those local universities in San Diego. Through my role with the Business Improvement Association, we lean on student work to support the needs of revitalizing El Cajon Boulevard, and that very much relates to enhancing public spaces. And so that’s kind of what’s guided me towards placemaking. It speaks to your description of these universities being isolated, that these students have generally very little know-how and appreciation for the city in which they live. And so getting them connected with communities sort of raises their confidence in their ability to work with communities outside of college and then contribute their skills and go from there. So actually work very closely with Kotaro and the arts department at SDSU. They’ve been involved in building out these public spaces.

54:22 Placemaking is also something that I do think is relative to the needs for our city and our binational region in that both San Diego and Tijuana sort of were developed on automobile grid and it didn’t really leave much room for public spaces and we really need to revisit that and put them into play. Those relate to creating artistic spaces, gathering spaces. Our motto with one of the lots on El Cajon Boulevard called Papa 15 is pop it up. So if you have ideas, we definitely have spaces where we want to see activation happen.

54:55 Kinsee Morlan Yes.

54:56 Kotaro Nakamura San Diego State, we have two spaces at Liberty Station. Thanks to Alan providing us with a discount rate for two studio spaces using for incubator for graduating students and the new faculties who can afford to have a studio space. Thank you. And I’m trying to do the same with IDEA1.

55:18 Kinsee Morlan No pressure.

55:20 Kotaro Nakamura And also downtown gallery. We have a gallery space near the train depot and that’s a tax write off for the BOSA development, that’s electoral condominium and they knew that the space is non-leasable facing the Broadway near the water. So they are leasing us, I think in $1 a year or something.

55:45 Kinsee Morlan Oh, nice.

55:46 Kotaro Nakamura And it’s a write off. So there are creative ways to do outreach. The other thing we do is that we push our students out to the community so that I know it’s intimidating to come to San Diego State, fight over parking spaces against the crazy students. So we have the name art produce gallery and taboo studio and the other places, other venues so that instead of creating the bubble on campus, that we push the art to the outside.

56:22 Kinsee Morlan Okay. Who’s going to talk to the dean at San Diego to get them to like the arts again?

56:29 David Malmuth I think the downtown… UC San Diego Urban is an opportunity for them to engage.

56:35 Kinsee Morlan He’s talking about a development project where the courtyard used to be. Yeah, right.

56:39 David Malmuth So it’s a block away. So I’ve spoken to Dan Atkinson who’s going to be doing the programming and suggested just like I did with Kotaro, that while they’re building it, so it’s two and a half years away, that they use the hub as a sandbox. No cost, no risk. Come and play, try things. And it’s very much in their interest to do it because there’s a whole bunch of people on campus right now who are scratching their heads saying, why should we be in downtown? Things are perfect in La Jolla. So what we’re hoping is that by engaging with downtown in a way that starts to create some excitement, particularly with students, that it’s going to start to generate excitements with faculty. And that’s been a pattern of suburban universities who have had urban campuses. So what we’re trying to do is to give them a place where they can try things and hopefully we’ll have really great experiences and we’ll start to generate some enthusiasm that will then carry over when they have a permanent presence.

57:27 Kinsee Morlan Let’s talk for a minute about Arts District Liberty Station. Nick. Nick Lesley has a name. Is that you, Nick?

57:36 Diane Peabody Straw We came to Liberty Station for the opportunity of being involved with the Arts District. It had the promise of community that was dedicated to the arts and culture here in San Diego, and I think it was just a very natural fit for the women’s museum.

57:57 Lauren LeVieux I was looking specifically for a place where I could work and show my work. What kept coming up in my research is Liberty Station, so that’s why I came down here to check it out and I was just like, “Oh, if I could get a studio like that, it’d be so great.”

58:14 Michelle Ballantyne We’re really drawn to all the artists here and the collaboration and all the potential that’s here. We also have family ties here. My grandpa was stationed here years ago, as well as Kelsey’s uncle and her fiance’s grandpa. It’s so neat to be part of the history in a way and it’s present and future.

58:33 Robert Scott I came down, I was really blown away by the atmosphere and all the art studios and the creative energy that I saw down here, and I really wanted to be part of it.

58:45 Gabriela Vila We were looking for an opportunity to bring artists from Mexico to exhibit in America. We came to see the space and we got super excited. We came over here and we were the first gallery here.

59:00 Diane Peabody Straw Here in the Women’s Museum, we’re just one of, I believe, three museums here in Arts District Liberty Station. So we add opportunity for community members to be able to experience arts and culture and broaden their horizons.

59:17 Lauren LeVieux Because it’s a place where I can work in the same room where I show my work. I actually like that because that way when visitors come and see my work, they see my process as well. I think that the process of making art is part of the finished product.

59:33 Kinsee Morlan All right. I do love Liberty Station. I go there a lot with my kids, but Alan, I also give you a hard time about how expensive it is a lot.

59:42 Alan Ziter Yes, you always do. And I don’t think you fully realize how inexpensive it is for the nonprofit dance groups and nonprofit music or museum organizations and how much money we also put into programming there to hire teaching artists to teach in our Liberty School program and then this Coming year, we have allocated $60,000 to do site specific commissions. There’s an RFP out right now on our website, NTC Foundation. It took a while to get there. This has been basically renovate, operate, decorate. These buildings that the Navy gave us were no gift. It’s cost us about $85 million just to renovate the buildings to get that certificate of occupancy from the city. We still have 10 more buildings to go. And I’m hoping that I’m there long enough to finally see the building’s cash flowing away that we can put more money into programming and into the pockets of artists and also subsidize more spaces like we’re doing for the SDSU students.

1:00:35 But it’s a challenge. I mean, if we could make space cheap, we would make space cheap. Space is not always cheap.

1:00:42 Kinsee Morlan But for the next 10 buildings, could people advocate to the city or county to give you more money so that there could be a cap on rent?

1:00:53 Alan Ziter Possibly. I mean, I actually have been meeting with the city about a chunk of money for one of the big buildings that we have to renovate. It’s 41,000 square feet. This would help us put a 300 seat performance venue in there. And as I’ve told some folks, there really is no good 300 seat theater in Mission Hills, Hillcrest, Point Loma, Ocean Beach, Mission Beach. This would be a great regional draw and bring more people down to the arts district. And we’re more than visual arts. We have a lot of dance groups and music organizations as well.

1:01:21 Kathleen Mitchell Can I add something?

1:01:23 Kinsee Morlan Yes.

1:01:24 Kathleen Mitchell I’m a self-employed artist and I can’t afford $3 a square foot. And that’s what I’m quoted at Liberty Station. And so the nonprofits, the dance groups, the theaters, that’s a good fit, but the independent artist is not a good fit in Liberty Station at those rates.

1:01:44 Alan Ziter And I agree. I’m a nonprofit organization. I would love a three bedroom condo downtown, but I can’t afford it either. So I mean, it’s just that market over there is not conducive to big warehouse type of spaces that are really cheap, unfortunately.

1:01:57 Kathleen Mitchell But it creates a very sterile arts community. Arts communities in my experience sort of grow organically. Artists find one another and create spaces where we’re comfortable working for one another. Labeling something an art district and then pricing out artists is a little bit hard to grasp.

1:02:21 Alan Ziter Well, it’s 100% occupied, so I can’t say it’s not working in all areas.

1:02:28 David Malmuth Can I share?

1:02:29 Kinsee Morlan Yeah.

1:02:31 David Malmuth In found spaces, like in the arts district in LA, for example, where artists started to populate it in the 70s where they were just giving space to anybody who was willing to try to make it safe, that kind of organic growth is much more feasible. This was not a found space. This was a very specific –

1:02:47 Kinsee Morlan And the city tasked you with a very huge challenge.

1:02:50 David Malmuth And another thing I would say, Alan and I have known each other 10 years and when we first started talking, it wasn’t inevitable that there’d be any arts district in Liberty Station. It wasn’t inevitable there’d be any artists in Liberty Station. So what I think he has achieved is remarkable. It is not the answer to all of the wishes and the hopes that we would have, but that’s because we can’t put that all on this one district. We need to have a multitude of arts districts so that artists at different places in their careers can afford to be able to do their work.

1:03:18 Kinsee Morlan Right. To be fair, Alan is the reason there’s any artist there out there at all. Give him a hand. So Jennifer, I have a question mark by your name. Did you bring a video for us tonight? Did I bring a video? We think so. All right. Let’s make it happen.

1:03:40 NBC 7 reporter Space is tight on this half acre property in Logan Heights where students and volunteers are helping the nonprofit Space 4 Art build a permanent home that’ll be an affordable artist colony.

1:03:50 Volunteer Artist #1 It might feel a little bit crowded, but our goal is to create it in such a way that, and kind of the same view of a tiny home.

1:03:58 NBC 7 reporter As architects survey the stage to make sure it’s level, students from High Tech High in Chula Vista adjust the framework.

1:04:07 Bob Leathers (Space 4 Art Founder) There’s going to be an amphitheater, which is being built right behind me. That is going to seat 120 people.

1:04:14 Volunteer Artist #2 It’s definitely not something I would assume that we did in ninth grade, but it’s been a great experience.

1:04:20 NBC 7 reporter Space 4 Art has been leasing property in the East Village for the last several years. The building is being redeveloped, so the group is losing about a third of its space.

1:04:28 Bob Leathers (Space 4 Art Founder) Even though we’re making it affordable as possible to build, the kids are making it affordable. They’ve already built eight houses, all the marginal units.

1:04:40 NBC 7 reporter The nonprofit was able to buy the abandoned lot on Market Street for $350,000 when the real estate market was low, with the hope that it will eventually house 55 artist studios with space for 35 artists to live. And when students and volunteers finish the temporary amphitheater at the beginning of June, it’ll be used for performances and outdoor space for local artists. The biggest challenge for the art center is raising enough money to finish this facility. It’ll be at least a few years before artists can live here permanently. In Logan Heights, May CHOA, NBC seven.

1:05:19 Kinsee Morlan So Jennifer, give us some numbers. How much money do we need to raise to make that happen?

1:05:25 Jennifer de Poyen Well, it depends on the model and which way you go, but at least a couple million dollars between two and four, depending. We’re going to use probably new market credits and we’re hoping to find… It’s a tough challenge because we’d like to find a developer, maybe art, what was it called? Artscape.

1:05:56 Artscape, a developer that is really interested in keeping it affordable. But on the other hand, as both David and Alan have pointed out, it’s really hard to do. It’s going to require, I think, a commitment from the city to somehow step up. And also I think we’re going to have to find a donor community that is interested in emerging artists, in supporting creative placemaking, activation. That’s what Space 4 Art has been doing since it was built or founded in 2011. So we’re really hopeful that we can do this, but it’s going to take a huge effort and it’s going to take a huge communal effort. I mean, you saw the kids working. They put up the amphitheater and the gallery and the boardwalk in our future home site in an empty lot in one month. Now, of course, there was a lot of planning and designing before that that went into it that Bob and other artists at Space 4 Art did with the kids, but it was essentially a barn raising, like old school.

1:07:13 And maybe somewhere between the corporate model, everything being done exactly to code and the Sam model where you just go completely renegade is really the community model, which is people banding together, giving their time, giving their passion and their resources to make it happen. And it starts with the artists. I mean, it really does start and end with the artists. There has to be a burning passion there. And then there also has to be support on the government level as well and business and philanthropic community, I would say.

1:07:55 Kinsee Morlan All right. I’m going to ask one more question and then open it up to Q&A to the audience. Sam, as a nomad curator, you worked inside spaces like the Downtown Library and other spaces that you mentioned earlier. Is there anything that you’ve learned from this experience that you feel could be…

1:08:17 Sam Lopez Whoa, whoa. First off, I’m sorry. Did you say a noise show at the Downtown Library? Holy fudge. Give the library a round of applause for that. Come on, serious. A noise show at the downtown library. I own all the Nate Hubbard over there. I saw him about four or five, six years ago at the old downtown library. I’m like, “Jesus Christ, this is cool.” It was an auditorium, totally… Well, there’s a couple people there and Nate and his buddy Curtis were doing some beautiful noise.

1:08:45 Kinsee Morlan So most businesses or places like the downtown library, they hear like, “Oh, there’s going to be someone eating and playing glass and they’re inclined to say no.” So how did you get –

1:08:59 Sam Lopez Well, that old library… And for years I tried to get in there and like, “Hey, can I do a show there? I saw somebody else do it. Why can’t I do it?”

1:09:05 Kinsee Morlan So here’s my question. How did you worm your way into spaces that are not spaces?

1:09:09 Sam Lopez Well, worming is for corpses. I’m not a corpse.

1:09:12 Kinsee Morlan How’d you do it?

1:09:13 Sam Lopez But I was determined homegrown. All right. And what I did was I kept going back and I tried to get a dialogue with the library or anybody really in this instance. It could be your next door neighbor’s bookstore, which is another thing we’ve done. But you just got to be very determined and have a good communication and say your yeses and your pleases and your thank yous. It’s very important. My mom taught me well. If you’re a dick, you’re going to get the shaft, bottom line. But if you’re really nice and you say yes, thank you and please and may I, it works, right? So that’s what happened. And then a couple years after just trying to be very determined and try to crack that nut, I got an email and it said, “Hi, I’m from the San Diego Library and my nuts dropped.” I said, “Whoa, yeah.” Without even reading it, I answered, “Yes, I would.” They went back up and we had our first noise show at the Valencia Park Library and people loved it.

1:10:15 They freaking loved it. They wanted something new, something that would just revitalize this old wormy corpse. All right.

1:10:23 Kinsee Morlan All right. A big hand to our panelists. I also want to again thank Xavier Vasquez for organizing, Jim Brown for the space. And John Amita Breed Bradley, SpaceTime over there working the video. Alexis Negron and Nick Lesley, Francisco Eme, Anthony Vasquez, Culture Change Consultants, Charlie Bradley Entertainment Services, Richard Gleaves. Are you here? Oh, there you are. Josh Pavlick from Helmuth Projects and all of you guys for showing up. So do you guys have microphones? There’s a microphone, so just raise your hand if you have questions. One of these people can come to you.

1:11:10 Alan Ziter Hey Kinsee, while that’s going on, I just want to point out California Lawyers for the Arts, the San Diego chapter is here tonight. They created a two-pager about the kind of questions you as a tenant prospect looking for art space should be asking landlords, ranging from use of common area to disposable hazardous material to do you have an occupancy permit and are you up to code? So take that free sheet. It’s in the back table back there.

1:11:34 Kinsee Morlan Oh, thank you. Awesome. All right. First question.

1:11:37 Rachel Fernandez Okay. Hi. So I’m Rachel Fernandez. You mentioned me. I’ve been trying to write some articles about the art scene here. Kind of came in as an outsider because I’ve been away for quite some time, so it’s been interesting sort of uncovering what’s going on. As I’m listening to this, first of all, I think this is an amazing event and the fact that everyone’s having these conversations is huge and needs to keep happening. So I’m going to do a quick plug, which is that we’re also furthering this conversation on Sunday up in Oceanside, which was named a cultural arts district by the state and really has very little infrastructure and very little to protect tenants’ rights. So that brings me to my point, which is I feel like there’s a little bit of an elephant in the room here, which is that there’s a housing crisis all over the country and gentrification is huge and real and vanishing spaces, so to speak, has been something that poor people and people of color have dealt with for a really long time.

1:12:35 Probably California used to belong to Mexico is Mexico. So the point is, my question is that this is a great space, right? And you mentioned Athenaeum earlier. Athenaeum has an event coming up that’s a papel picado making workshop. It’s $60 a head. I’m sorry, we’re in Barrio Logan in a cultural center for the Mexican community. papel picado is a cheap way that people get together and decorate their homes for the holidays and for different events. And to charge $60 is, to me, that’s part of the problem. I just kind of want to know from the panelists, I think this is a great representation of what San Diego has to offer. I mean, you guys brought up earlier that we already have a lot of resources. So what are we going to do as a community to address these issues and contribute with each other and get together to make affordable events and not just spaces, but events that are in spaces that are already here accessible to the public so we can broaden these conversations with the people that live in each community?

1:13:39 So that’s my question.

1:13:41 Kinsee Morlan Great question. Who wants to take it?

1:13:43 Sam Lopez Does that include dinner? Yeah. Oh shit.

1:13:52 Kinsee Morlan So how do we keep things from the $60 workshop from happening or how can we subsidize, expand the arts audience, which is getting older and richer and less colorful? Anyone? I mean, that’s a hard question.

1:14:11 David Malmuth Well, look, there are really good models that have emerged in East Village between Silo and Courtyard. Those were good examples of tactical urbanism and Kotaro has got a focus in his work on trying to figure out how do we use creative placemaking in a fashion that enables performance to happen, art to happen, that isn’t always so precious. Maybe it’s temporary, but that’s okay. Maybe that’s a way of lowering costs. So one of the challenges we have right now downtown is that doing these kinds of temporary installations, really anything pop up is ridiculously expensive and wastes huge amounts of time. So Liz Dubaker’s been trying for the last two years to get an ordinance pass that allows what should take two weeks to take two weeks rather than two years. And it looks like that’s going to go forward to the council in December. So if that happens, then there’s going to be, my prediction, a mushrooming of temporary projects, pop-up projects that happen that hopefully will create more opportunities for artists.

1:15:10 Kotaro Nakamura What we are trying to do is make a coalition of art organization, and that’s why I know most of the people in this panel, and we are in discussion with the Art Institute at the Baldwin Park and having all those organizations putting the effort together, I think we can create the strong energy in San Diego and also we can make things more affordable because we have a massive list of donors. So we don’t have to charge that much for the art experience.

1:15:51 Kathleen Mitchell I’d like to bring up another thing that has been going on for a number of years in National City, which is called A Reason to Survive Arts. They have temporarily suspended operation right now, which I can’t really speak to. I just know that they’ve suspended operation for the time being, but I looked to that as a great model. They took over, I believe it was an old library in a very central part by Kimball Park in National City, and it looked like it was flourishing and I certainly hope it comes back and serves as a model.

1:16:25 Kinsee Morlan Well, if you move out of the city of San Diego, you no longer get the city of San Diego funding. So I think that might have played a part in that situation. Also, there’s a lot of grants right now, or not a lot, but in 2016, I wrote a story about how lots of the bigger arts organizations are getting grants from the Irvine Foundation and some outside entities that specifically task arts organizations with doing programming that’s affordable and accessible and in places where people live and work and in communities of color. I mean, that grant though is going away. The Irvine Foundation is pivoting and doing something else now. So I don’t know. Yeah.

1:17:10 Beryl Forman I do think the trend around placemaking and looking out to the outside to the public space should be well embraced in San Diego because of our weather. It took us a long time to even sort of legalize getting outdoor seating in front of cafes. So it kind of goes to show how sort of backwards our thinking is in the city, but ultimately, our infrastructure’s old and that’s where kind of placemaking comes into play for people to participate in what they want to see become of it and then play that role in it and make it a much more inviting space. Also look to vacant lots.

1:17:44 Kinsee Morlan And people can see one that you’ve had a hand in at 44th and El Cajon.

1:17:50 Beryl Forman My recent line is I have lots of lots. So recently we got a lease from the city at the 15 and El Cajon Boulevard. That’s the one that’s really pop it up. So if you have ideas rent –

1:18:01 Kinsee Morlan And the last time I was at your place, there were free salsa lessons going on.

1:18:06 Beryl Forman So it is – Yeah, so we’re activating it. The other one is Fair44 where it’s also more mission driven about offering people who maybe work in the more affordable economy to get a business off the ground. There’s even a pop-up shop that Kotaro student designed. So artists, retailers could rent it for a day, a weekend. Those are the types of opportunities I think we’re lending to the creative community.

1:18:29 Kinsee Morlan All right, next question. Where’s the microphone person? Okay.

1:18:35 Jonathan Bailey Okay. I’m Jonathan Buley with the Snapshots Foundation, and I just wanted to comment. I think that the reason why there’s a sense of urgency is because developers are seeing the gold rush and every space around town I see is either for sale or in development. So first I want to thank Sam for setting a great example with pop-up events, things that you can do right now. Samset’s a great example for all of us. But secondly, I think that maybe it’s time to start thinking about development spaces, industrial spaces that the city could set aside as a performance arts space, just like what’s happening right here.This was an industrial space and we’re benefiting from the charity of the owner to be here. So I would just say that that seems like the middle ground. There are spaces that will be abandoned. Will the city become a partner and set aside certain areas in different communities around San Diego so we can have spaces in the community for performances?

1:19:41 And if you could comment on that, that would be great. Thank you.

1:19:46 David Malmuth I have a comment. Any enterprise that assumes that the city’s going to step forward and take leadership is doomed from the outset. I mean, that’s just the reality. This happened because Jim Brown wanted to make this happen and he was smart enough and tenacious enough to figure out how he could put together the partnerships, including the city. I’m not suggesting the city is not motivated to want to do the right thing. It’s just that it’s not typically in the DNA of people working there to take leadership on projects that entail a lot of risk. And these kinds of projects take a lot of risk and a lot of guts to make them happen. So what I hope to do is to empower people who want to make crazy projects like this happen and give them the skill sets that they can go figure out ways to get it done and be smart enough and create the kinds of collaborations and partnerships that allow these projects to be successful.

1:20:41 Kinsee Morlan Downtown Johnny Brown’s is vacant. It’s owned by the city. No one wants to lease it. They’ve put out multiple RFPs and there’s no takers. So maybe it’s time to approach the city and say, “Hey, how about it faces the plaza, the Civic Plaza. There’s a performance space right there. Rip out the bars and…” Well, you can leave the bar, but rip out the seating. You could do something cool. I actually requested from the city a list of all vacant city owned property and they can’t provide that. You instead have to go to the city’s real estate office website and look at the outstanding RFPs and compare that with a map and put the two together. I was lazy. I could have done it myself, but I didn’t but yeah. So anyway, you could look at what resources are there. Next question. Richard, you’re louder.

1:21:31 Richard So two quick data points and a question for the panel. I believe about six months ago, the Union Trib had an article about a massive new building construction at UCSD campus. And in the middle of the article, I was realizing, I was reading the description of a replacement craft center, which is, it’s going to be new and high tech. It’s going to be more like a maker lab. They talked about building surfboards, but it was several thousand square feet. Didn’t say anything about the old craft center, but it’s clear they’ve had it in mind all this time to try and do something similar to that. So there’s that data point. Kinsey, I’m an alumni. So I got the alumni magazine. Another article I’m talking about how they’re building like crazy and it was an extensive article about the future building there had quotes from the chancellor saying, “As soon as we get our trolley, we are going to turn ourselves into a cultural magnet for the whole city.” So they know exactly what they’re going to solve with the parking problem as soon as they get that trolley extension.

1:22:30 And it sounds like they’re going to reorganize their programming to invite the bigger city to come in and use it as a culture center. So second data point, question for the panelist question, especially with Kathleen because she’s looked for space and also the developers. What is the big demographic trend at this point because this talk is about vanishing space. Is it going to be business as usual that you’re going to find some lemon grove El Cajon, something like that, that’s being neglected and has spare underused property and artists will gather out there just like they’ve been doing everywhere? Or is something deeper happening that old game of artists chasing around the region, finding places and developers chasing after them is going to stop because something deeper is happening and basically all the places are sewed up, all the places are being developed and there’s nowhere for artists to find a building to DIY.

1:23:25 That’s my question.

1:23:28 Kinsee Morlan Big question.

1:23:31 Kathleen Mitchell I am aware of the new sterile craft center that’s being planned at UCSD, which will mimic much of the rest of UCSD, I’m sure. So yes, I was part of the group that kind of held on and tried to work with the administration to rebuild something and ultimately we threw up our hands. So where do we go? I don’t know how far east or south I’m going to have to go. We’re looking everywhere. I just looked at a place in National City that wanted $1.30 a square foot and Wendy Mariama and I were going through cobwebs and spiders and in this rickety building and thought, no, no.

1:24:19 Richard So in the sense that you think that things are actually different from what they’ve done in the.

1:24:29 Kathleen Mitchell I think there might be a place to go in the county. I’m pretty close to giving up on the city.

1:24:35 Kotaro Nakamura Well, we are looking to shopping malls. They say 50% of the shopping malls will close.

1:24:43 Kinsee Morlan Retail Armageddon. It’s upon us.

1:24:46 Kotaro Nakamura Have you been to Horton Plaza recently?

1:24:48 Kinsee Morlan Ghost towns.

1:24:49 Kathleen Mitchell Ghost towns.

1:24:51 Kotaro Nakamura So those are opportunity we have and look for those opportunity to occupy those spaces.

1:25:01 Kinsee Morlan I can talk as a homeowner who’s in the process of trying to find a new home within my parameters, which is affordable, pretty affordable housing. I don’t make that much money. And Canto is a great community and that’s where there’s still some affordable places. Lemon Grove is an affordable community. Spring Valley is an affordable community. So we still have this strip right in the middle there.

1:25:25 Jennifer de Poyen I think it’s important for our leaders and certainly artists, again, to advocate for central locations for artists to gather. Artists need to be with other artists. They need to exchange ideas. They need to exchange tricks, like the trade stuff, like how do you do this? How do you do that? I mean, Space 4 Art has done that and continues to do that. People stand around and talk about things. You invite people into your studio. You say, “What do you think of this? Well, you could try that.” That’s what causes art to flourish. Yes, artists can go to Encanto and Lemon Grove and those communities will benefit from that. The question is, does San Diego have the vision of itself and the means of persuading the apparently Neanderthal? No one said that, but the political leaders who do not have in their DNA, that’s a very good way of putting it.

1:26:28 They’re risk averse. They give more money to big organizations, less money to small organizations, no money to individual artists pretty much. How do we change that other than to continue to gather in central places, make noise and work together to keep making space for art?

1:26:53 Kinsee Morlan Mark Quint has shown us how you don’t need a central La Jolla location to have a thriving art gallery. His gallery is now in an office park on Santa Fe Street in a dead zone, but he realized that no one walking by, foot traffic is not going to… No one’s going to walk in and buy a $10,000 painting. So he’s thriving there. Next question, Susanna.

1:27:19 Susanna Peredo Swap Hi, I’m Susanna Peredo Swap, executive director of the Vanguard Culture. First of all, if anybody filled out those little surveys, you can go ahead and pass them on to the center and I’ll pick them up for you. What I find really interesting in San Diego, and I’ve lived a lot of different places around the world, and what I’ve discovered about San Diego that it’s pretty unique to this town is that arts organizations and artists tend to work in silos here. So you have visual artists that don’t hang out with museum people and museum people don’t hang out with gallerists. You have theater people that don’t necessarily hang out with dance people. You have the film community in their own little world over there. And so that was sort of the impetus for starting this organization, which was to try to create a virtual space that would introduce all of the wonderful creative activity happening around town to one another so that you could share resources, collaborate, be inspired by one another’s work.

1:28:27 And so in these years of arts advocacy and arts programming that I’ve done, which has been about 20 years now here in San Diego, I had the opportunity to actually work to help transform that building that used to be a reason to survive space. I was working for the city of National City at the time and they got a $10 million grant to build a beautiful new library and the old building was just sitting there. And it took about three years of advocacy, putting little notes and little flyers of information about the impact of the arts into all of the city council members’ folders. And every time they would speak about the arts, I would write a little thank you card and say, “Thank you for speaking up about the arts.” They wanted to turn it into a rehab center. They wanted to turn it into office spaces for rent, obviously all these income generating sort of opportunities.

1:29:27 But I stuck with it. I stuck with it. Eventually they kind of came around to this idea because in places like National City that have the lowest median income in the county, you need places for people to release all of that stress and you need to give your community places where instead of gang activity or being out in the street, because there’s nothing else to do. There really isn’t a lot to do except hang out on the street with your friends. So if you don’t create a hub, a space for them To collaborate and learn about art and express themselves, then you’re actually contributing to this problem of gang violence and all these other things. So eventually that happened and I’m so sad that they closed their doors because if you saw what that building looked like before, what they have done to that space is truly, truly impressive.

1:30:22 I mean, I don’t even know if you can walk in anymore, but it is beautiful. And that was all done through the hard work of students, of their own students who are dealing with parents who are in jail and lots of other really terrible issues, homelessness and things like that. So I’m really, really proud of what they were able to accomplish in terms of the programmatic transformation of the area and also the physical changes that they provided for that building and for the community. The city actually benefited a lot from their presence there. They used those same students and aspiring artists to create murals all over the city. They used found objects and materials and created pathways, these beautiful city planning type things that were so impressive and really beautified their area. So lastly, I think that the big… I’ll go back to the big problem here is that I think it’s really misguided to think, and this is a tendency here in San Diego.

1:31:31 I’ve been doing this for 20 years. I’ve seen this happen. I’m trying to advocate for the arts, but what I noticed is that when one dance company, it’s almost like it’s competitive. If a dance company sees another dance company succeed, it’s almost like they feel like you’re taking away my success in some way.

1:31:51 Kinsee Morlan So do you have a… Sorry, I have to speed it up.

1:31:53 Susanna Peredo Swap Sorry obviously. So I think what I’d like to get from this panel is what do you think your organizations could do to encourage creative collaboration across the board so that you’re not just focusing on your own particular area of expertise and sort of elevating San Diego’s arts and culture as a whole, if that makes sense?

1:32:18 Kotaro Nakamura I think that requires cultural change. What we are doing is actually San Diego State, very fortunate university recognized the value of arts and putting a lot of energy and communication and fundraising into arts. And so that’s a fortunate part. We are inviting Nick Cave to come into San Diego and give a lecture in October 24th, no 25th next year. But with that, we are creating a three way collaborative courses, arts, dance and theater, the costume making because Nick Cave is the guy with the sound suit. And so those three classes will work together to create the costume working with Nick Cave in Chicago. And so those are the things to change the culture. So we don’t work in bubbles. We work together with other schools, other museums and such and so on. All right.

1:33:24 Beryl Forman Thank you. Next question. I just wanted to add too, it’s a large question that you add, but I do have a very big interest in National City as well. So I’ve been thinking about more like where these central urban hubs are really on both sides of the border that already have somewhat of an arts community there, a cultural community. Events are happening regularly. There’s collaboration and putting that on a map and really celebrating that and making that a place where people want to live, people want to visit. I know Barrio Logan just got their cultural designation. There’s talks about how we’re going to get one in City Heights because there is a pulse there, but I think with that comes more opportunity. So just looking to where all these hubs exist, we all work in line together and continue to sort of set our goals high.

1:34:19 Kinsee Morlan Sorry, someone back here has the mic, I believe. Oh, you do.

1:34:23 Gloria Pour Hi, my name’s Gloria Poor and many moons ago in the early ’60s, I was told to draft a live work ordinance for the city of San Diego. I did that. We all know what happened in downtown San Diego with a permanent arts community. So I recently found myself in National City and National City’s been brought up many times tonight. I bought a warehouse in National City and I am the personal sacrificial lamb in that city for artists live work currently. But during the last three years, I’ve had a battle with the city planning and building department about the subject of artists live work quarters codes. The Oakland event was a very unfortunate event, but not a good example of artists live work. It was a very poor example of artists live work. So in this battle of hybrid code compliance, hybrid of commercial and residential code, and I’m not talking about public performance or exhibition space, I’m only talking about artists live work.

1:35:38 Very currently with… Well, there’s two things to take into mind here. For 25 years, there’s been something in the state of California called SBA 12, and it allows city officials to relax the building code and give a definition of what artists live work quarters can be in their city. Many cities have done that and they have specific building codes to be followed that are somewhat relaxed. Sprinkler systems, things that sometimes make artists live work quarters unaffordable for the developer of the building or the individuals working together.

1:36:23 Since Oakland, there is something in 2017 called Assembly Bill 565. And it says, and it has not been passed yet, they’re still arguing over it, that any city that chooses to invite artists live work quarters into their area must address the subject of the definition of what artists live work quarters is in fire building and safety codes because it is very complicated and there are no solutions until you do address the definition. The good news, folks, is that there’s one city planner down in National City because of my meetings with the city and my arguing and I have been sacrificed that has been tasked to draft a live work ordinance for National City. And there’s an area called the west side. It’s called the West Side Plan. It’s that little area of east of Highway five and to National City Boulevard where there are about 30 warehouses.

1:37:40 They all kind of look the same and they want those to become artists live work quarters. Earlier in 2017, they put out 96 notices to the business occupants of those buildings that they were out of compliance with what National City wants to take place in the West Side plan. They also say on page 32, paragraph four of the west side plan, artists live work quarters is a permissible use. So the planning department says, yes, you can live and work in a warehouse in the west side plan, but the building and fire department never addressed the definition of that subject.

1:38:30 Kinsee Morlan So what can people do? I’m sorry, I have to cut you off.

1:38:32 Gloria Pour They’re doing it. They’ve been tasked with the definition of artists live work quarters in the west side plan and maybe in all of National City.

1:38:44 Kinsee Morlan So artists should keep an eye on that.

1:38:46 Gloria Pour Absolutely. With all those warehouses going to open up somewhat, they need a little pushing. And I’ve been down there pushing all by myself. It’s not been easy.

1:38:58 Kinsee Morlan Thank you. Back here in the hat, I think.

1:39:07 Ryan Hi, my name is Ryan. I have an artist space here in the city of San Diego. There you go. I have an art space here in San Diego and there’s two things that I’ve heard talked about today is the housing crisis and also the lack of mixed use space. It seemed like there was talk about competition for different types of artists and the different needs that those different artists require to do their art. As the city grows and builds out and redevelops, I see that there’s incredible opportunity for new spaces to be developed and to have that more mixed use capability developed into those spaces or baked into those spaces. In going to meetings and in talking to city people, I’ve seen that there’s more of a push for bars and big business more of a stuff, not so much of a push for mixed use space.

1:40:14 It’s sort of something that wasn’t really on their radar. So that was my question is how does somebody advocate for changing the use of a space more of a mixed use space as opposed to more of a standard bar and entertainment space?

1:40:32 Ryan When I say mixed use space, I’m thinking something like Queen Bee’s Art Center where there’s a lot of different things going on and set up. It’s more of like an empty box, not where it’s just music or just this or just that, just a gallery space. It’s a space that’s set up to be used for a lot of different things. And that’s what I’d like to see more of. I’m trying to get involved more, but I wanted to ask the panel about how somebody can go about getting involved in things like that or advocating for things like that because I’m just not really sure where to start.

1:41:11 Kinsee Morlan I mean, that space that you referenced simply exists because the landlord wants it to. Space 4 Art flourished because of Bob Sinclair, who was a property owner who gave a shit about art and culture. So I mean that’s my answer is to find landlords that care, but maybe the developer –

1:41:27 Kathleen Mitchell The building we’re sitting in.

1:41:29 Kinsee Morlan The building we’re sitting in, developer, architect who cares about art and wants this to happen. Bob? He can maybe answer your question. This is Bob, one of the founders of Space 4 Art.

1:41:51 Bob Leathers (Space 4 Art Founder) It’s very simple. We need $1.5 million to close the gap.

1:41:59 Kinsee Morlan Put it out there, Bob.

1:41:59 Bob Leathers (Space 4 Art Founder) That sounds like an awful lot of money, doesn’t it? But with $1.5 million, we can build an art center that will house 40 artists in work live, really cool work live spaces. It’ll have two galleries. It’s going to have an outdoor performing space, three classrooms, metal shop, wood shop, the whole bit. All that. All we need is $1.5 million. Now you go out and try and find one of these philanthropists in San Diego to give you 1.5 million to build that space for very much needed artists. Good luck. We’ve been trying for five years. Good luck. We own the land. We’ve got the kids building prefabs, all that. But look at it differently. All of you up here, can you afford $1,500 for this project?

1:43:17 I’m not going to ask you to raise your hands, but I know most of you personally. I don’t know if Sam can, I don’t know him that well, but I do know the rest of you and you could afford it. Now, what does that really mean? We have a hundred people here. Hundred people divide that into $1.5 million and you have only $15,000. You know what? Each one of you knows 10 people who could give $1,500 and we’ve done it. We’re off. We then ever center and we plan the second one. In other words, the artists do it. You do it. Each one of you. It’s up to you. It’s your responsibility. Forget the city politicians. Yeah, we need them. We’ll go and try and get them, but they’ll believe it when you do it. You do it and they’ll follow you. They don’t lead.

1:44:22 You do.

1:44:25 Kinsee Morlan Right on. November 28th, Giving Tuesday, everyone could launch their own Space 4 Art crowdfunding campaign. Next question. How about someone way in the back? How about way in the back? Stand up the other way.

1:44:39 Tommy Walborn Hi. My name is Tommy Walborn. I’m an architectural designer here in San Diego.

1:44:49 Kinsee Morlan Speak up.

1:44:49 Tommy Walborn I have a question for the… Kind of piggybacking off of that actually for the more development savvy people on the panel. Are you familiar with financial models for cooperative spaces for artists or cooperative developments? I’ve heard a lot tonight about the economic growth that artist communities bring to neighborhoods and there’s this phenomenon of artists never really reaping the benefits of those economic growths. So you see examples in cities from LA to New York of artist communities growing and then getting pushed out by the economic development that they help create. So I’m curious if you’re familiar with development models that allow artists to become partial owners of those spaces and help to plant their feet so that they don’t get pushed out as the economic development that they create follows the benefit.

1:46:04 David Malmuth I’m not, but this group Artscape, this is what they specialize in. We did a panel actually with Bob about six years ago talking about art spaces and they’ve done a number, 20 plus projects and they do have a model that allows the artists to participate in the equity buildup so that they benefit from the success because yeah, there’s sort of this irony. Artists make a place cool and they make it so cool that it becomes too expensive for them to live there. So what they were trying to address was to create a model that allowed the artists to remain in place and benefit from the fact that they’re creating a cool community. So they would be somebody that I would talk to because it is an area of expertise. It’s not something that I’ve done.

1:46:47 Kinsee Morlan I mean the easy answer is get into that cheap space and get your friends to all go in and buy it. There’s a new artist space opening in Logan Heights soon and it’s owned by an artist who has been chased from North Park, no first Little Italy to North Park to Sherman Heights and he bought property along the way and so now he’s gearing up to open an art space, which hopefully will be permanent. All right, next question.

1:47:18 Max Scott Hi. I am Max Scott. I’m actually the artist in resident in the building.

1:47:24 Kinsee Morlan Congratulations.

1:47:25 Max Scott As much as I obviously appreciate this space, I also feel like it’s important to name that the artist residency is unfunded, that for me to be able to even be here requires quite a bit of privilege for me to be able to find my own housing and produce my own work out of pocket. So while spaces like this are really incredible and experimental and interesting, I think there’s also something there to think about. But I wanted to mention, so I’m from LA. I’m a project manager for a project called Sustainable Little Tokyo. It’s actually a coalition of four community organizations that have come together to advocate for equitable development that really pushes to really sustain the art and culture of the community. I just feel like something that’s missing from this conversation in some ways for me is that, for example, with this project, everything is community driven.

1:48:16 The push for art spaces for flex housing is coming from the community, that it’s actually really grassroots, that it’s from them. They’re the reason that we are advocating for these spaces. I feel like some of the conversation here feels a little external or maybe…

1:48:36 I just feel like the divide between what’s happening here and the community right outside of us that was noted in the first question is really stark here. But I also wanted to think about community driven spaces, a name that groups like Chicano Park Steering Committee is not here who are fighting for community space to create their museum in Chicano Park. And to think about projects like Union Center for the Arts, like Centro Cultural de la Raza as examples that aren’t being discussed here. And also that the work that I’m a part of in Little Tokyo is fully integrated in advocacy for housing rights for dealing with the housing crisis, that we are losing housing, that there are vanishing housing, not just vanishing art spaces. I mean, in some ways my question is to the panel, how or is your work in any way community driven and in what ways can we start to think about the work that we’re doing as also being a part of this larger conversation around the housing crisis?

1:49:47 Sam Lopez Well, let me answer that please. I don’t know anything about the housing thing. Yeah, I’ll give that guy a round of applause.

1:49:51 Kinsee Morlan Sometimes it takes an outsider to hold up a mirror on our community. Thank you.

1:49:57 Sam Lopez He has good hair too. At the end of my shows, I always ask, is anybody in the audience… In fact, I like to ask everybody here. If there’s anybody in the audience who would like to play a noise show or avant garde or experimental, come see me and you’re in. So I think it’s important to say that to the community and say, “Hey, you’re a part of this.” So it’s like the mafia, once you’re in, you’re in. So hopefully that helps a little bit.

1:50:28 Kathleen Mitchell Beryl?

1:50:29 Beryl Forman Well, I’d love to exchange notes with you afterwards. I’m involved with the Little Saigon District on El Cajon Boulevard. It was brought to the Business Improvement Association. It was brought to us by a group of young Vietnamese people who made a case that between Highland and Euclid Street, there are 70% Vietnamese owned businesses. It very much relates to the refugee settlement post-Vietnam war. We went from there and then the city gave it a cultural designation, but all along the way, it’s really lacked a look and feel, a brand, something that really tells the genuine story of why it’s being claimed the Little Saigon District. And just recently, I think it comes from years of collaboration and pushing on the subject that a collaboration of arts groups as well as my organization received $120,000 NEA grant to establish a mobile museum that speaks to those stories post-refugee moving to San Diego, as well as a California for the arts grant for a lot of public art that will be installed in Little Saigon District.

1:51:33 So I do think that recognizing the culture of an area, looking toward the outdoor space, working with the community that the arts end up coming through.

1:51:45 Kinsee Morlan All right. Next question over on this side.

1:51:48 Audience member I think I’ve got the microphone. All right. Great. Okay. All right. My question is specifically, I was a little surprised about how much of our plan to attack this is just based in playing the capitalist game, right? We’re just fighting for this piece of the pie, whether it be our developers fighting for the space or whatnot. And I’m happy that in the last couple of comments, it sounds like people are shifting it towards some sort of community basis. And that is hard to do when you’ve got so many disparate nonprofits all clawing for their own funding year after year.

1:52:26 I mean, I’m not the dude to do it, but at what point is there some almost subscription based thing where I can get access to these different galleries that are somehow coordinated, like some coordinated, totally community based thing that from just a dude saying it and from an audience sounds pretty easy, but would take some level of coordination. But rather than just trying to make art fit into how we’re running the rest of our government, I mean, you take me to the ballot, there’s no way I’m voting over art versus solving our homeless crisis right now. And I don’t think anyone should, but this needs to happen outside of that. So my question really is taking a look at the spaces we have, like libraries, other things that are inherently collectivist. I look at my library, I’ve got a CNC mill, I’ve got three 3D printers, sweet vinyl cutter machine.

1:53:21 When I personally think about space for art, part of that means the materials like a kiln. Oh man, I’d love to have one of those. I really would, but I don’t have the space, said housing crisis, and they’re expensive, but just that sort of thing. Outside of just trying to be better at fighting for a piece of the pie, do you have any… Are we attacking it in that way at all? That’s my question, I guess.

1:53:48 Beryl Forman Well, I keep on hearing about a library space. We have a underutilized vacant, actually, downtown library.This recent article, it shows that the city ran the numbers on what it would take to get it up to code, but didn’t want to release it as a homeless house. Why not put another option on the table?

1:54:10 Audience member There’s libraries in every community, right? Not just central library, which is red, but every community.

1:54:18 Kinsee Morlan Yeah, I’m not aware of any real grassroots movement like that happening right now. Maybe it is, but… Anyone else? Next question, middle.

1:54:31 Jacqueline Silverman Hi, I’m Jacqueline Silverman, San Diego Art Institute, and for the last three to four years, the San Diego Art Institute’s been highly activated as a community-driven contemporary space, and I’m charged and charged up to keep that going. And I have a really basic question though, which is, do we know how many artists would want to have an art workspace here and/or be a part of a community art space like this? 1,250. You know. I want to share your data. If that database is there, that’s great. I want to work with you on that.

1:55:12 Bob Leathers (Space 4 Art Founder) How many we provided for it?

1:55:15 Jacqueline Silverman Seven. That’s an important number.

1:55:18 Kinsee Morlan When did you get… So Bob said 1,200 are they interested in live workspace?

1:55:23 Bob Leathers (Space 4 Art Founder) This is based on when we put notices out and we had all of those series, all the character, whatever, and they went out and talked to people and whatever. It was all.

1:55:38 Kinsee Morlan So that was in 2006? 2005?

1:55:43 Bob Leathers (Space 4 Art Founder) No, it was more recent than that. It was 2008.

1:55:49 Kinsee Morlan So in

1:55:50 Bob Leathers (Space 4 Art Founder) 2008, it was there 1200 people. 2010. Okay. So maybe it’s doubled since then.

1:55:54 Kinsee Morlan Probably. All right. Next question. I don’t

1:55:58 Justin Pearson like, but you could add me and everybody I know that makes art to that list. I didn’t hear it. I think the biggest problem is capitalism. That’s what it comes down to. I think a couple people brought it up and it’s true because I don’t want to call people out. I think Sam’s righteous and I want to see the people bleeding with glass doing noise things at the other dude’s place in Liberty Hall or –

1:56:21 Kinsee Morlan Liberty Station?

1:56:22 Justin Pearson Yeah. Or in La Jolla or something. I mean, the thing is, it’s the undesirables at that point because you think about Oakland. I mean, I had friends that died there and it’s a trip because they were criminals or the unwanted, but they were the artists. They were the weirdos, but they were the ones that brought real culture and legitimacy to things that people can’t pay money for. So it’s a capitalism problem that I think we should address because yeah, let’s go out and get all those things. Let’s fight against the bureaucrats and let’s get the funding. Good luck. A lot of us don’t have the ability to do that. Add me to the list. I even have the ability to get on that stupid list. Everybody I play music with or everybody that I know that makes some sort of cool art, video, whatever, let’s all be on that list because we can all benefit from it.

1:57:10 The thing is, it’s a capitalist problem. It’s a disconnect of the bourgeois from the community, from the real artists outside.

1:57:21 Kinsee Morlan All right. Well, do you want to start that spreadsheet? Kinsee?

1:57:25 Justin Pearson I mean, the thing is, I want to start that spreadsheet. I’ve started all other kinds of things. I market myself. I have a full-time job marketing my garbage that I do. I mean, my girlfriend puts up with it every day. I’m on the computer. It sucks. And I try to make money. I mean, I spent, I don’t know, 20 something years playing free shows, touring the world for free. I’m an intern for myself. I’m not complaining. I’m psyched that I’m alive. In 2017, I’m 42 years old. I’ve cheated the system and I have dignity and soul and integrity. But the thing is, there’s this line drawn because no offense to the stuff in that video where there was the dancers dancing, but I mean, that is the bourgeois. It doesn’t appeal to the people in City Heights where I live. The people in Logan, it doesn’t appeal to those people.

1:58:17 It doesn’t appeal to the punks and the freaks and again, the undesirables, the people that passed away in Oakland. Those are our people.

1:58:26 David Malmuth Can I say… Sure. I mean, this may be popular, but I don’t see it as either or. I don’t, because I think it’s important to create spaces that art can happen, which we’re trying to do. I think it’s important to buy art at a very basic level because that puts money into artist’s pocket.

1:58:49 Kinsee Morlan Or pay for service.

1:58:50 David Malmuth If you buy art and you have the means to buy art, I think that’s a great thing to do. So I don’t feel like it’s us versus them. I mean, I think there’s –

1:58:58 Justin Pearson I’m sorry. Yeah, I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry, but I’m just saying it’s not appealing, not in your art sucks, my art, it doesn’t suck, but it’s not appealing to poorer people. It’s not appealing to people of color. It’s not appealing to people that really can’t afford it. It doesn’t seem feasible. It doesn’t seem part of cultural relevance to… It is a capitalist thing. It is a thing with the bourgeois. It doesn’t appeal to other people. I think that’s sad.

1:59:27 Gloria Pour And you’re all standing here in Southern California talking about this. Yeah. Yeah. That’s part of the problem here. The cost of living in this climatic environment is not getting any more affordable.

1:59:42 Justin Pearson Yeah. I didn’t mean to target you. I’m just saying that it’s a relevant subject. It doesn’t come up. I mean, the stuff that Beryl does over in the communities of color and where there are communities of… I mean, let’s see the refugees do art in your spaces. Or spaces like yours. You go to La Jolla. I mean, I’m sorry, but La Jolla sucks and it’s not really art. And it’s art, okay? Because I sound like a jerk saying what is and what isn’t art. But it’s this prefabricated sort of just, I don’t know. I’m a jerk. I should shut up.

2:00:19 Jennifer de Poyen Thank you. Can I just say Kinsee really fast? At the back of the room, we have intent to rent forms that you can all fill out. It’s just a form saying you would like a space, an affordable artist space, an art and home.

2:00:35 Kinsee Morlan Build that database.

2:00:36 Jennifer de Poyen We can try to wave it in people’s faces. That’s about all I can promise you from that. But if you sign it, at least we have an idea of the numbers.

2:00:44 Kinsee Morlan Oh, that’s great. That’s great.

2:00:45 Kotaro Nakamura I’d like to get back to him because I like it. But the artist created this make art and sell economy. And we had to change that mode, that art is not the commodity. Art is a means to create the culture. And so go ahead and accuse the rich artists and developers as bourgeois, but that is the wrong way to accuse it. I don’t think I’m accusing them.

2:01:19 Justin Pearson I think it’s a fact. I mean, we can’t really ignore that. What about the Basquiat painting that just recently sold for, I don’t even know how much money, but did Basquiat ever appreciate, get to see that income? No. I mean, it’s a fact. I’m not saying fuck the bourgeois. I’m not trying to draw a line in the sand. I’m just saying it’s a fact that we should address and it is relevant, I think.

2:01:42 Beryl Forman Yeah. I want to speak to that. I mean, you just did say that if art is the means to create culture and housing is not affordable, then how is culture going to be created?

2:01:52 Justin Pearson Exactly.

2:01:53 Beryl Forman We share somewhat of a relationship because we live on history being on 24th and E right in Golden Hill. And I just want to share that I’ve lived in the same complex for about 10 years and I’ve watched my property owners sell the place across the street. First, they were raising the rent by $100 a couple times a year. And then the new owner came in, immediately up the rent. And then a couple months later, all those tenants are being kicked out. They’re getting 60 days to leave. These are people who send their kids to school in the local community who’ve been there for 10 to 20 years. I’ve watched these neighbors care for someone who died in my complex not too long ago. It was very upsetting to me that capitalism really is taking over the affordability and culture of our city.

2:02:36 Kinsee Morlan Rent control is something that happens other places. San Diego does not have rent control and your city council leaders are putting housing plans on the table as we speak to address the housing crisis. And none of them have mentioned rent control. So something to think about. Next question. Yes. Young lady.

2:02:58 Carmela Prudencio My name is Carmela Perdencio and I work over at the Museum of Photographic Arts, but I do have a question for all of you. We talk about infiltrating these neighborhoods like National City, Lemon Grove, but what is the artist’s responsibility to the communities that exist there already and the culture that already exists there too? Any artists want to talk about that?

2:03:22 Kathleen Mitchell I think that you have a responsibility if you’re going to maintain a studio practice in a neighborhood that you perhaps do not live in, that you need to become part of that community. Personally, I’ve had a studio in Barrio Logan for five years. I spend most of my dollars here. I spend most of my days here. I spend most of my hours here. I buy my groceries here, my coffee beans. I eat in every restaurant you can imagine. So I think, and I’m acutely aware of cultural appropriation. I think that’s come up over and over again. And I think it’s something we need to be sensitive to. On the other hand, I grew up in San Diego. I remember when Chicano Park… I’m pretty old. I remember when Chicano Park, when it happened, I was alive, I lived here and it’s very much a part of…

2:04:17 It’s not my story, but it’s part of my story. And so I think it’s really important to appreciate and become a responsible citizen if you are maintaining the studio practice where you don’t live.

2:04:30 Carmela Prudencio Well, thank you for taking accountability for that.

2:04:33 Jennifer de Poyen For us on an institutional level, Space 4 Art has formed community partnerships and our programming, our educational programming, we call it steam to the streets, but it’s basically STEM education plus arts and we bring the arts and we have partnered with two local high schools, King Chavez and High Tech High, Chula Vista, both of which serve historically excluded and underserved populations. People who are maybe first generation, whose parents want them to go straight into business and they don’t want to mess with this arts thing. They come to us, they learn what art is all about. They learn how to make things with their hands, use power tools, but they also learn design about creativity and about leadership. Some of them leave and go and pursue artistic careers or political careers or civic engagement. So in other words, it can be very, on an institutional level, I would say that an organization has to walk the walk, just the way Kathleen was saying as an individual, go take that meeting, have that coffee, talk to your local people and see what they’re doing.

2:05:53 When we built a park on Imperial Avenue, there was a massive outreach effort. We were partnered with LISC and BAME to organizations that are devoted to housing and increasing economic opportunities in underserved communities. We asked the community, “What do you want in a park?” We didn’t presume to say this is what a park should look like and you can go check it out. It’s a very unusual looking park, but all the kids wanted something to do with a tree because they didn’t have trees in their own backyards. So we designed and built –

2:06:34 Kinsee Morlan A beautiful tree house.

2:06:34 Jennifer de Poyen A beautiful tree house. So these are the kinds of things that can happen when you actually listen to the community. And I do agree with the speakers who mentioned that you have to care about the community you live in and not just run in and run out. And I applaud Kathleen for eating in the neighborhood.

2:06:58 Alan Ziter This is kind of the opposite of all that. The Liberty Station Project, the arts district is located in one of the most whitest Republican neighborhoods in San Diego. So I had to go in and infiltrate that crowd and bring a more diverse scope of arts programming to them. But one thing we did recognize is there’s a large number of military families living within walking distance. So the Navy, this is all enlisted pay grade housing and this is among the most culturally diverse communities over in Point Loma. So we do a lot of programming with the military housing. So I think it just gets back to you find out who your neighbors are and you just bring new experiences to them, whether they’re white Republican or they’re City Heights or Barrio Logan, just bring new experiences to people.

2:07:39 Kinsee Morlan All right. It is getting late. Are there people who are dying to ask questions? You look like you’re dying to ask who? This guy?

2:07:49 Justin Morrison I think Justin said it better in a way that was true to how I was feeling about it, but I think I’ll just elaborate that I often find myself in the company of people advocating for art space with totally different definitions about what art is for and why people are making it. I do find some conflict being in a conversation about making access to space for art when actually what some people are talking about is making access to space for different kind of consumption, pairing wine and cheese and expensive admission prices to events for events that are basically artists run or providing entertainment and the work. So I think it’s worthwhile and I didn’t think I could add much more except to provide a little more nuanced take.

2:08:47 Sorry, I’m losing myself in it. How can we hold that in a sense we’re in it together and we have some shared concerns and interests and yet leave room for the fact that when we talk about art, we’re not all talking about the same thing or working towards the same ends. So for example, a space, the idea project where the entry level income would be $50,000. To imagine that any kind of art can go in there and not be at somehow in conflict with the core values behind the creation is kind of absurd or that any art could be put into a banquet sitting or any old context.

2:09:37 Kinsee Morlan I think I’m hearing a lot of like-minded people here and for a while in San Diego there were a lot of art collectives. So like-minded people making art for the same reasons, maybe not so capitalistic as other groups that were thriving and it’s ebbed and flowed through the 15 years that I’ve been writing and watching art in San Diego. But look at Santa Fe, what is it? Meow Wolf? Is that the place there?

2:10:03 Jonathan Bailey Yeah.

2:10:05 Kinsee Morlan Those are people from the little bit I know about talking about why we are making art and not being capitalistic, those are those artists who found a space, they found a benefactor. They make art just to make culture, to bring experience. They’re not selling. I mean I guess there is… Is there an emission price there?

2:10:23 Alan Ziter Yes, $20.

2:10:25 Kinsee Morlan Okay. I mean, you think about opera or theater and then $20.

2:10:30 Alan Ziter And they bring in 500,000 people a year to that, what was a former bowling alley. It’s 20,000 square feet. It’s a collective of 120 Santa Fe regional artists there and they came together and got this wonderful benefactor and they are paying market rent on that bowling alley. They’re expanding to Denver. They’re expanding to Houston. They want to go to Philadelphia.

2:10:50 Kinsee Morlan Maybe to San Diego.

2:10:53 Alan Ziter We’d have to get on the list.

2:10:54 Kinsee Morlan Let’s get on the list. Sounds like we’ve got people who want to make art to make art.

2:11:00 Alan Ziter Yeah, they’re making a lot of money.

2:11:05 Justin Morrison I guess I think the point that I’ll come to is that for the people who are involved in sort of creating these cultural institutions and trying to support the arts, try to be sensitive to some of the values that are maybe embodied in the work of the people who are making it and check in with them and find out does it make sense to try to subsume them under some other more capitalistic effort or something about creating culture in general. That’s all. Yeah.

2:11:37 Kinsee Morlan All right. I think we have time for maybe one more question. You already went. Is there someone here that didn’t ask a question? You didn’t ask one. Okay.

2:11:53 Audrey Hi, I’m Audrey. I actually work at San Diego Art Institute with her and her. But my question is, I go to DIY art shows and so the demographic is very, very different from people who are here. And so I want to know that at your art spaces, typically what’s your demographic?

2:12:18 Lauren LeVieux What’s what?

2:12:19 Audrey Your demographic. Who goes and who buys maybe? Because where I am, we’re just showing our art. And I mean, I think what you said also, cultural change is different because I know people who create art shows at their own businesses and people treat it as parties with beautiful art instead of we’re selling this to support the artists. And so I kind of wanted to know what the demographic is to sustain the place that you guys were.

2:12:57 Kinsee Morlan Well, so no one is… I mean, you’re sustaining – I can start.

2:12:59 Jennifer de Poyen Because our focus is emerging artists, we have a pretty wide range of… I mean demographic. We have a wide range of ages, cultural backgrounds. I can’t say that we have enough money to do things like fill out forms and compile statistics. This is something that small organizations aren’t very good at, which is producing data, but we see people from all walks of life and all ages. Our events have always… I think I shouldn’t say always. Our events are generally all ages and you can bring your children if you want them exposed to emerging art. You can bring your grandfather if he’s interested in that. And they’re free. I mean, I don’t think we’ve charged for any events that we’ve produced. So that’s why it’s a diverse audience as you might imagine.

2:14:01 Audrey I’ve also never been to this place or any… I’ve actually, I’ve known about your place for a long time, but I’m young. I’m 20, so I’m just new. I’m new to this thing. But I think I’m actually working with a couple of collectives that want to advance and be in that space, in the more established space. And we’re gaining money and learning about grants and fundraising and donors. And I think it’s kind of hard. The disconnect is pretty wide from the people who are just starting. So that’s why it’s important for places like yours and places that I’m working with.

2:14:45 Jennifer de Poyen I would say that somebody has to worry about the money. Maybe Alan and David would agree with that statement. And we have to worry about money too, institutionally, so much so that events that we produce cost us money. So that’s a tough nut to crack. We don’t make money when we curate a show. Somebody volunteers their time to figure out who to put in the show and then to put up the show and then to run the show and it all costs money. So a lot of it, again, is going to have to be grassroots. You want to do a show at an established venue, bring it, but bring everything. Don’t ask the organization to support it financially. I think if you approach it from that perspective, you might get more responses from spaces. If all they have to cover is liability and not anything else, then that’s more feasible.

2:15:43 Audrey That’s not what I’m saying where I’m… Oh, fund me. No, that’s not what I’m saying.

2:15:49 Jennifer de Poyen Yeah. No, I understand. I know what you’re saying.

2:15:51 Kathleen Mitchell And to answer your question about the demographic, I think at Glashaus, we had a main space gallery. It was a really beautiful gallery and we hosted numerous events there. And I would say the demographic was driven by whoever was showing. And then we would host things by the San Diego Opera came there and I’m pretty sure they didn’t fear for their lives when they were in the building, as did Art of Alan. And I was sure in those audiences there were people that had never set foot in Barrio Logan. So it was really driven by the event. Thank you.

2:16:27 Kinsee Morlan All right. Big thanks to you guys for hanging in there and your valuable questions. If you have questions that didn’t get answered, feel free to… They can reach out on the live link and email. Do you have an email address or on the Facebook event? If you have questions, get in contact with Xavier. Thank you.