Cultural Council Agenda and Packet 2023 03 16

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Cultural Council Agenda DATE Page 5 of 10 the sculpture. He's getting input from the affected groups about how they feel. He has heard lots of differing opinions in terms of it being a memorial (every different opinion about location, ideas about what it should be, that money should not be spent on this at all, to the way to some people say we should not have a memorial because they don't want to remember this event). He thinks the community is still in trauma and that maybe we are not ready as a community yet for a formal Marshall Fire Memorial. He asks how do we move forward as a community to remember this event and what about the Resiliency sculpture? He thinks these are two different issues that can be separated. He needs to go back to City Council with these thoughts and perhaps find some way to move forward. He is planning on doing this in March. He is interested in hearing more from the LCC about the matter. - Beth: there has been confusion even though the LCC made it clear that this is not a memorial and that it is a piece of art meant to bring the community together. LCC was not taking on or assuming we had a right to create a memorial to the Marshall fires. She asks if there is a way for us to make it more clear that it is art and not memorial. - Grace: it is a commemoration to highlight our community's resilience and bring some beauty. It is not Thee Memorial with a plaque that says how many acres burned, with all the facts and figures. In the year since the fires there has never been direction from City Council to make a memorial. It does need to be separated from a memorial and it should not be treated like it represents everything. A memorial can be done in later years. Grace asks Jeff if he is in the community soliciting information, how will he formulate a recommendation to the City Council with so many different responses from the community. - Jeff: it is more of a pulse than a scientific survey. The process is listening and pondering. Meeting with community members, individual groups who reach out to their neighbors, etc. and then he will weigh all the information. Do we move forward with the Resiliency sculpture and not a memorial? Do we talk about the Resiliency sculpture as being a memorial and moving it somewhere else? He doesn't think that would work but is still working through the alternatives. Keely: she finds it hard to imagine that the art would be adding pain because the grief and pain is already right here all the time. The nature of this sculpture feels like a movement of healing in our community. Jeff mentions that there are different triggers for different people. Keely understands this and clarifies that she is surprised the art would be triggering when there are reminders all over town of what happened. - Grace: the city could have a liability because we hosted a call. - Jeff: this may not be the case because Council had not voted on it for full approval. - Grace: while it technically wasn't completed, this may affect the reputation of the calls that the LCC puts out in the future. It will also influence who applies, who participates and who runs the calls. Jeff: I agree with that. "I am a man of my word and I believe the city should operate in the same way".