Joint Committee on the Arts

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So how long do you anticipate this meeting going on and

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get from?

Like, yeah, three hours. I thought I just turned it off.

Oh, yeah. Okay. This one is off. Right. Alright.

Why don't we start asking people to take their seats, please? Alright. We're gonna call this hearing to order in sixty seconds. So you have our video feed the opportunity to turn on.

Alright.

Let's call this hearing to order. This is an informational hearing in the California State Senate Special Committee on International Sporting Events and our Joint Committee on the Arts, and we invite our, we welcome our friends from the Assembly as well who are involved with our arts committee, both of our arts committees. We just wanna thank our colleagues who've come from all over, as far away as Padre Land, to join us here. We wanna also especially thank Expedition Park and the wonderful California Science Center.

Monique Hudson, Andrea, Ricardo Mendoza, they all worked so hard to make this hearing possible.

This is a very special space. Last time I was here, actually, was in the immediate aftermath of the fires where they held a big forum with community leaders on all the challenges post-fire. So, this is a place where people have been able to come together and discuss big issues. Our focus today is on the cultural Olympiad, all the cultural programs that are being planned for the LA 28th Olympic and Paralympic games.

You know, the term Cultural Olympiad started as a modern phenomenon in the, in the 1992 games in Barcelona.

But there's been an arts and culture component to the Olympics all the way back to the 1912 Stockholm games. In fact, for quite some time, there were medals, Olympic medals given out in art competitions, which I think is wonderful, and, maybe we should reconsider, you know, consider bringing them back. We could do a cinematography medal maybe for Los Angeles.

So, during, you know, we, there, but I think they had sculpture and painting, music, literature, architecture. And then in '56 in Melbourne, they then transitioned this effort of medals and culture to these exhibitions and festivals that have been now usually, you know, coterminous with the games. So, we're gonna learn more about the history and the context.

We're gonna talk a little bit about how the cultural Olympiad was conceived in prior games and then have a discussion about how the cultural Olympiad is being planned by LA28, along with the cultural programs being planned by our host city, LA County, partners around the region. We're gonna look at collaboration between local partners, and we're also gonna hear feedback from the arts community, which is very important. Several panelists work with arts and cultural institutions.

They're gonna share their work so far, feedback on the planning efforts, and I just look forward to a really thoughtful, forward-looking discussion today.

This is a, something that I've, I think my last hearing as a State Senator, so it's a little bittersweet for me. I've been Chair of the Arts Committee in addition to this committee on special international sporting events. But the arts have been something very important to me.

My mom is a working artist, was Chair of the arts commission in my hometown. We know that the arts are such an important part of what it is to be Californian, and they fuel so much of our heart and soul and the way that the world sees us. They fuel dreams and drive innovation and support tourism and community well-being and emerging industries.

And, of course, there's such a follow-on impact on so much, so much of our small business community and our workforce. So, we're really excited about what this summer could provide to our region, both as an exciting visitor experience, but also as a jump start to so much of the kind of cultural legacy that we know we can build.

And we know that the LA Opera, for example, is a legacy of the 1984 games. And what an incredible story that is, and I'm sure we'll hear about that and so many others. So let me give the opportunity to our Vice Chair at the Joint Committee in the Arts, Assemblymember Ward, and other members of the committee to say a few words, and then we'll invite up to the dais, Andrea Ambriz, who's from Expedition Park, and also Paul Krekorian, who's Executive Director for Office of Major Events for the City of Los Angeles. In fact, if you wouldn't mind, why don't you come, make your way up to the table here and, but let me turn it over, while you're getting up here to Assemblymember Ward.

Well, thank you, Senator Allen. Really appreciate you and your team bringing us here together. Good morning, everybody. It was an easy drive up from my home district in San Diego, and I'm just really delighted to be here for this hearing today, both as the Vice Chair of the legislature's Joint Committee on the Arts as well as, serving as Chair of the Assembly's Committee on Arts, Entertainment, Sports, and Tourism.

We have had heavy ties to this topic here today, and I wanna thank the Los Angeles community at large, for your active engagement with the legislature, specifically over the past year, really bringing us up to speed on how things are going and what we need to do to be able to be best prepared, for the best event that we can give for, our city here, our state, and the world.

We know that the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic games are a tremendous opportunity for California, not just to welcome athletes and visitors from across the world, but to really showcase the creativity and the diversity and the cultural traditions that really make us special.

We have previously had very few opportunities to be able to learn about some of the benefits that arts and culture festivals, organize as part of the the games that took place, in the city in 1984, and I think we're gonna hear a lot of that history here today. It's gonna inform us about where we are at this moment and how we can be best positioned approaching 2028.

Because I do see these games as a chance to highlight California's creative community and our creative economy in front of a global audience. We wanna showcase how many creative and cultural achievements have grown in the last 44 years since the games were last here.

It's an incredibly important moment, especially within the Los Angeles area. It's one of the most iconic cities in the world, and you all know this well. I'm really excited to be able to have this opportunity to get a better sense of the plans for the cultural Olympiad and how opportunities for artists and communities are gonna materialize.

And importantly, a lot of the discussion is just a starting point here today because this is gonna be what is gonna inform us and what we take back to the legislature as we're thinking about policy and budget conversations as we, head into the calendar year 2027 to, again, in turn, best prepare the state in this region, for maximum impact for these games. We know that the investment in the arts and the creative, community, will transcend the games.

It is really just a wonderful, moment in time at the start and the end of the Olympics period to be able to showcase ourselves to the world. But the lasting impact that we have, those seeds of foundation that we're gonna lay here, we know are gonna benefit Californians for decades to come. So, we're looking forward to all the discussion here today. We know that Paris set a very high bar, for, during their ceremonies for the last summer Olympics and how they threaded that together with the cultural Olympiad, theme.

So we're looking forward to those presentations and see what we can do, as a legislature, to be able to support you in your efforts. So thank you for convening us.

Thank you. I know couple members have, wanna make some brief opening comments. We'll go to Senator Smallwood. Why don't you take this?

Whoops. Alright. I'm sorry.

Thank you, Mister Chair. I know there are so many things that you could be doing, during this period, but I appreciate you being persistent and making sure that this conversation took place. I wanna thank Vice Chair Ward for being with us and braving that San Diego, 405 traffic to be with us today. And I wanna welcome you all to my 28th District, the mighty 28th District.

And really important that we bring this conversation home to LA. For me, the Olympics represents more than Olympic competition. For me, it really represents, justice, peace, and unity. The cultural Olympiad offers a real opportunity for us to bring those values to life, to bring it to life in our communities. And we've seen host cities like Atlanta and Paris where this has been a a reality.

That opportunity is an economic opportunity, and that is an essential part of justice. It's an essential part of civil rights. And every contract awarded and every cultural investment that is made is an opportunity to ensure that the spirit of global unity translates into meaningful benefits for our communities. I welcome LA28's plan, for the programming across film and fashion, food, music, performance, and visual arts. I don't think there's any other place in the world that can tell that story like we can.

And as the Chair said, we are very hopeful and excited. But I want to also challenge LA28 to think bigger and to ensure that equity is the foundation of the cultural Olympiad and not an afterthought. Los Angeles has extraordinary creative talent, cultural institutions. We have seen our global influence on so many historic events, including the historic 2022 Super Bowl halftime show where Inglewood, South LA, showcased West Coast hip hop and our black cultural influence are from around the world.

We also know that, in ensuring an application process in a digital calendar are useful tools, but we also need meaningful investment in original programming, direct engagement with our neighborhoods, and a Los Angeles that has its cultural marketplace on display.

Little Tokyo, Koreatown, Little Ethiopia, Pico Robertson in our Jewish community, South Los Angeles, all of these are in my district, and each deserves an opportunity and resources that reflect its community. We know the we are a country that is made of immigrants, and we know that Los Angeles is a global community. In South Los Angeles, in particular, we already are demonstrating what long term cultural investment can look like. Our district is home to California's first officially designated black historic cultural district.

The state of California has supported this effort with 5 million dollars in state funding for community planning, cultural infrastructure, and monuments honoring Black Los Angeles.

And our vision includes permanent monuments, gateways, cultural storytelling, and tours that attract visitors, support neighborhood businesses, and our local artists. That is what the Olympics should represent, and cultural recognition that leads to neighborhood investment and lasting economic opportunity is what we do expect. Other host store, host cities offer important lessons.

London launched its cultural Olympiad four years before the games and was supported by 105 million Pounds, in funding for its budget. Paris invested 41 million Euros in its cultural Olympiad, including 12.8 million Euros that came from the Olympic Organizing Committee. These examples underscore the importance of early investment, sustained partnerships, and strategies tailored to individual communities. These investments also should create a lasting legacy through monuments, cultural markers, and gateways that celebrate our communities' unique identities and to increase their invisibility as the world comes to our front and backyard.

The question is whether LA28's commitments and partnerships can deliver that level of ambition here in Los Angeles.

And I want to understand LA28's dedication and commitment to the cultural Olympiad budget. How much will be directly reached into local artist communities and for local cultural institutions, and what resources will support newly commissioned work in community-led programming. And, of course, as Chair of the Senate Labor Committee, and I'm always proud to say the first black woman to Chair that committee, I'm focused on good jobs. I'm focused on fair contracts and meaningful economic opportunities.

Artists and cultural workers also deserve real compensation, and neighborhood businesses deserve opportunities that they benefit as part of these games.

As we approach 2028, we do want Los Angeles to have labor and community peace, and we want unity in our communities. And these kinds of conversations and plans together ensure that this is an opportunity for LA28, government, local, regional, and state, labor, and community partners to create a win-win successful games that bring the world together while strengthening neighborhoods that make Los Angeles a global cultural destination.

So I look forward to the conversation, have lots of questions, and I know that we will leave here ready to do the work that we have to get done in less than six hundred days.

Yeah. Wow. That's right.

Six hundred and thirty nine.

Six hundred and thirty nine to be exact.

Alright. Let's go to Senator Archuleta. And then...

Well, thank you, Mister Chair and Vice Chair and, of course, the welcome from our Representative here in Los Angeles. Smallwood-Cuevas, thank you for having us in your district, which is so important. I'm Senator Bob Archuleta. I handle the 30th Senate District, which is Southern California, obviously, but LA County and Orange County, together.

And so I'm really excited about the meeting today because it's gonna open a lot of doors about the culture, about the Olympics, and about the future of the Olympics itself. But all of us could understand that it is our time now to open the doors for everyone to see Los Angeles, see California, and the preparation we're making for this historic time. So, Mister Chair, thank you once again.

Thank you. Thank you, Senator. Senator Richardson.

Thank you, Mister Chairman. So good to see you and thank you for calling this hearing. Let me start off by thanking the California Science Center for hosting us today at this amazing venue. I hope we will give them an opportunity at the end to make a commercial. But if you don't know, we're having a big opening here in Senator Smallwood's district, I believe it's November 13th, where the space shuttle, you'll be able to see all of the tremendous work.

What people have to know about LA is the reason why we were ready and we could confidently say we wanted to host the Olympics is because we do amazing things here in LA all the time. And so you're gonna see that. We hope that you come back in a few weeks to enjoy it and for many years to come.

A couple points that I wanted to make, I did have an opportunity to come and see one of the FIFA games that we had, the World Cup games. And even though USA had just lost, we were gonna be in the quarter finals and we had just lost, But I had an opportunity to see the security that was set up at SoFi, which is in my district.

And what was also interesting during FIFA is, back to the point of this particular hearing, we were able to see the community festivals, the watch parties, to see the excitement that the community had in FIFA. And I think it was really, frankly, a good dry run for us to get a sense of where things could be positioned, what's required, and then, how do we build that excitement within our community.

So I'm grateful, that we got through FIFA very positively, and I think it's really a testament to where we're gonna go. And lastly, I wanna say, we hear a lot about diversity and diversity is our strength.

And I think frankly, this hearing is about that, is about understanding how can we utilize all of the diversity, both ethnicity through the arts, everything that we have to showcase that for the many people who are gonna be coming to the Olympics, who will not only see the games, but are gonna be staying here, are gonna be eating here, that are gonna be coming early and staying later.

And so that's what really to me, today is about, is hearing all those things that we can prepare people for. I, unfortunately, will be leaving a little earlier, but I do have a staff member who will be here the entire time taking notes, and, of course, I'll be viewing the video. But I wanted to say that upfront. And with that, thank you for having me, and I look forward to the conversation.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Let's go to our Assembly side Chair, Tina Mckinnor.

Hello. Good morning. Good morning. First, I would like to thank Assembly member Christopher Ward and Senator Ben Allen.

I'm sorry, Christopher. I put your whole name. Chris Ward, for chairing today's important hearing and for recognizing that the 2028 Olympics and Paralympic games are about much more than sports. I also wanna thank the leadership and staff of the California Science Center for hosting us today in this incredible space that celebrates innovation, education, and discovery. As Chair of the Los Angeles County legislative delegation and a proud representative of the communities that will be at the center of the 2028 games...

I am excited about the opportunities ahead. The Olympics will bring the world to Los Angeles, but while the athletes will showcase their talents on the field, in the pool, and on the court, our artists, musicians, dancers, and cultural institutions deserve their moment in the, on the world stage as well. Los Angeles County is one of the most culturally diverse places in the world. From Inglewood to Hollywood, from our neighborhoods to our world class museums, we have extraordinary creative community with stories worth sharing.

The cultural Olympiad and community festivals present an incredible opportunity to celebrate that diversity, support local artists, and create economic opportunities and ensure our neighborhoods are part of this excitement. But we must be intentional. Our local artists and small arts organizations cannot be spectators. They must be participants, partners, and beneficiaries. As we prepare to welcome the world, I want to make sure the cultural legacy of the 2028 games extends far beyond the closing ceremonies.

I look forward to hearing today's creative plans, learning how our arts community will be included, and discussing how we can make these games a celebration of the people and cultures that make Los Angeles so very special. I'll have three important question to raise at this hearing. Funding. How much money will be dedicated to the cultural Olympiad, and how will we, how will we reach that local artist and community-based cultural organizations? Equity.

How will we historically, how will historically underserved communities, particularly black communities, be included in the planning with the programming? Legacy, what investments will remain in our communities after the Olympic and Paralympic Games conclude. The Olympic Games are about celebrating the best of humanity that includes our culture. I wanna make sure that when the world comes to Los Angeles in 2028, they don't just see our stadiums and athletes.

I want them to experience our neighborhoods, our music, our art, and the incredible diversity that makes Los Angeles County special. And most importantly, I want our local artists and cultural organizations to benefit economically from these games. I look forward to forward to the hearing today, and I'll also be leaving just a little bit early. But I'm glad to be here, and I'd like to thank, the chairs. Thank you.

Assemblymember Elhawary.

I will keep it quick because my colleagues are, did a great job of, making sure we talked about why we're here. Welcome everybody to Assembly District 57. So glad to have you and really looking forward to the opportunity to talk about the legacy that the games will leave behind, and truly so grateful to the Chair and Vice Chair for making this happen.

Thank you. Thank you, Assemblymember. Alright. Well, thank you, my colleagues.

Let's, we're now gonna turn it over for some welcomes, from, the Exhibition Park and from the city. This is just a, we're not doing question and answer for this panel. We will be going directly into the next panel afterwards, but we really appreciate the two of you being here. We appreciate your leadership, all the work you've put in that you're gonna continue to do to make these games so spectacular.

So we'll first go to you, miss Ambriz.

Well, in return, Mister Chair, we are so grateful for your leadership, not only for convening this hearing, but as you pointed out, this is your last hearing. So we would be remiss to not offer our gratitude and appreciation for your leadership for the state of California. You have been a great patron of Exposition Park, so we are so thankful, and we look forward to seeing you in, different ways in the future.

With that as well, I would like to, really appreciate and, thank the, Vice Chair as well for, helping convene this meeting in our, as we've heard from our home Senator and Assembly members in our, great Los Angeles destination here in ICON, which is Exposition Park. I'm gonna, throw out a few words.

A dinosaur, a 1923 built coliseum, a spaceship, a space shuttle, incredible art, incredible history, all of that, I should say, stormtroopers. All of those have one thing in common, which is that they all live here at Exposition Park. We are a 160-acre state property, and in that sense, we are under your purview and under your support. And we have been so appreciative of the leadership that you've demonstrated to invest in Exposition Park.

As we prepare for these LA28 games, we are so excited to welcome the world. And as mentioned, been mentioned before, we see ourselves as the backyard of this South LA community, and we are about to be the front yard to the world. And as we have the global spotlight, it is our responsibility to ensure that we're representing both the local community and also the best of California and what we can offer.

We've been working very closely with LA28, and we'll continue to do that.

We as well have continued questions around how we can engage the local community to have financed creative ideas that are brought into the cultural Olympiad experience. But we have a long bridge history here at Exposition Park in hosting incredible games and and hosting incredible, moments. As was mentioned by Senator Richardson, we did host the FIFA World Cup Fan Fest.

We also held the bicentennial for the country here just this summer, and we're just, 639 days away from hosting the third Olympiad that will be here at the park. We held it in 1932.

We held it in 1984. And lucky us, we all get together, to get to work together to host the 1928 games.

So as we think about the really important opportunity that we have here in this really incredible moment in time for us to work together and be a part of history, we really wanna make sure that we are reflecting the local community, and we are bringing the voices of the local neighbors that are going to be impacted by the, LA28 games, but also given this really kind of, you know, special lens and kind of window into what we can create on their behalf for the state of California.

So we appreciate the continued conversations with you. Please use us at any point as a site, as a destination with our four museums, with our four world class sports stadiums and arenas, and also with our incredible history here.

Thank you very much for hosting this year.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Well, thank you very much, Mister Chairman and members, for being here. And, Mister Chairman, it's a great privilege to be able to celebrate your victory lap here on behalf of, Mayor Karen Bass. It's my honor to welcome all of you. It's appropriate that we're having this hearing today in the shadow of the coliseum. And in just twenty-one months, the coliseum will become the only building in the world to have hosted three Olympic opening ceremonies.

Yeah.

And, Mister chairman, you, you told the story of 1932 and the fact that arts, were celebrated with medals, but also the 1932 games changed the way the world saw Los Angeles. We were no longer just a city of movie making. We were a city that had a cultural contribution to give to the world as well. 1984, of course, maximized that even more.

It was the foundation of the creation of the LA Opera, the Disney Concert Hall, and in so many, the Department of Cultural Affairs and in so many other ways. The '84 Olympics changed the cultural fabric of this city. 2028 will bring us games that dwarf those events and are entirely unprecedented in scale, 5 billion people around the world will be looking at California during those games.

We'll have 13 or 14 million ticket holders, millions of visitors coming into Los Angeles, and it will be a challenge and an opportunity of unprecedented scale. The city of Los Angeles as the host city and the state of California are the only two government entities that actually have skin in the game, that have put our money up and are at risk if these games are not successful.

Because of that, it's essential that we continue to work in close partnership, the city and the state, to ensure that we maximize this opportunity and ensure that we're getting the greatest return on that investment, that we can. And that's in many respects where arts and culture comes in. Arts and culture are fundamental to mayor Bass' vision of a games for all.

We have to make sure that everyone in Southern California benefits from these games, and we can do that through the arts. We can do that through the community empowerment, that comes from that, the kind of, bringing neighborhoods together, celebrating our strengths, the strength of our diversity through arts and culture. We are making an investment in doing that.

The city of Los Angeles, as you'll hear later, through the Department of Cultural Affairs, is investing taxpayer dollars to ensure that we have an arts and culture program well beyond the cultural Olympiad that'll be organized by the organizing committee. So the city itself is putting money forward for this.

And in addition to that, we're organizing through the office of strategic partnerships, philanthropy, and corporate support to make sure, that we can do even more. We celebrate and, thank you, for the investment that the state has already made, the 5 million dollars that, you know, of California Arts Council investment, it will be imperative for continuing cooperation and continuing support from the state of California. It'll be essential to maximize this once in a lifetime opportunity that we have now for a transformative legacy.

And if we do that, if we lock arms and do that over the next twenty one months, then when the Paralympic cauldron is extinguished at the Colosseum, on 08/27/2028, we'll all have reason to celebrate not only the success that we saw during the games, but the foundation that we've laid for future generations through investment in the arts and culture of of Los Angeles and California. Thank you very much for being with us.

Thank you. Thank you, Mister Krekorian. Appreciate both of you being here, and you're welcome to stick around as long as you like hearing the discussion but appreciate you being here as we call up our next panel. I'd love, I appreciate the reference to the Paralympic cauldron.

I do wanna just take a moment to acknowledge the very tragic passing of RJ Mitte who was a wonderful actor who passed away by suicide at age 34 not long ago, A couple days ago, a big champion for the Paralympic games, big advocate...

And another reminder of how much more we need to do on helping people struggling through mental health challenges. All right. So before turning over to our panels, I just wanna remind the committee members, we wanna ensure that the questions are on the topic at hand.

We may, you know, reserve the right to intervene if the discussion goes off topic and-- but-- and I do also wanna just recognize the arrival of our good friend and colleague, Senator Pérez, who's here. Thank you for being here. So let's now turn it over to our first panel, where we'll discuss the history of the Cultural Olympiad, the important lessons that we should reflect upon for the 2028 games. We're gonna start with Dr. Tawny Paul, professor of history at UCLA and director of the Luskin Center for History and Policy, and I love the fact she's wearing a-- is that a 1932 jersey?

It was worn by my grandfather who competed in the Olympics.

Wow. Okay.

As a sailor.

That is super cool. I love it. I love it. What year? That is very cool. And then we'll also ask Zev Yaroslavsky, former supervisor for LA County, current director of the LA Initiative of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs-- we'll ask both of them to give their presentations and then folks will be able to answer, you know, questions. But I'd love to-- can you give us the story? What year is the--

This is from the 1932 Olympics.

Wow. Okay.

My grandfather competed as-- in sailing on a six-meter boat, and this was the sweatshirt that he wore to compete.

So, this is maybe my father's most prized possession, and I got special permission to wear it today, so.

So cool.

That's what-- where was the sailing in '32?

You know, I'm not sure. I think it was in Long Beach.

Okay.

I think it was, but I'm not sure.

That's very cool. Well, thank you. Thanks for wearing the-- that wonderful piece of history.

Thank you for putting up with my dirty old sweatshirt. Yeah. So my name is Tawny Paul. I'm a history professor at UCLA, and I run the Luskin Center for History and Policy. I'd like to start by thanking Chair Allen and Vice Chair Ward for convening this meeting and inviting me to present.

I've been asked to talk a little bit about some historic context for us, and as the first city to host the games three times, there is a lot of history to draw from. I also believe that we have a usable past. So what I'll be really focusing on today is some of the lessons that we can learn from previous sporting events--actually, not just the Olympics, but World Cups as well. I do have a PowerPoint, which unfortunately you all can't see, so--

We'll turn around.

The research that I'm presenting is part of a project called Staging Heritage that I've been carrying out for the last year with my collaborator, Esmeralda Ziani, who's based in Qatar Museums and was very involved in the 2022 World Cup-- FIFA World Cup that was held in Qatar. So we're interested in cultural planning and the content of cultural offerings around mega sporting events.

I'm gonna start with an overview of LA84 and the Arts Festival, which really sets a kind of new standard for what an Olympics art festival could be, and then I'll move into five lessons that we've learned from these other case studies. And I'll just mention my colleague, Esmeralda, has submitted written testimony for you, and the full reports of our research are available on our website for the audience, and also we have some copies out in the front, so please go ahead and take those.

So, LA84. Chair Allen, I know you mentioned 1912, but I'm actually gonna go back even further and say that arts have been embedded in the modern Olympics since the games were recreated by Baron Pierre de Coubertin in 1896.

He envisioned the sports as, quote, a producer of arts and an occasion for arts. And as we know, the IOC specifically requires host cities to offer a cultural component within their Olympics bid, and LA, I think, really helps you establish that. The '84 Olympic Arts Festival was absolutely massive. It included 72 performing arts productions, more than 30 visual arts exhibitions, and then seven mini festivals that took place within the larger festival.

It was lauded as the largest arts festival that had ever taken place in America. It ran over 10 weeks, preceding the Olympic Games, and was divided into two parts. The first seven weeks celebrated international arts and then the last three weeks showcased the cultural richness of Los Angeles and the United States. It was directed by Robert Fitzpatrick, who was then the president of CalArts, and his vision really emphasized an arts festival that was experimental, that was innovative, and that would break boundaries. And he aimed to recruit artists and works that had never before been seen in LA and to bring artists and performances to LA that really challenged some of our assumptions.

The central theme of the arts festival was a broad internationalism, and I think this quote really says it all. Los Angeles is poised between two Easts--Europe/New York and the Orient. Tokyo, Seoul, and Beijing are as influential here as Boston, Paris, and Milan. Likewise, cultural traditions that date back to the days of the Spanish explorations of North America combine with the city's openness to the new and untested to create an atmosphere unique in all the world.

And so, what we can see here is not just an arts festival that's creating history, but that's using history and that's drawing on culture to really craft the image of the city that will be presented to the world during this event. So I'm gonna move into some of our lessons here. Our first is really about audiences, and despite our instinct to think about the Olympics as an opportunity to present LA to the world, to welcome the world to LA, what's really important to know is that audiences for Olympic Arts Festivals are predominantly local.

This is kind of surprising, but large visitor numbers actually don't guarantee attendance at cultural offerings, such as museums. In fact, in London and in Paris, visitors to museums declined significantly during the Olympics. And once in 2012, the British Museum recorded nearly 170,000 fewer visitors than the same period the previous year.

Several Paris museums experienced declines despite approximately 11.2 million visitors coming to Greater Paris. So, we know that our audiences need to be local, like, we need to make sure that we're serving those audiences. According to surveys, sports ticket holders tend to not go to cultural offerings unless they're integrated where they already are, like near venues, and most cultural participants may not hold sports tickets.

So we really need to think strategically about who we're serving, and that also includes timing. For the arts and culture, the weeks actually leading up to the Olympics might be more important than the kind of two weeks that the games take take place, and then during the Paralympics afterwards. In terms of content and how LA presents itself, I think this brings up a kind of interesting dynamic, which is that LA is not just presenting itself to the world. It's actually presenting itself to itself.

So we might think about what that means. And in terms of what we present, I just wanna say as an aside that cultural programming doesn't need to be about sports. The LA84 Art Festival's relationship with athletic events is worth mentioning. The OAF was envisioned as something that would stand on its own, not as just a corollary to the sporting events.

And then as this quote from Robert Fitzpatrick suggests, you know, what he was envisioning was really an arts festival of excellence that would rival the excellence or be comparable to the excellence being demonstrated in athletics at the same time. So, really, what we're doing is capitalizing on the moment, trying to do something really creative while we have, you know, the energy and the attention of the city and of the world.

Also, just to say in terms of content in LA84, of all the performances and exhibitions, notably only one was explicitly dedicated to sports and two more linked to the Olympics. So it was really kind of its own distinct sort of thing. My second lesson is about community participation during the Olympics and Paralympic Games. Working through an existing cultural landscape that goes beyond large established institutions is what leads to success, and the most impactful cultural offers employ a co-creation model with local communities.

That's what we've seen in both LA84, Paris, and London. What happens in LA84 was that they opted into a co-producing model. So cultural institutions and performance companies would submit programming ideas and then the OAF would assemble events and exhibitions that aligned with the Olympics theme. But one of the central tensions in '84 was the balance between bringing international art to LA and showcasing LA culture to the world.

And the focus on international art left a lot of local artists and institutions feeling really excluded. This ended up leading to a number of fringe festivals, which were staged by smaller arts groups who'd been left out, and I'm including a couple of quotes here. The first is an op-ed from the LA Sentinel, which expressed frustration that more local artists should have been included so that visitors to the festival would clearly see that America has more than imported stars and super athletes.

And then the second quote there comes from Peter Sellars who directed the 1990 Los Angeles Festival, and he had kind of reacted to '84 and said, you know, there will be no European and no East Coast culture in this festival. This festival will be very, very LA.

Our third lesson has to do with access, with accessibility, and we're thinking about access in really broad terms, not just in terms of disability access, but really the access of any local community who might have trouble otherwise participating in the arts festival. Access means not just being able to experience culture but being able to contribute to that culture. My collaborator, Esmeralda, likes to always remind me, accessibility is about more than ramps and it's about more than translation. It's about including communities in planning and in curation so that they have a stake in what is being shown.

Wun Zinn 2012 through a program called Wun Zinn Unlimited did a really excellent job with that. They built a multi-year cultural program with community participation, museum collaboration, and disabled cultural production. And by including communities broadly, the visitor numbers that they saw were really good because those communities had a stake in what was going on. Fourth lesson, I've mentioned community-based and co-creation models, but what's really important here is that community participation needs resources and it needs authority.

You know, in terms of resource, one of the things that the Cultural Olympiad can do really well is help lend visibility to different arts offerings, but what I'll warn is that visibility without resources will favor institutions and communities that already have capacity. So resourcing is really important. Shared authority is really about whose voices get to be heard, and this is really important, especially when we're talking about immigrant communities and diaspora communities.

During the Olympics, country houses and embassies tend to be given a lot of voice or they have a lot of voice in how international communities are represented, but the cultural representation supported by a state country house doesn't always resonate with local immigrant communities and so there can be a tension between how state narratives align with diaspora experiences. This is something that happens in London. There was a lot of pushback in 2012 on some of the country houses and a number of community pop-ups that happened as a response. And I think this is something that's really important in LA because we have such a diverse international community here.

And then my fifth and final lesson is that Legacy Begins Now. LA, as we all know, will host its third Olympic Games and its first Paralympic Games. Really great legacies are possible. We saw this in 1984. Legacy is about capitalizing on the Olympic and Paralympic moment to create lasting cultural infrastructure for the host city and its communities. Qatar did this really, really well during the World Cup.

They cemented and funded their public art infrastructure, and the city was turned into a kind of open-air museum with acquisitions, such as the one on the bottom left there, that lasted beyond the tournament period. Paris also did a really good job with this using temporary cultural infrastructure to serve institutions in ways that would last beyond the game's time. They developed the virtual content for their museums and also multilingual interpretation that still exists today.

In order to cement these legacies, though, we really need to start planning for them now and thinking about what will remain, who will own it, who will maintain it, and who can use it going forward. So looking ahead, a major goal of our research project has been to help institutions navigate the game's governance system clearly and understand how and where they can participate.

I'll say that the governance landscape presents challenges to LA institutions and planning how they might fit in. We have a three-tier system here. We have the Cultural Olympiad, we have the city, and we have the county, all who have plans, and then LA will also have neighborhood and community cultural offers. And in comparison to our other case studies, this is highly atypical.

It's highly atypical for more recent cultural delivery models not to have a governance structure that concentrates its decision-making into kind of one umbrella organization. London, Paris, Qatar, and Vancouver all had that. So, LA's wider ecology can be a strength, but museums and cultural institutions also need a clear explanation of how these different parts connect. So to conclude, culture, I believe, can help Los Angeles welcome the world, and the opportunity for us is to leave stronger institutional relationships, access, and cultural authority after 2028.

We have seven research reports available in your packets but also on our website for the audience that go into everything I've talked about in a lot more detail, and you can access them via the QR code that's here. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Let's now go to Supervisor Yaroslavsky. Are you doing a PowerPoint or--

No.

Should I turn my chair back around?

Yeah.

Sorry. Sorry to make you be turning around--

Yeah, yeah. No, it's okay.

I'm too old for our PowerPoint. First of all, what a great presentation, Tawny. A colleague of mine at UCLA and director now of the Luskin Center for History and Policy, so good selection to have-- have her directed. Senator Allen, I just want to also congratulate you on 12 years of outstanding service. You're my state senator, you're my former intern, and you didn't embarrass me.

And I have confidence that your public service career is not over, but thank you for your service up until now. I don't have a PowerPoint and I knew-- I've seen Tawny's outline for what she was gonna say, so I just wanna give you some personal observations as someone who lived through that period. By the way, how much do you want for that sweatshirt?

I was there for '84, I was there at the beginning, and I'm gonna be very positive. I'm not gonna make any critical analysis here, but I wanna tell you what I believe the arts festival, the Olympics Arts Festival in 1984, did for us, for Los Angeles, and I wanna put it in the context of what's happened to the cultural footprint of Los Angeles since 1984.

I don't think it would be completely honest to say that every one of the things that have happened since 1984 happened because of the culture-- because of the Olympic Arts Festival, but it is fair to say that the Olympics Art Festival was catalytic. It catalyzed so many things. First of all, it galvanized so many component parts of our-- of what was then the art-- the cultural footprint. It was-- it wasn't a show. It was a cause in this sort of way, a cultural cause, and many of us did not completely understand that at the time.

But I'll give you one example. I-- my late wife, Barbara, dragged me to a Kabuki performance up somewhere in the Pasadena area. I did not wanna go. I had enough to do. It turned me around when it came to that art form, which is actually quite fascinating and exciting. But most importantly was the opera. It's been mentioned a couple of times, and I don't think it should be ignored. We had no opera company here. In fact, the only major artistic company that we had in Los Angeles, I believe, at the time was Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Operas, if they came here, they came here with-- when a company was on tour or from outside the country. We still have-- well, we've had a semblance of a ballet company, but for most of our history, the ballet was when the Bolshoi or the Royal Ballet would come here from Europe and perform here, and by the way, to sell out audiences at the Shrine Auditorium right up the street, 7,000 people for two consecutive weeks.

There was an audience for that sort of thing. But the opera came about because Plácido Domingo was here, and he looked around, and as he was wont to do, why don't we have an opera here? And from that several word sentence, became an opera.

We're now celebrating our 40th year, just finishing the 40th year. The opera was born in 1986 as a result of the Olympic Arts Festival and the presence here of Plácido Domingo. And it turned my life around because as-- when I became a county supervisor, and we have the oversight of the county Music Center, I got involved with the opera for a number of policy and financial reasons to help the opera get through a tough time.

And my son, who was in the-- on the Monroe High School Academic Decathlon Team, and one of the categories was opera-- by the way, I hated opera at the time. The only opera I'd ever seen was Hansel and Gretel when I was an elementary school kid, and it didn't connect with me. But I heard the wafting of the music that my son was listening on cassette tapes. Some of the younger legislators may remember what a cassette tape is. The-- and I heard those-- the music coming up from Carmen and from La Traviata, and I said, that stuff is good stuff.

I could get into this. And then I'm, like, county supervisor, and the opera calls on me, and I started going to the opera, and I'm now on the Opera Board, and I've become a huge advocate for the opera, just one person. You never know who you're gonna touch, thanks to the Olympic Arts Festival of 1984.

I'm not gonna take much more time, but I wanna go through the litany of things that have happened culturally, the infrastructure that has been built in Los Angeles, and for every one of these institutions, for every one of these buildings, there's an institution behind it. There are people who are employed, and they they look like Los Angeles in most cases.

So, one of the infrastructure investments have been made here, what I've called the golden age of the arts in Los Angeles, and in no particular order, the Getty Villas, the Getty Center--brand new--the redoing of the-- well, the expansion of this campus, the redoing of the Natural History Museum, the expansion of this museum, the redevelopment of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art campus in the Miracle Mile.

By the way, the LA County Museum of the Arts started in what is now the Natural History Museum, the oldest institutional building in LA, but they now have the brand new museum on the Miracle Mile, the Disney Concert Hall, the Soraya, the Cal State Northridge Performing Arts Center, and I could go on--Hollywood Bowl transformation from a 1950s, you know, facility to a 21st century performing arts facility, and there are more.

All of that's happened really in the last 20 years, 20 to 25 years. Think about that for a second. If any other city--Paris, Rome, Tokyo, doesn't matter--it had gotten just one of those things, if we had just done Disney Hall in the last 20 years, we would have called it a pretty good couple of decades.

But we've had it all, and I really believe that what the 1984 Olympics Arts Festival did was kind of that junction between the past and the future where we had a cultural footprint here but it was minimal compared to other major cities. And what this did was catapult us into-- it allowed us to think much bigger so that you galvanized the philanthropic community. You galvanized the cultural arts community. It spawned the Pacific Standard Time exhibits that took place in 1987 and beyond, or whatever the year was. '87, we had our second so called-- we just called it the LA Arts Festival under Peter Sellars's direction, and so forth.

And all of that started--I wouldn't say started--but got accelerated by the Olympics Arts Festival. So you never know what kind of impact this thing would have. I'm disappointed that we haven't-- and we're gonna hear more from the Cultural Olympian folks. I'm gonna be interested to hear where they are.

We were-- in '84, remember, we got the bid. The bid was was granted in 1978. The arts festival was probably in the works by '81 or '82. I don't remember the year, but it was several years before the Olympic Games, not two years before the Olympic Games. So we've lost a lot of time.

Nonetheless, whatever we do here, it's an opportunity to galvanize the cultural energies of our city and for people like myself who weren't particularly plugged into some of the cultural assets that we had and catapulted-- catalyzed it into something that is bigger than the sum of its parts. So I think it's very important, especially in a city this diverse. Probably the most diverse city and county in the world.

And the Olympics is the most exciting athletic event and the most comprehensive athletic event--the Olympics and Paralympics--that there is on the planet. And to have that here and to have that, like so many other things, galvanized by-- catalyze the cultural footprint of Los Angeles even further will be a great victory for us. Anyway, I'll stop with that.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you for your many, many years of leadership in this and so many other areas for our region.

Just thank me for your internships.

Yes. Well, that too. That too. That too.

Did a great job for me, by the way.

Healthcare. We did health policy. Thank you. Thank you both. Let me just start. I'm interested in your comments, Dr. Paul, about the decreasing attendance in several of the museums, and I'd love to get your thoughts as to why that is, how we can counteract that decline. I also have an understanding that the catacombs in Samsaadhanii actually saw a spike.

So there were some cultural institutions that actually had an increase in attendance. Can the two of you speak to-- you know, how did that experience compare to '84 with regards to attendance? What are some of the differences? What are some of the lessons learned from cultural attendance at the World Cup, which, you know, perhaps was a less of a focus this summer than I think we hope to see with '28? So I'd love to think about how-- how do we-- what are some of the lessons learned from '84 and '24 with regards to having a really robust attendance from locals and tourists alike?

Yeah. So there-- I mean, you're quite right to point out that there can be some variation from institution to institution, and there might be some reasons why Paris and London saw some declines. I also understand that ticket prices may have been raised during the Olympics in some institutions and that may have played a role.

I mean-- and why do they do that?

Why do they do that? It's an opportunity. I mean, it's an opportunity for them to benefit financially from the Olympics. So I think location of institutions is really important. I mean, some will be, you know, close to venues, which makes them kind of easy to pop into and that could create a bump. Some will have to be closed during the Olympics because they're within a security perimeter.

I mean, I think one of the things we can think about is kind of getting culture out, like, getting it out of the, you know, institutional buildings into spaces where people are, so cultural offerings that take place, like, near fan zones or, you know, near venues, which are kind of super accessible in a very easy way. We wanna make this really easy for our audiences. I think the reality is that, you know, during that, you know, short period that the games are actually taking place, the focus is really gonna be a lot on sport. And I think that when we think about arts festivals, we need to be thinking about a much longer period.

Right.

The successes in '84, the successes in, you know, London 2012 and Paris really were a matter of, you know, building longer-term arts offerings that could take place weeks, months, even years leading up to the games. So I think just focusing on that rather than on this kind of, you know, really set two-week period is probably a good strategy for us. I don't know-- I have not been able to find visitor numbers for LA84, unfortunately. I've been deep in the archives and-- but maybe Zev can talk--

Yeah, I don't know the numbers. I did know it at one time, but one of the things that shocked me after the '84 games was that the business community, the hotel business community, said that they had less occupancy during the summer of 1984 than they had in the previous year. And the reason, those of you who were around in 1984, everybody was panic-stricken that there would be traffic jams all over the place, terrorism, this, that, and the other thing.

And I guess-- I asked the question, if you wanted to go to Paris and you weren't particularly a fan of gymnastics or track and field, you probably wouldn't have gone in 2024. You would have gone in 2023 or '25 because you don't wanna mess with all that traffic and all that other stuff, which, by the way, did not materialize here. We didn't have traffic. But that was-- the Olympics scare non-Olympic type people away, just general tourists. So they were actually down.

And residents leave town.

Well, they did-- they did too, and they certainly didn't come to work. I could speak for myself. But the fact is that when people promoted the Olympic Games, both in '84 and for '28, '24 at the time, it's gonna bring people, it's gonna bring tourism, it's gonna bring that-- no, it doesn't bring tourism. It actually-- no. We make-- the economy makes it back on other stuff, but if you were a hotel owner, it wasn't the best year of the decade. I don't know the numbers, but they're out there somewhere. The Convention and Visitors Bureau can probably dig that up for you.

Yeah. Just building on Senator Richardson's comments, do-- are there any lessons learned? Obviously, World Cup--very different experience, much smaller operation in Los Angeles, but any lessons learned from some of the cultural activities that were taking place this summer and the international tourism and resident engagement that you think we ought to be thinking about or that's instructive?

We carried out this research kind of in the months leading up to the World Cup. So I don't have any, I haven't looked at the data for the World Cup in Los Angeles. Have you seen anything?

No.

Okay. Alright. Maybe we'll ask another panel. I mean, I've noticed that you've included a Qatar '22, which, and of course, it's such a more concentrated World Cup. I mean, all the games were so close to each other. But did you notice a difference between the World Cup Cultural Festival and the Olympics festivals that you've studied? Is there, or is it just kind of the general same idea?

Do you mean differences...

As you compared to these very, you know, London and Qatar and Paris?

Yeah. I mean, I think Qatar is a bit of a, is a bit of an outlier in terms of being a very different city. And the reason we included it is because that's where my collaborator is based, and so she had access to some really fantastic data from there and was actually involved in the museum offerings.

But I think, you know, there is a big shift between '84 and London and Paris just in terms of kind of how we deal with local audiences, how we think about co-creation, how we involve local communities. I think that was, you know, in the public history world and maybe the more broadly, the arts and museum world in 1984, that kind of wasn't the language that was spoken at the time, whereas now there's a lot more emphasis on, you know, inclusion and diversity within the art space.

And so I think that would be the major, the major difference. And then the other one would just be the 1984 focus on international, on like, you know, bringing in international excellence, whereas Paris and London were a lot more focused on kind of displaying what they had. And that's something that LA can can do now being the kind of arts capital that it is.

Yeah. Yeah. Though, you know, the Kabuki experience you had was an example of bringing in international excellence perhaps. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's, I mean, that's not to say that international excellence was bad, but I think LA was a very different city in 1984 than it is today. You know, I think New York was kind of the undisputed arts capital of the US, and I wouldn't say that that's true anymore.

Yep. Alright. Let me turn it over...

A real good point that, you know, since '84... It was already happening, but since '84, LA is, if you're, if you're an artist, if you're an up and coming artist, if you're, think outside the box, whatever, in whatever form of art, you wanna be here. Because there are no constraints on you here.

You don't have to be a part of the Rockefeller family or the Vanderbilt family. Anybody who's got an idea, as we've seen, it can, you can make it, to steal the New York theme song. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. And they and they do. And some of them used to make it here and then leave. Now people make it here and this remains their home. So this is a cultural capital, really, a cultural capital of the world. No question.

Yeah. Okay. Alright. Thank you. We'll go to Senator Smallwood.

No. Really appreciate the presentation and hope that we can get a copy of that PowerPoint too so we can continue to think about some of the information that you presented. I wanted to start with our dear supervisor, and it's always good. I really appreciate that we have institutional living knowledge to help us work through this because there's always a been there, done that quality, right, to this conversation.

And you talked a lot about that we've lost a lot of time and, but that we do have all of the assets and the energy to make this happen. Given that this process started far earlier in 1984, we are now two years in, 600 days plus to go. What is your, what is your sense having worked with counties, cities, state directly as an elected leader, but also having that experience of LA 28?

What can we do to then begin to really materially set on a course that will allow us to ensure that our major cultural institutions and our community based organizations. And, you know, we have done a lot to invest in our neighborhoods and sort of the city within the city. How do we make sure that those communities are also gonna be touched by this? What can we be doing, particularly those at the state level and our local partners?

Look. What's done is done. And I don't know why. I have some ideas, but this was just not... We had an opportunity to do something, you know, to have a longer runway leading up to the, to the games, and particularly the Cultural Olympiad, especially since we were originally gonna have the games in '24 and turned out to be '28. So we had a lot of time.

And there were a lot of people who were involved in '84, a lot older now, and a lot of people who were younger people who were at the cutting edge who wanted to do something and tried to get galvanized the artistic community, the LA 28 Committee, the city, the county, and it just didn't happen.

And I'm not trying to point a finger here, but it just it just didn't happen. And it was, it took second, second level of priority. And I don't think there was one person who had the capacity or the will to really take this on like a Bob Fitzpatrick did for the 84 Olympics Arts Festival.

So it's done. And so I think I don't know what you're gonna hear from the Cultural Olympiad people, but I suspect that they're gonna try to do the best Cultural Olympiad they can with the, with what they have now and the time they have left. I'll give you an example of what we lose on time.

If you wanted to get a Plácido Domingo back in 1984, you couldn't call him up in 1983 and say, hey. What are you doing on July 27? We'd like you to sing the national anthem. You know, he's booked up for five years, and there are a lot of artists who are booked up for four, five, six years. I mean, the LA Opera is talking about, thinking about their, what they're gonna be performing in 2031.

So that's the kind of thing that we lose. And, but that doesn't mean that the Cultural Olympiad is a flop. It can be something. And, really, in a way, that's the challenge that they have is to look at what, at the assets they have. They need some resources and give them the time they have to make something good. And there are a lot of things going on in the city every day culturally. I mean, things that none of you and me know about.

I had lunch a couple of, several years ago with Joel Wachs, my former colleague, and now runs the Andy Warhol Foundation in New York. And we had lunch at Langer's. And after we're getting ready to lunch, he said, I've got a meeting down in Washington Boulevard and La Cienega. And I said, what are you doing down there?

He says, well, that's the fastest growing gallery place for contemporary art anywhere in Southern California. And I said, I drive through that neighborhood five times a week. I had no idea. So I did drive down there. And there are there are these kinds of pockets all over town, not just in the city, but in the county.

And they're hiding in plain sight. So maybe that, this is not my strong suit, but maybe this, these are the kinds of assets that can be leveraged for something. But make no mistake, we lost a lot of time. We coulda, we... And it's nobody's fault sitting in this room. It's just time had passed us by, and there were other other priorities in time.

I appreciate those examples. And I guess, Tawny, I guess I wanna ask you, what would you say given the time that's passed? What would be the one thing that we could do to ensure what you talked about? And I'm really, the point that you made about the lasting legacy piece and the cultural infrastructure being something left behind by this. So what is the one thing in 600 days that would really help us do what the supervisor laid out, making sure we bring all of those great assets together to bear for a Cultural Olympiad?

You know, I think that's actually a good question for the arts community because I think what we're gonna be relying on is what, you know, what communities and what institutions are already planning. And I think what we need to be asking is how we can best support them to do what they what they wanna do really well and to maximize their audiences.

So that's the lasting legacy piece you feel. That's the... I just wanna be clear. You're saying that the local artists will be the ones to shape the lasting thing legacy.

I think so. Yeah.

Thanks.

Senator Pérez.

Thank you, and thank you for your presentation. I really appreciated it. You know, I was just going through some of the materials when it's comparing both 1984 versus 2024, and I think it was a report that was produced for us by the UCLA Department of History back in 2015.

And, as I've been thinking about, you know, some of the financing for, you know, improvements and whatnot, how that operates, I found it really interesting to read here that many of the of the funding opportunities have kind of changed since 1984. And so the report notes two principal changes that affect finances and revenues are noteworthy.

In 1984, the LAOOC, or the Los Angeles Olympics Organizing Committee, controlled the sale of television rights, received the proceeds, and negotiated their distribution to the IOC, or the International Olympics Committee, at the USOC and to itself. Today, the protocols are reversed. The IOC controls the television rights negotiation, receives the proceeds, and determines how they will be distributed to the local organizing committee at its sole discretion.

Later on in the report it notes, it is possible that the city may be asked to assume total financial responsibility for staging and operating the Olympics before it knows how much television and sponsorship revenue it will receive from the IOC. While the IOC is expected to give Rio De Janeiro, the host of the 2016 games, $1.5 billion in such revenues, the amount that will be available in 2024 has not been confirmed and won't be for some time.

And so it's noted throughout the end of this report as it's looking at comparisons how revenues and finances were handled previously, how they were handled by the kind of hosting entity. And now it's the IOC that kind of controls, whether it's television sponsorships, whether it's communications or marketing. It even notes that the host city organizing committee is required to enter into a joint venture marketing agreement with the USOC, which transfers a large portion of marketing revenues from the organizing committee to itself.

And so one of the things I found interesting when we went to go, and we spent some time in Paris, I spent some time talking with them about the improvements and investments that the Olympics had made into their community. They built out a very large pool and a number of other kind of stadiums because they lack stadiums in that regard.

They're not, you know, LA, we're very flush with kind of sporting arenas and stadiums here, that they were able to make that investment. And so it seems like one of the major differences from 1984 versus now is that that revenue and those finances are controlled by the international committee. And so some of those dollars could return back to the City of LA as well as other cities that are hosting events.

I represent Pasadena, which has the Rose Bowl, Arcadia, which has the Santa Anita Racetrack. And so I would just love to hear from you. Are we anticipating additional revenues flowing back towards the city so that we could make some of those improvements, make some of those upgrades, this investment into arts and the culture? I'd love to hear that and to see, you know, what, I guess, what we're anticipating given that the financing structure has been flipped since the last time we hosted the games.

Yeah. I don't think I'm the one to answer that question. I think that's the question you should ask of the LA 28 Committee and some of the city officials and state officials because you're on the hook too for $250 million at some point if it goes, if it, if there's a deficit. I can say this, that paper, I think, is a paper several people, including myself, wrote that. So eloquent. I didn't realize. That wasn't my contribution to eloquence, but we did that paper in 2015. It was the first thing I did at UCLA when I came back after retiring from public life.

And what we warned at that time was that, because the bid, Boston had just abandoned their bid. They were, they had a lock on on getting the USOC nomination. They would compete for the games for '24. They decided they didn't wanna risk the financial calamity that some people thought it would be in Boston. Boston does not have anywhere near the athletic infrastructure that we have here. And so they bailed, and the city stepped forward.

My good friend, Paul Krekorian, was on the city council at that time. And I think I went and lobbied him on this too. The city had to sign a commitment, a contractually binding commitment before they even know, knew what their costs were gonna be. They had no way of knowing in 2015 what would be in play in 2024, let alone, as it turned out, 2028.

They signed an agreement that basically was a blank check. And I called three different prominent lawyers in town. They're all alive still, and I'm not gonna give their names, but most people know who they are, who are experts in this field. I showed them a copy of the, of what was called the Joinder Agreement, the commitment.

And one of the lawyers who said, I've quoted him many times. He said, I would never allow my client to sign such a document, but that's what the city signed. And now, having said that, we have a lot of assets here, athletic venue assets. There's no reason if it's run right, and I believe this. No reason why this Olympics can't make a make a profit on paper. Okay? Theoretically, it should be able to make a profit.

They say they're gonna get 7 billion and change in revenues. The costs are gonna be somewhere around the same. That's what their budgets are saying. I'm sure those are dynamic estimates, but what the difference between 1984 and 2028 is that the city had no worries in 1984 because there was a charter amendment that was approved by the voters. 70% of the voters voted to prohibit the city from using taxpayer money for the Olympic games.

I helped write that charter amendment. The problem was that we didn't, it only applied to the 84 games because none of us thought we'd ever be alive to see another games come to Los Angeles, Olympics come to Los Angeles. Just who would have dreamt that? And here we are.

So there is no such guarantee or prohibition in the city charter, and there is no guarantee that the city won't be on the hook, and the state is on the hook. But there's also some escape language that the state has in the legislation, if my memory serves me correctly. But that's the issue. They should be able to run the games at at a profit.

And honestly, I think the legacy of the games for the people who organize it, unless they make at least as much of a profit as the 84 games, it'll be a failure. But they should make a profit. I bet you say that tongue in cheek. They should make a profit. But what we don't know is where's the, you know, how much money is it actually gonna cost, and where's the money gonna come from?

And I think this is an issue that the City Council and the and the LA 28 Committee are in a discussion, if not a shouting match. We had the same shouting match with the LA 84 Committee back then, but it's par for the course. But there is that risk. And one last thing I'll say, and I don't wanna get into national politics.

But the federal government has to, is a major fiscal partner in the security issue, and in the transportation issue, in the bus system that they wanna create for the '28 games. You tell me between now and 2028 whether the Trump administration is gonna release some of that money, what the conditions of that release of that money, which is in, I think it's in their budget. I think it's over $1 billion for security alone.

And I may be over my skis here, but Mr. Krekorian, who's in this, in the midst of this stuff, he would be a better source of that. That money has to come our way, and there's $750 million is reported for being able to bring in law enforcement officers from other jurisdictions in California. Legislature just passed a law, the governor signed it, to allow that to happen. But they're gonna have to pay those officers.

They're gonna have to house them. They're gonna, you know, where's that money gonna come from? These are huge chunks of dough. If you have a $7 billion budget... I'm not even sure this is on the LA '28 budget, these kinds of things. But $750 million just for that, a billion dollars for security, which wouldn't just be local security. It would be federal security as well. That's a lot of money. And at some point, there's gotta be some transparency to the people who are guaranteeing the money.

You know, when the LA Opera almost went bankrupt in 2009, 10 during the Great Recession, they came to me and they said, we have a bank that's willing to lend us money. We're having a big, the Ring Festival, the Wagner Ring Festival, which is a big thing. People come from all over the world to see this thing. And then the recession hit and people stopped traveling.

And so they had a $32 million budget. $12 million of it was assumed to be ticket sales from people coming from outside the country. And they didn't materialize, so they needed to borrow $12 million. They came to me and they said, would the county be willing to guarantee the loan we're gonna get from bank? A bank wants a guarantor.

And I said, jeez, we've never done that for any of the resident companies at the county music center before, ever. But let me see if we can get the votes for it on the board. And we did. And he told me, the chairman of the board told me at the time, Marc Stern, he said, part owner of the Milwaukee Brewers, so we're not talking this week. Marc said, we have the people who will pay, who will make good on the loan.

They just, it's gonna be spread out over the next three years. Okay. Show me the list of who they are. Well, they wanted to be anonymous. I said, well, I can't go to my colleagues if I don't know. And so he showed me the list. And it was the usual suspects of people who step up when somebody needs philanthropic investment, and it worked, and they paid it back early. Now I say that because that's not $7 billion.

It was only $12 million that we were on the hook for, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't do that unless I had an extraordinary confidence and transparency from the people to whom, for whom we were guaranteeing the loan that they were gonna be able to do it. And I don't know that that's been the case between the 28 Committee and the city, and it's gotta be. And I understand they have issues of confidentiality and they're competing, you know, for, they have people competing to be sponsors and all that stuff.

That's all right. But there should be a conversation between the CEO of the LA 28 Committee and the CEO of the city, the mayor, and the president of the city council, maybe a couple of other members of the city council. I mean, some sense of where it's at and not be flying in the dark. Peter Ueberroth could have never done that because he knew the city would be prohibited by law from funding a deficit. So he was motivated.

He'd go to you as a sponsor and said, we're gonna maximize what we get. You know, there's the whole story. They had a, who was gonna be the official film of the 1984 games? Film, which is, used to be what, how we make, took pictures. Right? And it was a it was a competition between Kodak and Fuji.

And Kodak didn't think that the LA 84 Committee would have the guts to give, to award that contract for the official film to a Japanese company, to a foreign company. They did because they outbid Kodak, and that sent a message. That's not, it may be happening now, but we don't know.

And, anyway, I'm still optimistic about this. I don't think Casey Wasserman wants to be in a deficit or his team wants to be in a deficit. I don't think the mayor wants to be in a deficit. And there's no reason for it to be because they don't have any major capital requirements other than building a swimming pool at SoFi and a track at the Colosseum, which in the whole scheme of things is not a, is not that big a deal.

They don't have to build SoFi. They don't have to build the Colosseum. I talked about the cultural assets that have been built in the last forty years. Look at all the athletic venues that have been built and the dormitories at UCLA and at SC that have been built. They got a lot going for us here if it's done right. So I'm not that pessimistic, but I would have never signed a contract that gave away, you know, the crown jewels.

Alright. Well, I think we'll take one more question, two questions from, from Senator, Assembly Member McKinnor and then Ward, and then we can go move on to the next panel.

Yes. Thank you for bringing up the, my bill. We did get the bill signed to bring in police officers from out of state, and I do believe that we will get the federal funding. We always have to remember this is the president's Olympics as well as it's LA 28, and I don't believe that he, on this one, I really don't believe he's gonna fail us.

I have one question for you guys about '84. How did the city and county coordinate their separate plans for communities outside of Los Angeles? Because part of my district sits in Los Angeles, but I also have Inglewood, Hawthorne, Gardena, and Lawndale that sits outside. How did they coordinate with cities outside of Los Angeles?

In what in what term?

With the Cultural Olympiad. Was it just in LA, or was it was it also in other cities?

It was all over the place. Yeah. It was in Pasadena. The Kabuki was in Pasadena, I remember. It was a hot night in Pasadena. And it was it was everywhere. And I don't know how the, I don't think there was a problem coordinating it. It was, you know, law enforcement also. They, the law enforcement agencies coordinated. But, no, there, it was a, the cultural arts festival, the Olympic arts festival was ubiquitous throughout Southern California, maybe even outside the county.

Thank you.

Yeah. I think there were there were actually even events up in Santa Barbara. I mean, it was, yeah, it was very diffuse. And I think that kind of, you know, to go back to the earlier question about how can we ensure that we're getting audiences, getting stuff out, and kind of, you know, it needs to not all be concentrated right in Central LA where, you know, where the congestion will also be.

Yep. Alright. Assembly Member Ward.

Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm really, I think building on some of your comments, it wasn't lost on me. It hit me pretty strongly, that disconnect, right, between a lot of our arts and cultural institutions and these sporting events right now. And so you had also kind of observed that sometimes there was a symbiotic relationship there, and that's when things were a success.

And I remember talking with some of the LA 28 city officials in previous meetings as well with that already awareness and intention of really bringing community ideas, community locations into the overall planning because we wanna stay connected for so many reasons. We want them to be successful.

That is the cultural hub that we want to be able to blossom and to be able to showcase to the world. But that's also where we're gonna be able to see that, you know, more immediate and ongoing benefit, both financially and culturally to this region. And so I think that this is a great first panel to be able to lay that foundation of historical perspective because we've learned those lessons.

Not just from here in '84, but also in more recent games as well. It's gonna inform the decisions that we're making in those investments because I do have that concern that we might be pushing Angelenos out or pushing Californians out of a lot of these opportunities. I want everybody to be able to look back and say, no. I was there, and I got this inspiration, and I had a great memory and a great time, and maybe something turned for the better in your own life. Right?

And I'm wondering, you know, Supervisor Yaroslavsky, you had mentioned as well too. It's sort of as thinking about the next line of questioning about, well, how do we showcase or how do we, how do we really point to the investments that were made and what that meant for ongoing benefit to the community.

And I think we talked a lot about this amazing world class infrastructure that's here in the Getty or the Disney Center or other locations. But what about at the individual levels, you know, individual artists that might have come out of there that, you know, sort of got their foundation? What about our schools? What about our youth? You know, where can we think more broadly about that historical perspective and how that was able to catalyze the opportunities for...

Wan to start?

Oh, you start. I mean, you want me to start?

Yeah. You start while I think.

The answer is I I don't have an answer to your question. Which would be very uncharacteristic of me. You know, you you put on the best festival you can. You try to outreach as many people as you can and have have a footprint that is as broad as it can be. And then let the chips fall where they may. I mean, I I tell you that you never know.

Who knew in in 19, whatever, '84 or '83 that that I'd one day be a county supervisor and and be in a position to, you know, to play a role in the cultural footprint, expansion of the cultural footprint, or to save the opera, for that matter. Who knew? I told the story to, and then I'll be very brief, but I saw I I told the last committee that we had about a year ago, I think it was.

The story of of my going, this is not cultural, it is for me, went down to watch the women's marathon on the first Sunday after the game started. And a friend of mine and I went down to La Brea and Rodeo Road, and that was about mile 21 of the of the marathon. And here comes Joan Benoit, who's, you know, just cruising to a victory, and you couldn't even see Greta Weitz, who was a Norwegian who was three minutes behind her. It was a wipe out.

And I'm looking at her and I'm saying, I wanna do this.

And I was I was a runner in high school and I quit. And, after I graduated and I smoked two packs a day for twelve years and then I quit that. And then I decided to get back in shape, and I started running again. And I go to the I see Jon Benoit, and off I go, and I tell my wife and my buddy.

I said, I'm I'm I wanna start jogging with you. You know? So we, and we, I did.

And I ended up running three marathons and ran up until through the pandemic. I tell you that story because I'm the oldest male to live in my family that I know of. The oldest prior to myself was my cousin, second cousin, first cousin once removed, who was 72 and died in the operating room under recovering from his second bypass. And everybody else never made it to 70, and all the males in my family never made it to 70.

And I'm saying, you know, I'm sitting here today telling you I'm playing with the house money. Why? Because I exercised. Why did I exercise? Because the 1984 Olympic games took me down to Le Brea and Rodeo.

I jogged down there four miles from my house, watched that thing, and watched her, Joan Benoit, cruise by. And the irony of it is when I ran my first marathon, which was at 85 in New York City marathon, she was giving autographs, signing autographs to people registering for for their bibs. And I got a picture sitting in my house of of of her and I.

She saved my life. Now that's just one person. There are millions of stories like that.

Exactly. And I think it's a great example, and I'm I'm happy to, I'm glad you're able to kinda reach back into memory about how that impacted your life because there probably are tens of thousands, if not millions, of others that and that I think is actually the benefit that people are gonna wanna be able to look back on this is how did this actually affect me as a local resident, as a city resident here. I don't wanna flee.

I know in Paris, there was a lot of stories of people that were leaving the city because they just didn't wanna deal with it, but also they could, you know, Airbnb their place out, and costs are being driven up, of course. But they they lost that moment to be able to actually be a part of, you know, that that that event and that history and what that could have done for them in their lives and that inspiration.

And I want that for our youth as well too. So I think the conscientious sort of threading about all of the the the seeds that we have here as a community right now and how we're gonna integrate those and maximize those opportunities, are gonna result in many of those stories as well for for the future generation.

And I'll just kinda close as well and recognize that, yes, not only do we need the money from the federal government, but would be great if we also got a little bit of a better attitude, and a little bit of an inspiration, a little forward thinking excitement about the opportunities that present here because these are also gonna be America's games as much as they are Los Angeles' games.

And so, yes, he's gonna have a little skin in the game. We would hope he would see it that way because that might get a little bit more interest. But comments that we heard, like, for example, the other week are not, you know, very helpful when it comes to think of, like, you know, getting others interested in being able to come to California. We know we have been hit hard.

Our tourism authorities are already measuring that at our theme parks, at our national parks, all the resources, what makes California, what draws people here is hit.

And so until that attitude turns around, we're already running, like, sort of against the wind right now when it comes to, you know, having that level of not just federal, you know, financial investment, but also kind of spiritual investment that's gonna draw that international attention here. And so I just kinda put that call out. But I know that our LA City panel coming up next has been thinking about all these things too, and I'm looking forward to your presentation.

Thank you. Yeah. The comments certainly brought San Diego and Los Angeles closer together. Yes, ma'am. Alright.

Let's. A quick quick question from from Senator Archuleta, and we will need to be getting on to the next panel. Yeah.

We will be really focusing in on the art.

I I think I'd like to get back to say thank you. Thank you for your history. Thank you for your participation. The old term been there, done that. You've been there, done that, and and I appreciate that.

So my question, if the if the theme is games for all in 2028, then what should we be looking for from your eyes that you would say, you better do this and you better look out for that and you should include this with what we wanna do, what you heard from the panelists already. We want diversity. We want inclusion. We want make sure that in our communities, everyone's participating, learning about the arts and culture.

What what what do you think that you should be telling us if we had that magic phone to tell Mister Olympic, here in California and Los Angeles to look out for.

You know, I I I don't know what I would advise you generally, but what I would advise is do do a great job and and don't over, don't spend more than you're taking in. That that, to me, that's that's first and foremost.

Because if that Olympic game runs in the red, everybody's legacy is tarnished forever. When when when the Orange County went bankrupt in 1994. '94. Yeah.

They declared bankruptcy the day I was sworn into the county board. Not one member of their board of supervisors ever got reelected or elected to any other office. It's not a good thing to have on your resume that you were presided over a bankruptcy. And whether it's the the 28 committee that goes bankrupt or the city that goes bankrupt, it doesn't matter.

And it does and and the odds are, and I'd say this prayerfully, the odds are that's not gonna happen, because they they they... It shouldn't happen. But we're we're just praying. We we don't have any.

That's not me, but the powers that be don't have a window on what's going on. That's what I would say to anybody is just just break even. Even make a profit and reinvest in the community like the 84 games did. And, otherwise, you know, access, I don't.

I I didn't apply for any tickets. I've been there, done that. I watch it on TV. It was it was one of the great moments of of my life to see the opening ceremonies. There are a lot of reasons I'll go into here.

And let let, you know, let the let the people experience this. And, you know, people come to the games because they're they're sports fans. I mean, I I was a track runner. To be, to have the greatest distance runners in the world spend seven days running competitions at the coliseum, I went to six of the seven.

And it was it was like I I was like a kid in a candy store, but a really big candy store with a really delicious candy. It was fantastic. And let let the let the games do their thing. But access is, you know, and there was a problem in '84, and it's a challenge in in '28. What about people who don't make a $150,000 a year? What about the 38% of the households in LA County that earn less than $60,000 a year? Household income, think about that.

Can they afford $200 for a for a ticket to a preliminary game in volleyball, let alone championship, you know, gold medal night for the, gymnastics? No. So there's gotta, and and there may be some plans to do that. That's that's a thing that I I think kids are, young people are so, and and some not so young people are so moved by this thing but and and inspired by it to do crazy things like run a marathon? Zev, are you crazy? But I did.

And and there, I guarantee you, and I know many of the stories, there are tens of thousands, millions of stories of people who did something different because of what they saw. And that's that's what's so great about this thing. It's, it's an unprecedented. It's it's.

There's nothing else like it. Maybe the World Cup is similar, but the World Cup is a different different kettle of fish. This is concentrated in four and fifteen, seventeen days, whatever it is. So the greatest athletes in the, on the greatest sports, Baron De Coubertin, would would probably have no idea.

He wouldn't recognize what what has transpired in this thing. It... I'm a big hawk on on these competitions, and I I love them. And I just wanna make sure that, you know, to to put it, to quote Peter Huberoth in from his memoir, I I believe that the, that no sporting event should should require tax payer money, even a sporting event as important as the Olympic games. And by the way, he voted for the charter amendment, he says in his book. Alright. Anyway.

Yeah. I mean, I think just to to bring it back to the the arts and culture, we're looking at a very different infrastructure in 2028 than we had in 1984, and that the '84 arts festival was a very kind of top down model. Right? They had a really tight vision of, you know, what it would be, and and it was plans and kind of from above.

Whereas I think this time, we're reliant on much more kind of bottom up organic, you know, generation of arts and culture that will then be included as as part of of the LA28 Arts Festival.

So, I think my my suggestion would be, you know, figure out how how to best support that kind of organic energy and those creative ideas that are, like, really coming from from local places and local institutions.

Yeah. Alright. Well, thank you. Thank you both so much. Thank you for the wisdom and and sagacity that you bring to this and great context for the rest of the discussion, though, but we will be pivoting very intensely toward arts and culture with these this next panel.

Nora Halpern will be starting, vice president and executive director for the LA28 Cultural Olympiad. Dwayne Jones, we invite up, senior vice president for LA28 Cultural Olympiad and stakeholder events. Daniel Tarica, general manager for the Department of Cultural Affairs for the City of Los Angeles. Chris Concepcion, who is the assistant general manager for Department of Cultural Affairs for the City of LA. And then also Kristin Sakoda, who's director of LA County Department of Arts and Culture.

So let's get started with you, Miss Halpern. We appreciate your being here and appreciate the presentation you will be providing us with. And thanks again to our great Bruin panel from before. Alright. Okay.

Thank you, Chair Allen, and thank you, Vice Chair Ward. Thank you, everyone assembled today. And and also, Senator Allen, thank you for your tenure and your dedication to your constituents and also from my perspective to the arts. You've been such a great champion throughout your tenure.

Thank you.

And on behalf of the arts community, I wanna thank you.

Appreciate that.

So my name is Nora Halpern. I am the executive director of the Cultural Olympiad. I've been with LA28 for over two and a half years. And I am a Los Angelina. I am one of those people who was old enough to have been here in '84 and do do feel changed by that experience, which is what drew me back to take on this position.

So I was a young curator and artist at that period thinking about my future in the arts ecosystem. And were it not for the eighty four games, there wouldn't be the ecosystem that allowed me to thrive. So I really do passionately feel the power of possibility for an Olympiad.

So we're gonna share some images, and I was I was very moved by, by the the comments of Senator Richardson that diversity is our strength, because that's really a guiding force for our mission, which is that the cultural Olympiad will provide communities across the greater Los Angeles area with a platform to tell their stories through arts, culture, and heritage.

Woven together, these myriad and unique narratives will give visitors a vision of our city's vast cultural richness and complexity while while also developing a greater sense of understanding, pride, connection, and belonging for those who call Los Angeles home.

So going back to my experience, during the Cultural Olympiad where I where I did see lots of wonderful things from across across the sort of Western canon. I learned so much more about my city, my county, and my community through the experience of the Cultural Olympiad. So that is another legacy that I think is very powerful. I'm gonna turn it over to Dwayne Jones, my colleague, who'll talk about the structure.

Thank you so much. As as we mentioned, we see 2028 as an incredible opportunity to showcase today's Los Angeles, a city that acts as a cultural crossroads for global traditions, dynamic arts, and creative innovation. We have an objective, some objectives set up really for our cultural Olympiad planning, and that's really to celebrate and uplift the diverse culture of Los Angeles through a range of art forms that are created by and for Angelenos and shared with the world.

We wanna leverage LA's unique position at the global intersection of culture, sport, and creativity to expand the reach of the games far beyond the field of play into the communities of the LA.

We wanna collaborate with community partners on programming that brings to life both LA28, programs, cocurated opportunities with partners, and really focus on cultural, community grassroots led programs that come up through the community. And then the one of the biggest ones is really to ignite that culture of participation. We talked about how locals have not been as engaged or don't always know what's happening in the city, and we wanna ensure that everyone sees themselves as part of the LA28 story.

The way we're gonna do that is through a model that focuses on three key pillars in the center here, and that's our official cultural Olympiad mark, our stamp of approval.

It's our association opportunity for institutions, organizations, nonprofit groups, and anyone who's doing programming throughout the greater Los Angeles region. We will open applications for this in early '27 so that people can apply to receive the mark. Our goal is to make that as simple as possible through an online portal that's very easy.

Questions that we are working very closely with our partners at the city and the county to talk about the criteria, the questions, and how we can bring the most programming into this and bring them under the umbrella of the cultural Olympiad. Our goal is to really make this accessible for everyone to experience what LA showcases, what we do on a daily basis.

We will also create a digital calendar and mapping platform. It's not just another app. This is not an app at all. It's actually a web based platform, easily accessible, full of information where all of that programming that comes under the cultural Olympiad will be accessible and discoverable for both locals and visitors across LA.

We will also have a culture for all program where we will provide funding to offset the costs for institutions, small nonprofit organizations, people who are already doing great programming, but have ticket prices that may prevent some people from experiencing that.

We wanna make culture more accessible to people and break down some of the financial barriers to access that, to be able to get tickets to an event, to some programming that's happening all across the region, but they may not have the financial means to do so. We wanna open that up, but we don't want those institutions or organizations to lose money in being able to offer that lower ticket price. They need to be able to put their programming on.

We are modeling, all of the disciplines for our cultural Olympiad. We've expanded past what a lot of people think of when they think of the cultural Olympiad of just the visual and performing arts to reflect what LA really is today and everything that we have to offer in fashion, in film, in food, in music, as well as the visual and performing arts.

And that's how we're going to sort of make it more accessible to people all over LA.

Thank you. And and as I sit on this panel, you're what you're seeing here is already the reflection of collaboration because we've been meeting regularly with our partners at the city, sorry, as well as the county. So I I like I like the physical setup of this table. So, what we're working on now, is something we're super excited about, which really does, celebrate the diversity of our communities on every level, geographically in terms of, types of communities, diversity of styles.

The LA28 official art poster project is a deliverable of every games. And if for those who might remember in the '84 games, artists like John Baldess and Carlos Almera as a number of major LA artists made, posters back in the day. We're looking really to deep in community to find the most expressive artists to represent our city to itself and to the world.

So the process that we created to achieve that was to invite 20, curators from around the region to nominate five artists each.

This is including LA City, LA County, and the broader stretch of the games. Those curators nominated five artists. We wound up with over a 100 and plus artists to choose from, and that list of artists was then winnowed down by a very small group of about five folks around the table, and we came up with an incredibly, vibrant collection of eight Olympic posters, eight Paralympic posters. I would love to be able to tell you who the artists are, but we can't do that until July 2027.

But they are are in a way, not, no pun intended, the poster children of the games themselves because they are going to show the diversity of the city. They're gonna be replicated not just for posters you put on your walls, but across the city as part of part of the vision of what the Olympiad is about. What we're working on next, as Dwayne mentioned, is the cultural Olympiad mark, and that's where we get to engaging all communities. So it's not just the LACWAS and the Geddes and and communities that we are, that the world is familiar with as as cultural hubs within the city, but it's uplifting cultural districts.

It's it's celebrating everything from what's happening, you know, at MOCA to what's happening at Tia Chucha in in Sylmar. We really wanna be able to show on this platform the democracy and diversity of the kinds of non for profits that exist within the community. So we are gonna be giving the mark to, to programs and events and and both as a as an opportunity for the world to see what we're about.

For those who can't come to the games, they can experience culture from afar on this digital platform.

But most importantly, it will help Los Angelians understand their landscape better, their cultural landscape better, and create a whole new generation of cultural consumers. And then our North Star is what's to come.

And, again, because we tend to like to hold close all of the plans, we will be giving out information at at the appropriate moment, but we are gonna be creating, bless you, a fashion, film, food, music, performing arts, and visual arts focused programming across the city and lots of free programming at local parks, venues, and locations working with our partners here and community stakeholders.

So we are super excited and super confident that the reach of the Olympiad will trickle to all of the communities, not just be focused in in the more traditional cultural core. And that's it.

Okay. Let's go next to, Daniel Tarica. You can just do just, oh, we're working off the computer.

Yep. We're gonna segue.

Well, thank you so much, and good afternoon, everyone. We wanna give a thank you again to Senator Allen and to your team for helping facilitate this conversation, to Vice Chair Ward, and to all of you for being here and for your ongoing support of the arts. I'm Daniel Tarica. I'm the General Manager for the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, and it's truly an honor to be here today. I wanna...

Along with our colleagues here from LA28, from LA County, and I also just wanna acknowledge our other fellow municipalities that are here, as well as arts organization representatives, both large and small. I'm also joined here today by Chris Concepcion, who's our Assistant General Manager at the Department of Cultural Affairs. And today, I'm pleased to present our host city's 2028 cultural program for the Olympic and Paralympic Games framework, or cultural program for short, and to give a glimpse of the programs that have already been activated.

The cultural program framework that we've built, which includes program goals and strategies, guides our work to deliver, to deliver a citywide effort grounded in culture, community, and legacy. And to start, I'd like to tell you just a little bit about the Department of Cultural Affairs at a glance and acknowledge that the arts infrastructure that we have here in the city did come out of the '84 Olympic Arts Festival, and it's really exciting to see what we've been able to grow into.

So DCA is the city, City of Los Angeles' cultural agency. And for more than a century, we've been able to invest in artists and organizations, operate cultural spaces in local and diverse communities across the city, and have expanded access to arts for all Angelenos. The scale and continuity of that work are important. DCA supports more than 350 artists and cultural and community organizations of all sizes, both big and small, through grant making.

We operate 36 art centers, galleries, and historic sites throughout the city and theaters, and we have about 350 employees providing arts education in communities, devo...

Delivering exhibitions, performances, and artistic programming, and supporting the art sector economy that DCA supports the cultural life in Los Angeles every day. So our 2028 cultural program builds on this existing capital, and we've added four dedicated team members that have joined to support this program to augment our work. So you'll see a few data points here that reflect DCA's reach and capacity. In fiscal year 2024-25, DCA reached about 3,700,000 Angelenos through our programs and services.

And the mayor and council are continuing to invest in the infrastructure that makes this reach possible, including a $12,000,000 investment in our city's cultural facilities.

We're also meeting these significant investments with the moment for, for 2028. So... And for those of you who live or visit... have visited Los Angeles, you probably have felt DCA's impact without knowing it and support it... And that we've supported.

We've been... We're embedded across Los Angeles, from neighborhood organizations, both large and small, and community programs to some of the city's most recognizable cultural spaces. You may know us through, through California's only human-made UNESCO World Heritage Site, Hollyhock House, or the historic Watts Towers, and the Vision Theatre. You may also be familiar with organizations that we support and programs we fund, like the LA County Museum of Art, the Arts for LA, the LA Phil, LA Commons, and we also fund individual artists as well.

Now I'll pass it over to Chris.

Hi. Good afternoon. We'd like to move on now to talk to you a little bit about the cultural program for the Olympic and Paralympic Games, which ultimately is the host city's citywide initiative that extends, that extends before, during, between, and beyond the Games. And the mission for this program really is to showcase our diverse local culture on the global stage.

And we really believe that LA is a mosaic landscape that is cosmopolitan in nature, and we want to really uplift that international spirit that already exists here today.

The cultural program is a road map for partnership across LA28, LA County Arts and Culture, our local artists, arts organizations, communities, and government alike. And what's more, the cultural program is really a long-term civic investment strategy as we see it that connects local communities to a global moment. Aligned with Mayor Bass' October 2025 Executive Directive 16 and her Games for All vision, the cultural program embeds arts and culture into the Olympic and Paralympic legacy.

The Games really transcend sports, using LA's dynamic cultural landscape to showcase local values and bring the spirit of the games to life. And it should be noted that this work really has been years in the making, beginning with community listening sessions in 2020.

Through a formal cultural exchange program, the city and county then learned directly from a formal cultural exchange with the City of Paris before, during, and after the 2024 Games. And we continued our work through research, additional community input in 2024, and, by an unprecedented... Excuse me, through additional community input and applied learning. And our work is anchored in, by an unprecedented partnership that you see here today between LA28, DCA, and the County Department of Arts and Culture.

And it should be noted that we've been meeting with them regularly for a number of years with the county starting in 2022 and with LA28 starting in 2024, leading up to the development of our plans.

By leveraging each organization's unique strengths and networks rather than merging into a single plan, our teams crafted three complementary plans that deliver a far greater collective impact, allowing us to reach further and impact, allowing us to reach further and create a broader impact than any one organization could achieve alone.

And we've already tested international cultural exchange models through our partnership with the City of Paris in 2024. You'll see here on this slide a list of three partnership projects DCA led in collaboration with County Department of Arts and Culture and the City of Paris. The county led additional programs as well, which Kristin will mention.

These programs were a great test case in piloting cultural exchange programs involving LA-based artists and international artists, and we will continue our exchange projects with Paris through 2028.

The goal for 2028 builds on this model, pairing LA and international artists to share practices, develop new work, build cultural diplomacy, and strengthen our creative ecosystem. One of the things we've learned from previous games that we are, are looking to shift the model of is really uplifting local culture. And so if we are going to invest in a cultural exchange program, it will truly be an exchange between LA-based artists and international artists rather than importing international talent to LA.

In the interest of time, we will skip the embedded video in her presentation, but we'll be sure you receive a digital copy of this presentation at a later time.

So DCA translated the community input, the international exchange, and the applied learnings, research, and mayor and council input and created our cultural program framework, which serves as the blueprint for the host city's program led by DCA. Embedded in that framework are five pillars that serve as key goals, which you'll see summarized on this slide, including showcasing local arts and culture, and that truly means reaching out to every community across Los Angeles, inclusive access, which also includes uplifting our dis...

Our artists with disabilities culture, and the richness that we have in Los Angeles, cultural diplomacy, and creative sector growth. Additionally... And, and, and also...

And also just would like to add and also sustainability to make sure that we have what we're building, both that's climate conscious, as well as how we see this going forward. So the city built a three-tier structure of programs that gives us a flexible way to deliver the cultural program. Tier A represents the core program anchored by $15,000,000 of DCA's existing budget, and that has been set aside by the mayor and council.

Tiers B and C contain ambitious additional programs that will be added to Tier A as funding partners are identified. And just to note, the tiers are not ordered by priority.

They are... Tiers B and C are separated solely by cost. So to tell you a little bit about the timeline, I will tell you that our momentum is already underway. The cultural program is as much about local residents as it is about visitors. The host city seeks to create a culture of celebration, investing in more festivals, public art, and artistic opportunities in advance of the games.

We want LA to know that the Games are not happening to LA, but happening for LA. We're using this year and next to test ideas, to build partnerships, and offer programs before the official launch in summer of 2027 that will extend through the Games. And, of course, we seek to continue legacy programs and projects long beyond the Games. Lead-up programming began this past summer and will extend into the summer of 2027.

To date, DCA is proud to have led, partnered on, and delivered 19 arts activations, events, and projects.

Ultimately, the goal is to use the momentum of 2028 to create boosted cultural infrastructure, intrasector collaboration, and opportunities for Los Angeles. So the city hosted the kick it in the park activations during the World Cup, and that exemplifies the cultural program in action using arts, culture, and sports to activate public spaces and foster shared cultural experiences.

Led by the Mayor's Office of Major Events alongside city council offices and departments, including DCA, the pilot locations engaged over 270 artists, and all the collective activations brought together 40,000 Angelenos. Beyond those numbers, these events allowed DCA to test partnerships, refine strategies, and scale up for future celebrations. And while sports viewings brought people out, arts and culture brought people in, sparking intergenerational art making, spontaneous dancing among strangers, and deep community connection.

This is how we build a culture of celebration that begins now and lasts long beyond the Games. And I will also add that this experience was really important for us to understand the timing of what we plan and how we plan it. We are... We need to move forward on this timing now, as we continue building.

And we've been able to grow our cultural program team in partnership with the Office of Major Events for the city, but there's still a lot more that we need to do in a short time period.

So the implementation is already underway. Actually, I'll, let me pass it to Chris.

So with the framework approved by the mayor and council this year, DCA has really moved from planning into both program design and delivery concurrently. As of October 1, DCA has received interest forms from 815 artists and arts and cultural organizations seeking to be part of the cultural program.

Our $15,000,000 core program, as listed in Tier A in the previous slide, is already underway with coordination across program areas and cultural program team focused on... And our cultural program team is focused on partnerships and pilot activations.

As Daniel mentioned, we've implemented 19 programs and events completed this year as part of our lead up programming, and we have one more to do in December, and we're just getting started.

At the same time, we are building a global network of cultural partners across more than 20 countries, creating opportunities to collect... To connect Los Angeles' local cultural ecosystem to the world stage. That means we're building both locally and globally, investing in Los Angeles artists and communities while creating international relationships that reignite LA's spark as a global arts capital.

The signature programs that you see on this slide are from Tiers B and C, and this shows how the cultural program can create lasting cultural impact.

These priority programs include a twenty eight year youth arts legacy initiative, a disability arts and Paralympic celebration, which we are particularly excited about given that this will be the first time that LA hosts the Paralympic Games, 15 new Olympic and Paralympic murals that invest in local artists, communities, and youth apprentices.

And we just wanna note that the 15 new murals are part of a bigger vision the mayor has for delivering more murals to the city centered in artistic excellence and community representation. All of these programs represent opportunities for artists, funders, communities, civic partners, and government to come together to build a legacy for Los Angeles.

And this ultimately is an invitation to partner with the city, to partner with the county, to partner with LA28, to help shape what Los Angeles' cultural legacy can be for 2028 and beyond. And because all of our programs work together, including our partners from LA arts organizations and collectives, some of whom are with us today and some who are not, because of all of this work that works together, there is no wrong path to partnership.

The cultural program is not a single pathway as you'll see here.

It's an interconnected ecosystem, uniting DCA, LA County, LA28, artists and organizations, and partners to reach Los Angeles' vast diverse communities. No one entity can achieve this shared vision alone. By offering multiple entry points for artists, potential partners, organizations, this framework's goals and our collective plans align efforts to broaden collective reach and maximize opportunities for Angelenos and visitors alike.

So we truly have a unique opportunity right now to leverage this moment to strengthen and further strengthen Los Angeles' cultural infrastructure beyond the 2028 Games. Together, we can build on LA's already vibrant everyday culture and deliver a program that leaves a lasting and meaningful legacy.

Thank you. Yes. Gotcha.

I just, exactly. Yeah.

Okay. Good afternoon. It's really a pleasure to be here with you, distinguished members. I want to thank the Chair and the Vice Chair for inviting me to present and for calling this important topic today, and for all of your support for arts and culture all throughout the state, throughout LA County, and all the jurisdictions that we represent. I'm Kristen Sikota, and I am the director of the LA County Department of Arts and Culture.

Happy to speak to our plans for 2028 and our cultural program framework, and the collaborative work going on to date. So, to start, LA County Department of Arts and Culture, we are the local arts agency for the Los Angeles County region. And we have a vision, a mission, and a vision for LA County as a place where arts, culture, and creativity are integral to every aspect of our civic lives for all our people and communities.

As you know quite well, speaking of LA County, this means the jurisdiction that is nearly 10,000,000 people. It is 88 cities and over 100 unincorporated areas, incredibly diverse, over 200 languages spoken, diverse geographies, coastal, urban, you know, mountains communities.

And so all of that and all of the incredible cultural organizations and artists and so many folks who make up the arts and culture sector, we want to aim to support.

And we do that across a number of programs and services listed there, from grants and professional development to hundreds of nonprofit organizations, to county civic art collection, where we get to commission individual artists for county capital projects and special initiatives, arts education and youth development programs in school, in communities, and county institutions, and cross-sector arts, where we look at the role of arts and culture in advancing equity across policy areas.

Arts and economy has been spoken about on this panel: arts and education, arts and justice, community development, health, well-being, and so on. We have a small but mighty research and evaluation team and communications team, and I wanna acknowledge we are also home to the LA County Arts Commission, the public-private initiative, the arts education collective dedicated to ensuring all young people and students have access to the arts, and the LA City County Native American Indian Commission.

For 2028, we envision the 2028 games as an opportunity to inspire, connect, engage, and strengthen communities through a dynamic cultural program.

We wanna celebrate our creative expression, champion arts and culture, uplift LA's cultural heritage, and reflect the diverse voices of the LA County region in the global spirit of the games. And as so many have acknowledged today, one of the driving north stars of this is lasting legacy benefits for our arts as a sector, but also for our local communities beyond 2028. As has been noted, we have been deeply engaged in this work and in learnings and really appreciated the panels prior to ours as well.

It's so important to uplift that arts and culture are an integral part of the Games and that Olympism, the notion of tying together culture, sport, and education, is a cornerstone of this work. But we also took a look at the modern Games and called our friends from around the world to learn more about what worked, what didn't, what did they see as their lasting legacy.

And you can see it's a wide range, from not business as usual, having incredible dance companies, you know, propelling off of buildings. And in fact, that's actually a US company based in New York City called by Elizabeth Streb, who was featured in the London games, to our friends in Vancouver, where they actually cited bringing together the local native tribes was one of the lasting legacy... Legacies of their games.

And, of course, as has been spoken about today, the transformative 1984 Olympic Arts Festival here in Los Angeles, where I was not at the time, but I was a young dancer sitting in front of the TV, you know, watching with my eyes glued, and only later came to learn about the incredible cultural program.

I wanna also just recognize as many have spoken about that, that arts festival was transformative in so many ways, but now we have an opportunity to build on all of the assets that have grown since then.

To deepen our learnings, but also to make space at the table for our local arts leaders and community, LA County, we convened a series of roundtables. And we invited our colleagues up there to help us produce them: Arts for LA, LA Commons, and Cars, and we invited our colleagues LA28 and City of LA to join us. And we brought together over 300 arts leaders from LA County to sit in roundtables and tell us what did they see as the need.

What did they see as the opportunity? And some of the key takeaways: there's an entire report that also included a post-survey in 2025 that we've highlighted here really became the foundation for not just our plans, but, I would say, actually for many of the plans and aspirations across not just this table, but many of the folks in this room.

One of the things that was echoed was that the primary aim was focused on local. We heard that earlier today, too. 70% folks said they want to focus on the local LA County communities and the rest as visitors. We also heard top ways to reach audiences through programming, not only in institutions and museums, but, yes, installations and performances in public spaces, community-based festivals and events, and cross-cultural collaboration locally and internationally, especially given our incredible diasporas.

We also heard that top strategies for making this possible include, frankly, direct funding to community-based arts organizations.

They wanna ensure that they have the opportunity to deliver their programs, but also the creation and uplift and visibility around cultural hubs and our neighborhoods, as we also heard earlier in today's conversation. We also heard a real need for marketing and visibility because if they've got great programs but nobody knows about it, or it's not promoted, we will also not have met our goals, so marketing and visibility, and storytelling. And finally, we wanna break down barriers and have pathways to participation.

So that's for everybody, whether it's thinking geographically, as we do, that we want the entire county region to have opportunities they can go to, or whether it's certain populations that were really present in our roundtables and in lots of the conversations today: disability access and inclusion. We also had a roundtable of native cultures and leaders and reflecting our broader region's cultural diversity.

As Daniel mentioned, we also were part of the formal leadership exchange with Paris in the region of Saint Anthony City and City of LA, and the Paris City Department of Cultural Affairs.

So we were able to test and really bring to life some examples of what cultural exchange can look like across different art forms and disciplines, from culinary at La Plaza de Culturriarte on the bottom to posters competition by our incredible art students here in LA's colleges, paired with the ones in France, to using dance to create a more inclusive world. And these also show us how arts and culture can be a strong bridge to diplomacy.

As I move into our framework, I wanna just highlight and acknowledge that we are all playing distinct yet complementary roles. As you've heard, LA28, they are responsible for the official Cultural Olympiad, and they will have the mark and all of their incredible programs.

And they are a distinct, separate nonprofit, but, of course, they are central to the organizing committee and their role in arts and culture in the games. Our colleagues in the city leading as the host city, and we are so pleased with the incredible, unprecedented partnership and collaboration we've had leading their work citywide. And for us in the county, our aim is to think about broader access across the LA region.

So many cities, so many unincorporated areas, so many organizations, and ensuring all those communities will have access. And so we're partnering with them.

And then I want to speak to field-wide stakeholders because, of course, it is really all of those organizations, initiatives, and many other municipalities, including some here today, like Long Beach, Santa Monica, Pasadena, Santa Clarita, and so many more, which we, as LA County, actually regularly convene on a quarterly basis. So we're using our reach to make those connections and to build those bridges and build greater coordination. For 2028, we have set some goals, which I would say are aligned goals.

So, sitting across this table and many more, folks are using different words, perhaps, but really, ultimately, have shared goals that are similar to these that you see. We want to tell the story of LA through our arts, culture, and creativity.

And I think that is a change from 1984, where they did uplift and include LA-based organizations, but they did have that real distinct strategy of bringing in and having the international folks pay. Maybe we can talk about this later, but pay to present their organizations here. This part of the strategy was also financial.

And so, here, I think there is really broad consensus that the goal is to uplift the incredible richness of LA's cultural heritage, and that, in some ways is the de facto shared thematic vision for arts in, in this time around. We wanna expand access to the arts and engage our communities and cultural participation.

We have the opportunity to spark new collaborations and exchange, strengthen our art sector, and then create lasting benefits that can be cross-sector benefits through the arts. As we look at the myriad programmatic strategies, from murals to festivals, to arts education and so much more exhibits, what we are doing in our 2020 framework is we've rolled those up into four programmatic pillars that reflect our programs, but also really strategies across the region.

The first is arts and culture programmatically for all: a robust offer of exhibits and opportunities for engagement across institutions, across organizations, but also in community parks and civic spaces. The second core pillar that we wanted to uplift is a focus on youth. Young people engaging in arts, learning, play, and creativity in schools and communities and other spaces so that we have a celebration of their young talent, but also their sense of inclusion and learning, and creative career pathways.

Third is thinking of the role of culture in place. So, public art, but also creative placemaking and placekeeping, use art and culture to celebrate our local communities, preserve our cultural assets, and ensure that all communities can be a space of welcome, belonging, and activation. And fourth, thinking again about those communication strategies and marketing and visibility and storytelling. Okay. Now I'm gonna briefly highlight a few examples of how we, as the county, are supporting in these pillars.

The first would be our grant programs: organizational grant and community and pets art grant. These provide, pro... About 600 organizations with funding, and we'll be inviting them to include their plans in their grant applications. We're also exploring and having conversations with county cultural venues like LACMA, Music Center, Natural History Museum, La Plaza de Culturriarte, and all... The LA Phil, who operates the Ford and the Bowl because they...

We are connected to them, as well as county departments, our parks, our libraries. Those are also venues for cultural programs. In 2028, we will dedicate as a year of creative youth, and we will be anchoring it with our own county programs across the 80 school districts of LA County, representing 1,500,000 students, but also in communities, parks, and in county institutions, and inviting partners to join us.

And for that, we'll anchor with our paid arts internship programs for students, creative well-being, which is arts and healing, for youth, especially systems-impacted youth, an arts and youth justice mural legacy for young people that are systems-involved, and a new 2028 Olympic arts education curriculum guide we're developing with the Olympic Museum and local, talent here, local, teaching artists and educators, and we will release that as a resource for the field in '27.

And so we're also continuing to explore additional opportunities to expand, expand our grants for school districts, expand our paid internships, and launch a 2028 version of our poster competition with City of LA and cultural diplomacy.

For Culture in Place, we're gonna be leveraging our artist-in-residence program around themes like disability arts and immigrant communities, as well, and other cross-sector arts activations in local, place-based hubs. And we are seeking to greater uplift for our native communities and a visibility campaign, and to conserve one of the 1984 original commissioned murals that's in our collection, right here outside of Expo Park.

Lastly, in the fourth pillar, an outreach campaign, because, as you have lifted up, all of our communities really matter, including those that might have financial barriers. So many of the county departments, our constituencies are, are those communities. So partnering and leveraging, and giving them toolkits, and giving city and unincorporated areas toolkits as well.

We've got lots of next steps we can tell you about in continuing to build this program and partnerships, continuing to convene our stakeholders and support the readiness of the field, and then deliver, of course, in 2028 for lasting legacy. But I will close by really bringing our attention to what I will call a living legacy.

I think the hearts and minds and the experiences, but also the skills that young people will build in their education, in their internships, and so much more, are also part of the legacy. It's not just a stadium or an organization that gets built. And so with that, thank you so much, and you can learn more about what we've been up to.

Appreciate it.

Well, thank you to all of you for the fantastic presentation. All the work that's reflected in those presentations that you both have done and will be doing to make this a special, special experience for all of us, that magical summer to come. So appreciate it. Let's open up the floor to questions. I know we have Senator Perez, Scott, in a few.

I'm just thinking. Thank you.

One wanna begin by thanking you for your presentations. It's lovely to have you all here, and appreciate hearing the feedback from some of the work that the county's been leading, because I represent communities that are outside of the city of Los Angeles. I appreciated you making reference to the report that you all produced, the report on arts and cultural convenings for the twenty twenty Olympic and Paralympic Games.

And in that report noted that there were a number of communities that were highlighted in the survey responses as needing dedicated support leading up to and during the games. And you can very quickly see that one of the communities highlighted is Altadena.

Obviously, we're gonna be hosting several games at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, which is very close by the Altadena and the Burnscar area. And as well, the San Gabriel Valley is highlighted, API communities are highlighted. And I think this really speaks to kind of the importance of us highlighting the cultural significance of other communities that are going to be hosting games outside of the city of Los Angeles.

Representing the San Gabriel Valley, the West San Gabriel Valley that's an area that has one of the first Asian American ethnoburbs, as we refer to it, in the nation. And the city of Arcadia that is going to be hosting Games, is a part of that.

It is one of many communities that has a very large API population. And so I really wanna ensure that, that cultural significance is being highlighted. You mentioned in your presentation that the county has already been working to coordinate with cities, hosting meetings with cities to talk about some of these opportunities.

I know we had a very detailed presentation from the City of Los Angeles and some of what they're doing, but I would love to hear you kind of speak more to how the discussions have been going with other cities. There are cities like Long Beach.

I don't represent Long Beach, but I know the good Senator from that area and good Assembly from... Member from that area would appreciate them being highlighted as well. So what are those discussions looking like as we're talking about cultural events for those communities, and how they can be active participants in highlighting the events and hosting great opportunities for the events? I...

I'd love to hear, hear more details around that and how we plan on getting resources in particular to some of those communities, especially given some of the funding and financial dynamics that I highlighted earlier.

So, I have some more questions, but I'll let you respond to that first.

Thank you. And thank you so much for the question. What I referred to earlier is that we have a practice of convening on a quarterly basis, municipalities that have a formal sort of local arts agency or, or grant program of their own. So there's about 12 of them and growing that we convene quarterly. And in this time, what has emerged is the need to collaborate and coordinate around 2028.

But they are doing fantastic work in and of themselves, in addition to being part of our broader county ecosystem. And that does include... I'm not gonna be able to do them all off the top of my head, but Long Beach, Santa Monica, Santa Clarita, Pasadena, and, and more. But I will also say the county, led by a motion that I believe was led by Supervisor Lindsay Horvath, broadly has been convening all 88 cities.

And what we've done is we've been able to participate in those 88, for 28, convenings, which are also quarterly, and have a dedicated session for arts and culture where we brought together and their office, together with county CEO major events, brought together a number of speakers to both share existing plans, really increase their awareness around arts and culture, and begin to engage and hear what are their needs, what are their interests.

I've also served on panels with others like City of Pico Rivera and other places where even they don't even have necessarily their own official office of arts and culture. They are, like, out there. They are really... The interest is extraordinarily high, and I've been very impressed to see so many city managers, city leaders recognize the power of the arts for economic development for inclusion.

And so what we're gonna look to do is continue not only those convenings we're doing, but pulling resources together for all the cities in a toolkit that we'll make available to unincorporated areas as well, and would love to collaborate with any of your, your offices, as well as all the cities here in the county, on what will be most helpful, what's gonna be most useful for us to include in those toolkits about arts and culture.

Lastly, if I may just say something about Altadena, because the wildfires were extraordinary in terms of the devastation, and we sprang to action in what I call creative recovery. These folks behind me: arts and culture is a form of recovery. Not only do we have to support the artists in Altadena, okay. And the creative businesses, but that is a form of healing. Yeah.

That is a form of creating spaces. And so, we are still working in Altadena, providing healing-centered arts education at parks like Loma Alto Park, and we launched a new project with the LA County Library, Altadena Library, LA City Library, and others that will be about art-making and community memory to engage folks in the rebuilding process through culture, and that's gonna go through 2028.

So I didn't have time to speak to it, but we're putting that under the column of sort of culture in place and, like, creative hubs. It's like someone said, it doesn't have to always be about sports. It's about how do we actually build greater community and, as spaces, become places, people wanna not just live, but also visit and uplift.

Thank you. And, appreciate you acknowledging that, too, that it is a form of healing and recovery. Right? And I think, especially for the Pasadena area, the San Gabriel Valley area, because we're such tight-knit communities, we are all very invested in Altadena's recovery. And so seeing that highlighted as a part of the discussion around culture, around the arts, I think, is very important from all of us, from Monterey Park to Alhambra to Arcadia and beyond.

It's, it's something that's very significant. I really loved in your presentation the real focus on youth. I think that's incredibly important and critical, and the partnerships with the nonprofit sector. But I do wanna tap on the business component. You started speaking to this a little bit when you were talking about Altadena.

One of the things that I saw that was great about the World Cup games in particular, and, and FIFA, I live in Pasadena, was seeing all of the events that popped up that were hosted, some of them by cities. So here in the city of Los Angeles, there was a huge event that was hosted at the Colosseum that was... I believe it was free, or if not, it was very low cost to get into. And same thing in Pasadena.

It was kind of an open-air event.

We're outside of the Pasadena Auditorium, which I live right down the street. You could just stand out there. There was food vendors. We shut down the street, and it made for a really interactive experience that was very accessible for members of the public, which was super lovely. In addition to that, you also had local business owners that hosted events at their restaurants at their bars, and it really created a really fun opportunity for them to attract business that was really centered and focused around the event.

And so I just wanna highlight that I also think that that's a critical piece of this, and being able to kind of map that out for members of the public so they know, hey. The bar down the street from me, the restaurant down the street from me, is hosting a fun event where I can interact and attend with my friends, and I can watch the games.

Or if I'm maybe tied on funds, I don't wanna go and spend a lot of money on a restaurant or at a bar; I can go to the local park. I can go to the, you know, to this other location where I can publicly participate and watch events, hang out, and have a good time. I think having this diversity of options is so important and so critical, so I wanted to mention that.

The other thing I wanna go back to is just what I was referring to earlier, which is some of what got highlighted in this report that was produced eleven years ago in years ago in partnership with our former supervisor, Yaroslavsky, who's here today. And that is some of the financials and the, the changes in the funding mechanisms around the Olympic Games.

And so, you know, one of the things that the report highlighted that I didn't get to, get to is that some of the ways that some of these venues have been sponsored after this change has been through corporate sponsorships and so through some of those partnerships. And, it it is something that's really important for me to be thinking about.

You know, we were talking a little bit about the funding mechanisms, transportation, right, security costs are obviously some really fundamental things that need to be taken care of.

I know we're depending on the Federal Government to come through. There's obviously all sorts of dynamics with the Trump administration. Altadena is currently waiting on $34,000,000,000 to arrive from the Trump administration, so I hold my breath in hopes that that money will come, but also know that there's also a big bill that they still need to pay to us. And so I, I...

When I see some of these other pieces that I think are really important, wanting to invest in our local artists, wanting to make sure that we have resources to beautify our city.

I recognize in order to do that, we're gonna need dollars. And so I'd, I'd love to hear a little bit what we're thinking about. I guess this would be a question for you all from the LA28 folks. What we're thinking about, what we're brainstorming, in terms of getting some of these beautification and, you know, cultural efforts financed, to make sure that we have dollars and resources for our local artists to support them with doing this good work and with hosting some of these events.

Because I, I want this to be a big success for our city, but I also want us to have art that is going to be permanent, that, you know, my children are gonna be able to look back on and say, wow, that was a part of the LA28 Games in the same way that we see some of those historical monuments for the LA84 Games.

So, you know, is that... Are we going to be anticipating revenue coming from the IOC after the fact? Are we looking at corporate sponsorships? Like, what are the innovative ways that you all are thinking about to, to finance these games and to make sure that we have revenue coming in to support some of these big dreams that we have in less than two years? So...

I can speak to that a bit. I'm not a programming, programming expert on the final of the games. We do have our leadership team and our business relations team who are absolutely working on all of the funding elements around ticket, ticket sales and broadcast rights, and all of the pieces that will fund our privately financed games.

What we are engaging in right now is the fundraising for the Cultural Olympiad specifically, and conversations are happening both on the philanthropic side and with our current partners who have expressed interest in getting involved. So we are very much in, in the conversation.

Right now, with funding, what our plans are for the Cultural Olympiad with the build out of this infrastructure to be able to really take the largest megaphone that exists to the largest audience that exists and showcase and uplift what's happening in Los Angeles on a cultural basis.

Yeah. And I and I will also say that that LA28, as you know, has a commitment not to build, not to not to build new infrastructure. And, and part of the understanding of that now is that it will also look to others to support permanent legacy sculptures and public art. It's not something that's within our plan, but it is certainly something within the broader plan.

Absolutely. Yeah.

So who's doing the public art?

Sure. Sure. Sure. So, the City of Los Angeles public art is part of what we are doing. A large component of that is murals.

So we're really excited to be able to have those as part of the legacy of the games. To respond also to your question about funding, this is why the city has committed $15,000,000 of the... Of our budget to be able to focus towards the Games and then to use that to be able to leverage with outside funders, with corporate sponsors. So... And, and we're having joint conversations.

We're also having individual conversations. We actually, about a month and a half ago, we were hosted by the Southern California grantmakers to be able to, to share more about the plans that we are all building and how that we're working complimentary. And what I will also add, and as Chris mentioned as part of the conversation, we wanna make sure that there is funding that comes in.

It is an economic driver for the arts and cultural sector, and it can come to any three of these entities sitting at this table here. So that's the other piece that we wanna make sure, again, that the funding comes to the community.

And so some of that, like, sponsorships, for example, right, and other, like, marketing efforts and whatnot, like the dollars that would originally be coming for... In the 1984 Games. And again, I'm referencing this report that came to the Los Angeles Olympics Organizing Committee that's now going to the International Olympic Committee. Are you anticipating that the IOC will be, like, there's going to be a check to come to backfill some of that funding? Or

No. We... Not not to the city. I can't speak to the organizing committee.

I don't have specifics on that piece of it, on the game's funding overall. That is definitely another conversation, but our leadership is, is super engaged on that. They are fully engaged in those conversations, and they have our plan in place to deliver the games on time, under budget, and, and hopefully with that surplus that we saw from '84.

I, I guess I just, I just wanna make clear that if there are, you know, revenues that are being generated from the games, that I think that those revenues should be going back to our local entities that are making real investments and trying to beautify our city, highlight the cultural components of the entire county of Los Angeles. Like, the dollars need to be reinvested back here.

And that's not super clear to me in terms of how that's happening here, but I know there's sponsorships, there's sales that are happening. And I... It's really critical to me that we're seeing that that money is going right back into the hands of, of the public sector who's making all these important investments so that we could even host these games.

I would expect that that will be the case. You will see benefit to the city and the county and the Greater LA region from this, from any surplus that comes. But, again, that's not my area of expertise on, on this panel.

Alright. Let's go to Senator Smallwood.

Thank you all, and really appreciate the, the discussion and the thorough presentations. A lot of questions coming up about one, just the structure of all of this. As I looked at the slides, there seems to be a lot of replication and duplication in same language, which is good because we have alignment. But it also can be challenging if we are looking at the same philanthropic partners and the same sponsorships, and how do you make sure that all of the communities are being addressed?

And what I took from the first panel from the great supervisor was that there's a show-me-the-money quality to this, that we don't have a lot of time to sort of understand how much is being invested, when it is being invested, and where it's being invested.

And being at the state level, that raises a lot of concerns. You know, our communities have been through a lot. We talked about the wildfires. Remember, we're still in a COVID recovery. Remember, we were ground zero for immigration raids in many of our neighborhoods, Altadena in particular, South LA, East LA, directly, really in a recovery stage from all of these things that are happening.

And also needing funding and all of the resources to make sure that we are weathering all of all of that. And so I, I, I say that because the significance of really focusing on communities, particularly those that are in the footprint of the Olympics and those communities that have the most unique and powerful cultural contributions, are the ones that will need resources first to be ready to do all of the things that you have listed there.

And given the short time frame and given some of the structure I'm seeing, I'm a little concerned about how do we make sure that those communities are gonna be directly lifted up. So I guess my first question is, and I understand that there's a fundraising campaign happening to support a lot of the...

What I see is LA28 having the overarching sort of framework for the cultural Olympiad and the local and regional area sort of filling that in, what looks like to be quite a few arts projects, but not certainly the sort of concentric circles that you showed, of the music, the film, and all of the key components what will...

That will make up the Cultural Olympiad. So, as a former nonprofit founder, we always have to begin with the end in mind, and there needs to be a number that we're trying to get to to fundraise so that we can actually be able to effectively address and do the work that we have planned to do.

So what is LA28's broader strategy in terms of what is the number in terms of financial commitment to that larger umbrella, which I think sounds like it will feed a lot of the local programs that the city and the county are moving? How much of that funding will directly support artists? Is there a sense of what that looks like?

How much of that money will directly support cultural institutions and really target some of those community-based organizations that will offer them some of the most powerful experiences. But as I laid out, have some of the toughest road to travel over these next six hundred days. I, I really need to understand because, to me, if you have no resources, none of this happens.

And we know that there are communities that are left behind that will be left behind given the time frame that we have and the fact that we're unclear about how much resource is gonna be invested?

Sure. I can tell you that, as I mentioned, those fundraising conversations are in, in the works. We're talking both on the philanthropic side and the partnership side. So I don't have a specific number to give you per se, but we are working toward an end goal in the tens of millions for the funding of this program. What we didn't go into a lot of detail on is some of the community and free programming that we will provide as part of our plan.

We've already announced a community film series where we will literally be taking iconic... Curating an iconic film series that we will take out into the communities of LA and into lots of city local parks and, and areas, as well as the announcement of a series that will be coming... We'll be announcing next year that focuses more on county locations, local county parks, and areas.

We are working closely with the city and the county on how we establish those, but we will be producing those in the different communities of LA and incorporating local food, local musical opening acts for those film screenings. We will be...

The performance series that will, that will be focused on will include dance and theater and spoken word and things of that nature, but also incorporating the local food aspect and cultural activations in those community celebrations. Free to the public; that will be one of the components that we're doing in terms of offering free programming.

But then, focusing on that culture for all program where we are working to identify the organizations and institutions that are providing programming so that we can offset the cost to make it more accessible to people who might not be able to afford a $200 ticket to the LA Opera or another performance that someone may not otherwise have the opportunity to attend. So we offset their cost to offer blocks of tickets at a lower price.

We're working through the criteria on that and how those will be identified, but that is some of the future planning there and how we're investing in making it more accessible.

And can I just ask a follow-up question? So, is the tens of millions being raised to cover all of those

Yes.

Activities? Okay. Yes. As well as the, the, the... That digital platform that we talked about, which is...

I see as one of the biggest opportunities we have. I think in every listening session we've had, over the last two years, everyone is asking for a comprehensive resource of how you discover culture in Los Angeles. How can you find what's happening at that small community theater in a in a neighborhood that people don't know about?

When I have friends coming into town to visit for the weekend, I have to look at 30 different websites to figure out what I want them to see or what's going on in LA right now. And there are lots of pieces out there, but we are looking for a way to bring in and really showcase and highlight everything that's happening in those smaller neighborhoods, giving them the same level of marketing and, and promotion that we're doing...

That these institutions have, giving them resources that they don't... May not otherwise have.

And I would also say in terms of programming that, that what you're seeing here is, you know, you have grantmakers on the panel here and, and whoever gives to whatever entity, we feel that it really is lifting up the entire...

We see it as, as kind of a citywide embrace. So it's not as if it's, it's all about us, or it's all about the city or it's all about the county. We see that it all lifts all boats. So, so for us, it, it, it does feel that it's, it's sort of for the citizens and the access to the art programming that we hope to underwrite is, is going to make for a more community... Deeper community engagement.

And there will be more programming that we'll be releasing next year. We're in conversations to finalize the details on that, but you will see more specific programming and how we're embedding art into our Games, as well as how we're going to take that poster project and really showcase the 16 artists that we have identified across the region and, and really show the world what they and

I, I appreciate that, and I appreciate the... It sounds like the amounts... The fundraising effort is rivaling what the city has invested. And, and there certainly are a number of... It looked like tier B and tier C that have not been funded.

So I... I'm glad to hear that. The one caveat that I, I wanna just point out is as we are going to bring 15,000,000-plus people to these different venues, whether it's a

restaurant, a playhouse, a dance studio. Those small business owners will need to be prepared to welcome those visitors. They will need to make infrastructure changes to welcome that volume. They will need to have additional security staff to be prepared. And so I, I didn't hear where the resources will be able to help those local cultural small businesses, entertainment small businesses be able to accommodate the scale.

If most of the resources are being involved in the promotion and the drive, then how do they prepare? The other question I have is: how will LA28 work with relevant rights holders to make room for grassroots fan zones? This is... With the World Cup, we had 100 different locations across the city. And some of them...

I mean, I think at Expo Park, we had, for one game, 45,000 people show up just to the one game. So these... LA is a small country, so in... On itself without all the visitors. So my question is, you know, what...

How will we ensure that those kinds of rights are provided? And meaning that it can be marked, folks can actually view the games. And then... And two, how will we make sure that there are resources to also support some of those small businesses? And I will ask LA28 and Mister Tirico how we're working through that process, because those rights will need to be given in enough time for those small businesses to be prepared, to make sure that the communities are prepared and ready.

I'll say that we do have a team at LA28 that's working with our program that's called Celebrate Two Eight. That is our fan zone watch parties program, similar to what you're, you're speaking to. And they certainly had some learnings from what they saw with the World Cup watch parties, and we have made our plan easily... Much easier and more accessible in terms of the scope and size. I think there were some restrictions on what some watch parties...

The scope that they had to be able to accommodate the number of people, and it... It's made it a little more difficult at times for some of the locations that wanted to host a watch party to do so. We have scaled that way down so that smaller gatherings can happening, and it, it makes it a lot more accessible and, and easier for people to host. So they don't have that, that...

Those infrastructure costs that might come with more security or fencing or being able to accommodate 5,000 people in a space.

So it's a... It's another team. We have a, a team that is literally working headstrong on that, and, and we are constantly in conversations with both the city and the county on the plans that they're... They have for their watch parties and locations as well.

So what's, what's really exciting on the city side is having gone through the Kick It in the Park events. So we... The city... And this was a decision made through the mayor's office in partnership with the City Council, and I'm joined here today by folks that are both part of the Office of Major Events as well as the Office of Strategic Partnerships that really led the efforts on this. But the decision to make...

To, to create the Kick It in the Park events was to do things that were open to everybody. There's no cost to entry. There are opportunities for small businesses to be part of it, and to do that on a way that that, you know, the, the department participated in about 15 of them in a few different capacities. But on a larger scale, again, it was 105 events that happened across the city over about thirty-nine days.

And as we look towards the games, it's gonna be exponential from that.

And that is what we're starting to plan for now. And, and that... The part that, that is being worked through right now, and again, this is something that, that the Office of Major Events and the Mayor's Office can speak to further, is navigating how to do it in a way that, that manages the size of the events in addition to the rights question that you're asking as well. And then the other piece that I'll add is that we...

The mayor's office has also started an initiative called Relay 28, that is really exciting to help workforce development and help organizations gear up for what this time looks like.

So very much the questions that you're asking are very much the direction that the city is going towards to make sure that we're able to be prepared, because not only does the city municipality need to be prepared, but all of these organizations that are supporting needed as well.

I, I appreciate that. I'm glad to hear that, that preparation is happening. And my final question as I wrap up has to do with existing infrastructure, like cultural districts and community-based organizations.

You know, we're hearing that just having those organizations just trying to get signage up, whether it's a cultural district or a performance collaborative to get signage up to promote their communities during the Olympics, it looks like may not be able to happen for whatever reason in terms of delays, in terms of the time frame in which the planning is rolling out.

And so my question is, how are we gonna build upon the assets that we currently have, and what is the way that we can expedite if we do have organizations that do have resources that want to get involved, that want to make sure that they have the right infrastructure?

How can the city work with them to expedite that in this moment? And what can LA28 do to ensure that there are collaborative types of resources? Certainly, you're gonna be doing not building infrastructure, but you're gonna be doing a hell of a lot of signage. You're gonna be building all kinds of temporary structures that could be very useful to our cultural and artistic community.

But we can't use the same system, and we certainly can't go through three or four different kinds of processes to do that.

So my question is, how are you working together to help to support those cultural institutions, those cultural districts, that have our fundraising and are wanting to invest, but to help them expedite their ability to be ready and not have to jump through a tremendous amount of hoops that will basically, you know, out... Outlive the... The hoops will outlive the Olympics in our time frame. So how will we do that, and how are you working together to make sure that that happens? Sure.

To begin, what, what we've been able to do and and we've been working with City Council with the mayor's office to really be able to leverage the assets that the department has and that the city has. So, looking to be able to first start there to make sure that we are able to use.

And as you're aware, we've been working hard to get a number of our theaters opened up to the community again, including the Vision and the Warner Grand in San Pedro, as well as the Madrid Theater in Canoga Park. So really leveraging that support both with our elected officials to be able to bring those to fruition and to be able to open those.

And then, going more broadly within community institutions, we are continuing to build that dialogue and have those conversations to learn about what folks are building and then how we can support.

We're working closely with the mayor's office as well to be able to expedite, expedite getting through the bureaucracy of the city. I'm very aware of the work that, that the city is doing around the black black cultural District as well, to really be able to move those structures forward so that we can have them in time for the games, and looking at building both public and private and nonprofit partnerships to be able to work through that as well.

Thank you. I'm glad that you're... We're talking about cultural districts because I, I see the, the coalition that's building around various cultural districts as already establishing the legacy of 2028. Whereas in, in the past, the cultural districts have worked within their own, own communities through a coalition; they're now working across as, as a broader, movement, so to speak. So for us, we attend all of the, all of the meetings of the, the coalition of cultural districts because for us, it's important to be able to tell...

To, to encourage those communities to tell their own stories through the amplification that we can provide. And going back to your, your concern about constituents not knowing exactly how to participate, I, I think it's, it's worth encouraging them to, to, to attend the first Friday meetings that we have online about the goings-on for LA28, where they can learn about the ramp system and how to, how to get a small business into the track.

We have an incredible team whose job it is to make sure the community is engaged, feels engaged, and is empowered to have all the instructions required for engagement. Again, not our team, but one that we work closely with.

I appreciate that answer, and I'll, I'll just close by just reiterating equity means giving folks what they need to be able to fully participate. And every community is different, and many of these communities that present some of the most powerful cultural stories that the world has seen or heard will need to have additional resources. They will need to have accelerated processes. They will need to have time that we've lost, that we've gotta quickly make up in order to, to fully participate in.

And I'm curious if LA28, particularly when I think about the small businesses, have you talked or engaged with the governor's office of business and economic development, co biz, and the California Arts Council about exploring some kind of a partnership that can really support of the games, and, and to see what kinds of, kinds of resources...