Boulder Arts Blueprint Background

Dear Boulder Community,

We like to joke that Boulderites see ourselves as special. Exceptional. Unique. After spending years in Boulder, I can say with confidence that we are right.

We live in a stunning place with dedicated and thoughtful city staff and a community that is caring, engaged and deeply creative. I cannot go anywhere in Boulder without meeting someone who sings, dances, writes, designs, paints, or builds something beautiful in their spare time. Creativity is in our character and makes us the exceptional place that we are.

The Arts Blueprint puts a spotlight on that reality. It celebrates our creativity and encourages us to take pride in it. One of the strongest messages we heard during this process is that culture and creativity are central to Boulder’s identity. They shape how we live, how we connect, how we work and how we see ourselves. This plan invites all of us to take that seriously, to show it off and to understand art not as a luxury but as an essential part of daily life.

The Arts Blueprint is backed by strong research and community input. We heard from nearly 2,000 community members through the process. Benchmarking with like cities and studies such as Arts and Economic Prosperity 6, national work from the Knight Foundation, the We-Making Study, the Journal of Creativity and our own Artist Census and Venues Study show that cultural activity strengthens our economy, improves well-being, builds social cohesion and even supports climate awareness and action.

The Arts Blueprint details goal areas and strategies that came through clearly in our research and engagement: Accessibility and Inclusion, Entrepreneurship and Workforce, Reputation and Identity, Public Art and Public Space, Nonprofits and Institutions, Experimentation and Innovation, Scenes and Affinities. Together, these goals reflect what matters most to our community and move us toward a city led by creativity.

This Arts Blueprint is ultimately about how the arts support everything we care about as a city. Creativity strengthens our economy, supports small businesses and entrepreneurs, builds belonging and public trust, improves health and well-being, activates public space, influences how we plan and build and helps us navigate change with imagination and care. So, when we invest in arts and culture we are investing in the outcomes we want for our whole community.

I am so grateful for everyone who contributed to this process, including our incredible staff of Brendan Picker-Mahoney, Sarah Harrison, Cindy Sepucha, Jake Hudson-Humphrey and Matthew Beutler; Matt Chasansky for your mentorship, Cris Jones for your direction, Mark Woulf and Nuria Rivera-Vandermyde for your leadership.

To our Advisory Committee, Arts Commission and community members that gave us input through this process: your honesty, passion and ideas helped shape something that truly reflects Boulder. I look forward to continuing this work together as we build a future where art is not an afterthought but a defining part of our civic life.

This Arts Blueprint is an invitation to see the arts not as a nice to have, but as essential civic infrastructure. It asks us to embed creativity into how we plan, how we invest, how we design neighborhoods, how we support our economy and how we take care of one another. This is our moment to lean into the creative current that already runs through Boulder and to use it intentionally to strengthen everything else we do. Let us support it, fund it and integrate it. Let us build a city where creativity is not tucked away, but visible, valued and working in every direction, strengthening everything else we do and continuing to make Boulder truly exceptional.

Cheers,

Lauren Click
Arts and Culture Manager
City of Boulder

Public Sphere Projects

Public Sphere Projects is a national planning and placemaking consultancy. We advise place managers on the visioning, strategy and stewardship of shared urban places through an uncompromising commitment to the values of justice and joy.

Public Sphere Projects is led by a cross-disciplinary team of professionals with expertise in urban planning, community development, public policy and creative placemaking. Our team comprises leaders who have held senior roles within government agencies and urban place management organizations.

Progressive Urban Management Associates (P.U.M.A)

Progressive Urban Management Associates (P.U.M.A.) is recognized nationally for our team of experienced place management practitioners, planners, market researchers and consensus builders. We’re a one-stop shop for helping downtown, corridor and neighborhood districts of all sizes tackle complex challenges through public engagement, strategic planning, actionable work plans and financing tools.

Office of Arts and Culture (OAC)

The City of Boulder’s Office of Arts and Culture is part of the Office of Cultural and Economic Development. It is responsible for the oversight of cultural grants, creative sector programs, public art, support for cultural nonprofits, creative neighborhoods programs and support for individual artists and creative professionals.

Through a set of programs including cultural grants, public art, initiatives for artists, the creative economy and research, the Office of Arts and Culture seeks to ensure creative expression remains at the core of Boulder.

During the creation of the Boulder Arts Blueprint, Office of Arts and Culture staff included:

• Brendan Picker-Mahoney
• Cindy Sepucha
• Lauren Click
• Jake Hudson-Humphrey
• Matthew Beutler
• Matt Chasansky
• Sarah Harrison

Boulder Arts Commission

The Boulder Arts Commission believes arts and culture are the foundation for a diverse, inclusive, equitable and accessible community. We work collaboratively with city staff, artists, arts and culture organizations and the community to support artists and enrich Boulder’s quality of life and economic vitality and to help create a highly innovative, vibrant and resilient city.

- Boulder Arts Commission mission, est. 2022

The Boulder Arts Commission, established in 1979, is a seven-member body appointed by Boulder’s City Council to support and advance arts and culture within the city. Its role includes promoting public awareness of the arts, advising City Council and staff on cultural policy and funding, administering city arts grant and program efforts, assisting with grant applications and consulting with local arts organizations as needed.

Thank you to the Boulder Arts Commission for providing high-level guidance and thoughtful input throughout the Boulder Arts Blueprint process. Your leadership and perspective have helped strengthen the plan’s vision, priorities and community relevance.

At the time of the Boulder Arts Blueprint, the members include:

• Caroline Kert, Chair
• Jeffrey Kash, Vice-Chair
• Maria Cole
• Yaelaed Whyel
• Sheryl Cardozo
• Jill Katzenberger
• Gayathri Vinay

Boulder Arts Blueprint Advisory Committee

The Boulder Arts Blueprint Advisory Committee helped guide the development of the Boulder Arts Blueprint, ensuring the plan reflects the voices, values and lived experiences of Boulder’s creative community. The committee is composed of artists, arts and culture leaders, community advocates and cross sector partners who bring a wide range of perspectives and expertise. Advisory Committee members serve as thought partners to city staff by reviewing research and engagement findings, testing ideas, elevating community priorities and helping form recommendations that will guide Boulder’s arts and culture strategy for the next decade.

The City of Boulder extends sincere thanks to the Advisory Committee members for their time, care and leadership. Their contributions have strengthened the Arts Blueprint and helped lay the foundation for a more vibrant, inclusive and resilient cultural future for Boulder.

• Amanda Berg Wilson
• Andrew Ghadimi
• Bettina Swigger
• Charlotte LaSasso
• Cheryl Liguori
• Dave Kennedy
• Deborah Malden
• Emiliano Lake-Herrera
• Kari Palazzari
• Kathleen King
• Leah Brenner Clack
• Maria Cole
• Parisa Tashakori
• Travis LaBerg

In 2015, the City of Boulder adopted the Community Cultural Plan. This plan was a roadmap to improve the city's services and programs in support of artists and the creative economy.

As that plan reaches the end of its intended horizon, Boulder faces a moment that calls for a refreshed strategic direction—one that reflects current conditions, emerging opportunities and evolving community priorities.

Since 2015, the Office of Arts and Culture has evolved and matured. The Community Cultural Plan set the foundation for the office to develop into a funded and stable Local Arts Agency. Now institutionalized, the Office of Arts and Culture both reflects on its last decade of progress and strategizes to better reflect the broader community.

This moment is particularly timely in the city’s history.

First, the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan (underway at the time of this writing), provides a catalytic moment to pause, take stock and strategize. As an addendum to the Comprehensive Plan, the Boulder Arts Blueprint interprets the vision, policy guidance and goals of the Comprehensive Plan for cultural affairs and the arts.

Second, the passing of the 2024 Arts, Culture and Heritage tax greatly increases direct investment into arts and culture. It is imperative to devise foundational organizational work that will best unlock the opportunities created by this new investment.

Third, since the creation of the Community Cultural Plan, the Boulder itself has changed. Boulder moved through the COVID-19 pandemic and into a post-COVID reality. This period brought rising property values, cost of living pressures, higher commercial vacancies and new questions about how community members connect with one another and engage in shared spaces. At the same time, the City of Boulder developed the Sustainability, Equity and Resilience (SER) Framework. North Boulder (NoBo) is now a designated Cultural District. First approved by voters in 2014, the Community, Culture, Resilience and Safety tax has supported multiple capital projects for local arts organizations and was extended in perpetuity in 2025. Despite increasing property values that squeeze many artists and venues, Boulder was ranked by the Southern Methodist University’s National Center for Arts Research as #14 in the nation on its 2025 Arts Vibrancy Index. Amidst these large changes, Boulder was selected as host of the Sundance Film Festival beginning in 2027. This event brings increased visibility and opportunity, along with the responsibility to consider how a global cultural event fits within—and supports—the city’s broader arts and culture ecosystem.

Together, these conditions highlight the need for a strategic framework that stimulates growth, risk-taking, visibility and new resources to Boulder’s creative ecosystem in ways that are inclusive, balanced and aligned with citywide goals.

The new plan – the Boulder Arts Blueprint – aligns with and advances the goals of the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan and the city’s Sustainability, Equity and Resilience (SER) Framework. It also serves to not only guide, but to leverage, increased funding to best serve as a catalyst for broader community investment in arts and culture. It is imperative to continue to align the Office of Arts and Culture within the exciting and dynamic current landscape. The city’s increased capacity for sustained investment in arts, culture and heritage underscores the importance of a thoughtful, coordinated approach.

The Boulder Arts Blueprint was developed through a two-phase planning process designed to ground arts and culture decision-making in community input, data and city priorities.

Phase 1 focused on discovery and foundation-building through extensive engagement, review of existing plans and policies, benchmarking and alignment with the SER Framework and Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan. It also reviewed the myriad of research carried out by the Office of Arts and Culture such as an Artist Census, Venues Study, Cultural Asset Map and Boulder Creative Industries report. This work informed a set of findings and insights that shaped the Arts Blueprint’s vision.

Phase 2 builds on that foundation by translating the vision for the arts into goals, focus areas, priorities and actions that will guide the Office of Arts and Culture’s work moving forward. Across both phases, the project team worked closely with a Boulder Arts Blueprint Advisory Committee representing a diverse mix of for-profit and nonprofit organizations, large and small institutions, individual artists and cultural workers and leaders from across disciplines and communities. Their ongoing input helped ground the Arts Blueprint in lived experience and sector realities.

The Arts Blueprint was created using a Theory of Change model. This process is a strategic planning tool used to create logical causal steps to reach long-term desired outcomes. Within this process, community input was transcribed into a clear sequence of vision for the arts, goals, strategies and actions. Strategies are intentionally interrelated, designed to strengthen internal municipal capacity while amplifying the role of the cultural sector among external audiences, funders and industries.

Community engagement was a central component of the Boulder Arts Blueprint and was intentionally designed to be broad, inclusive and accessible.

Engagement methods included interviews, focus groups held throughout the city and multiple meetings with the City’s Community Connectors in Residence (CCiR). The team executed a community-wide questionnaire and conducted pop-up outreach at community events and recreation centers. They also participated with Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan Update activities. In total, nearly 2,000 community members gave input.

The Boulder Arts Blueprint intentionally sought to consider equity in its approach. Early stakeholder mapping helped identify gaps in representation. These gaps guided outreach efforts as the team worked to ensure perspectives historically underrepresented in civic planning were meaningfully included.

Across engagement activities, several consistent themes emerged, including the importance of access and affordability, stronger marketing to artists about arts opportunities and the role of arts and culture as fundamental to Boulder’s identity. Community members also expressed a clear interest in balancing support for longstanding institutions with flexible, experimental opportunities that encourage new ideas and emerging artists.

These insights echo findings from the 2025 Boulder Artist Census, Venues Study and 2024 Boulder Creative Industries Report. These studies document structural challenges related to affordability, income stability and access to appropriate space—underscoring the urgency of coordinated policy and investment responses.

Engagement continued beyond Phase 1 through ongoing Advisory Committee interaction, meetings with City staff and a public town hall to share draft goals and gather feedback on actions, partnerships, funding mechanisms and policy approaches. This continuity ensured that community input informed the Arts Blueprint as it moved from discovery to decision-making.

See the Boulder Arts Blueprint: Engagement Report for more details.

Equity is a core principle of the Boulder Arts Blueprint and is embedded throughout the plan.

The City of Boulder understands the role that institutional racism has played in perpetuating inequities over generations. The city is committed to developing a vision to advance racial equity through education, programs, policies and budget decisions. Race is often the greatest predictor of access to success in our current system. The creation and perpetuation of racial inequities is embedded into government at all levels. Initially focusing on racial equity provides the opportunity to introduce a framework, tools and resources that can also be applied to other historically excluded groups based on gender, sexual orientation, ability, class and age, among others. The ultimate goal of this work is to address and dismantle the root causes that create inequities and our role in government is to ensure that we actively work toward that responsibility in policy, programs and decision-making.

Within each goal of the Arts Blueprint is a section explicitly speaking to equity considerations. The Office of Arts and Culture has worked closely with the City’s Office of Equity and Belonging, a division of the City Manager’s Office to identify equity considerations relevant to the outcomes and actions described. The project team thanks the Office of Equity and Belonging for their thoughtful additions.

These equity considerations are intended to act as a broad guide. As is the city’s practice, when a new project or program is initiated, OAC will also use the Racial Equity Instrument (REI) to analyze the disproportionate impacts a program, policy or budget decision can have on communities historically excluded by government institutions and address any unintentional impacts, bias or burdens.

To read more about the City of Boulder’s Racial Equity Plan, please visit the Office of Equity and Belonging’s website.

The Boulder Arts Blueprint is a strategic guide for aligning vision, priorities and action across the city’s arts and culture ecosystem.

This document is:

1. A clear vision for the arts supported by actionable strategies, priorities and next steps.
2. A framework that balances bold ideas and long-term possibility with realistic implementation.
3. A roadmap for the City of Boulder, under the direction of the Office of Arts and Culture, for interpreting the vision, policy guidance and goals of the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan for cultural affairs and the arts.
4. Grounded in clear actions but adaptable and flexible to meet future needs.

This document is not:

1. An exhaustive list of every idea, desire, or request expressed through engagement.
2. A plan solely focused on or driven by any singular event.
3. A list of demands placed on other city departments, partners, funders, or advocates.

In the pages that follow, the Arts Blueprint outlines a shared framework for decision-making and collaboration—one that can be used by city leadership, staff, partners and the community to steward Boulder’s arts and culture ecosystem in ways that are inclusive, sustainable and responsive over time.

The Boulder Arts Blueprint is intentionally aligned with the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan (comprehensive plan).

The Arts Blueprint serves as a complementary, implementation-oriented framework that advances the comprehensive plan’s long-term vision through the lens of arts, culture and creativity. Together, the plans reflect a common perspective that arts and culture are not standalone amenities, but essential civic infrastructure that strengthens equity, economic opportunity, community wellbeing and regional resilience. While the comprehensive plan establishes broad community goals related to livability, equity, sustainability, economic vitality and connected neighborhoods, the Arts Blueprint focuses on how arts and culture can operationalize those goals in tangible ways.

This alignment is reinforced through overlapping engagement and shared expertise. The development of the Arts Blueprint coincided with the comprehensive plan update and arts and culture subject matter experts were embedded within the plan engagement, policy discussion and draft plan direction. This integrated engagement approach strengthened consistency across both plans and ensured that cultural considerations were incorporated early.

The comprehensive plan includes policy direction that supports a robust creative and cultural economy with related policies: Visitor Economy, Night Economy, Experiential Economy, Social Infrastructure and 15-Minute Neighborhoods. One policy is dedicated specifically to this work, “Arts & Culture Investment”*:

“The city supports a diverse range of affordable and accessible arts and cultural experiences by supporting investment in art in public places, venues, facilities, special events and programs that reflect Boulder’s creative spirit and community diversity. Arts and Culture programs will reflect the cultural and linguistic diversity of Boulder’s community members.”

*The specific language of this policy is subject to change until the adoption of the comprehensive plan in summer 2026.

The Arts Blueprint builds on this foundation, directly supporting and advancing the plan in these ways:

• Equity and inclusion, by prioritizing access to arts and cultural participation across all neighborhoods, income levels, abilities, ages and cultural backgrounds and by centering community voice, representation and belonging.
• Inclusive local economy, by supporting creative workers, cultural organizations and neighborhood-scale creative businesses as highly valuable contributors to economic vitality, workforce development, entrepreneurship and local identity.
• Public spaces and placemaking, by leveraging arts and culture to activate streets, plazas, civic spaces and underutilized sites in ways that foster interaction, safety and community pride.
• Great neighborhoods and connected communities, by advancing a 15-Minute Neighborhood approach that integrates cultural amenities into everyday places such as parks, libraries, schools, main streets and community centers.
• Sustainability and resilience, by strengthening and stabilizing cultural organizations, supporting cultural continuity and encouraging adaptive reuse, local participation and social cohesion as key components of long term resilience.

In this way, the Boulder Arts Blueprint functions as a cultural implementation companion to the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan. It translates high-level planning goals into arts and culture specific strategies.

The next section presents a vision for the arts building on the community vision as articulated by the Comprehensive Plan.

For more on the comprehensive plan, visit the city's website.

Highlight: “Experiments in Public Art: Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan Update Series”

The Experiments in Public Art: Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan Update Series is a set of artist-led public art projects designed to support the City of Boulder’s major update to the Comprehensive Plan, which launched in 2024. The series demonstrates how arts and culture can meaningfully support civic practice by translating complex planning topics into accessible, engaging and community centered experiences. Through a collaboration between the Planning and Development Services Department and the Office of Arts and Culture, artists were embedded in the planning process to help humanize policy conversations, visualize and interpret technical information, elevate diverse community voices and create opportunities for community members to reflect on Boulder’s identity today while imagining what the city could become over the next 20 years.