65B - ARTS AND CULTURE MASTER PLAN

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Santa Ana Arts Future Community Arts and Cultural Master Plan At the same time, multiple studies report concerns shared by residents - gentrification, increased costs of housing, the potential loss of cultural identity, gang violence, and a large homeless population, among other issues. Unmaintained commercial areas exist throughout the city with vacant and abandoned buildings creating eyesores amongst the strip malls and commercial district of South Main Street, for example. Santa Ana also lacks some resources required to support increased cultural activity and development of the creative economy. The city does not currently have the infrastructure to enhance visitorship due to the lack of downtown hotels and convention or meeting facilities. And while it has many strong and well -loved cultural assets on which to build, there are not the range and quality of performance and exhibition venues needed to support greater artistic and audience development. Yet despite this, Santa Ana is without a doubt a community with great pride in its history, tradition, and culture and with that comes a naturally cautious attitude for many towards the kind of growth that often changes the very nature of historic towns like Santa Ana. As a result, an issue at the forefront of this planning process and at the heart of community engagement was the desire to incorporate and balance the diverse interests, voices, and peoples of Santa Ana. Planning participants often articulated the need to find ways to reconcile what often appear to be competing interests: the traditional and the new, young and old, affluent and underserved, and everyone in between. The City of Santa Ana is dedicating resources to this first arts and cultural plan and there is a committed cadre of arts patrons, consumers, and advocates prepared to support the City's efforts for its arts and cultural development. Community Engagement The planning team conducted a comprehensive community engagement process. It officially launched on January 27, 2016 with the Santa Ana Arts Future Town Hall and continued through April 1, 2016 with the close of the community survey. It employed a mixed -method research protocol using both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Community engagement activities included: • A town hall and community open house events • Stakeholder discussion groups and interviews • A community survey • Stakeholder -led discussion groups and meetings • A review of existing research and planning initiatives Additional efforts were made to ensure a wide range of responses. Efforts included specific Spanish language meetings as well as open houses with translation. All information and survey materials were translated into multiple languages. Throughout the process the following core questions were asked: 13 65B-17