Our Creative Community
Our Creative Community
We're weaving art into every part of the city to make Ventura an exciting place to live and create jobs and innovative businesses.
Community Partner
"While transforming my family's old 20,000 square foot mattress factory on Ventura Avenue into a vibrant, mixed-use community arts center with artist studios, activities for youth and cultural events, I learned how we are fast becoming a city of "art-repreneurs" - full of enthusiasm, leadership and business sense - where vision, opportunity and creativity converge to create Ventura's exciting new cultural institutions."
Increased the community's public art and cultural expression
- Over 150,000 residents and tourists attended Community Services events
- 21 local arts organizations and 10 performing and literary artists provided cultural programs with the help of $164,000 in grants and $39,500 in Artist Fellowships
- Enhanced the community with three new public art sculptures:
- Making Lemonade at new Thille Park
- The Big Swing at Buenaventura Golf Course
- Parabolic Flight at Olivas Links
- Community groups and artists created StreetScape Murals for new bus shelters
- Provided art classes to over 10,000 children and adults
Arts mean business
Ventura's arts industry creates annually:
- $18.6 million in economic activity
- 645 jobs
- $13 million in local household income
- $768,000 in local government revenues
- Ventura cited in the top ten "America's Best Places for Artists" in Business Week
- Downtown Cultural District organizations' operating budgets grew from $500,000 in 1994 to $4.9 million today
- Cultural tourists in Ventura spend an average of $80.55 per person per day - better than the national average of $62.13
- ArtWalk attendees spend an average of $28 per person
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Promoted multiculturalism in our city
- 2,000 ethnically diverse children and adults visited the Olivas Adobe for the newly bilingual Cowboys, Heroes & Outlaws: Passport to the American West
- Hosted "Arts Leadership in a Changing Environment: New Skills, New Approaches" conference to strengthen our diverse arts organizations and artists
- Created MAVericks/Marketing of the Arts in Ventura to network, support and promote our many artists and arts organizations' programs and activities
Preserved our heritage
- Started renovations of historic Olivas Adobe with matching $1,076,000 state grant
- Engaged youth in historic preservation with "Adobe Mudslingers" that won History Channel's $10,000 "Best National Project" award
Met diverse performance, exhibition and workspace needs
- Raised $1.3 million for Working Artists Ventura (WAV), a $57 million complex for artists and creative businesses
- Showcased 150 artists to 20,000 people at three popular downtown ArtWalks
- Expanded arts classes to ethnically diverse students at Bell Arts Factory
The Road Ahead
- Debut of new, free, outdoor family fi lm series at Ventura parks this Fall
- Groundbreak WAV affordable live/work space in 2008 to provide housing for over 100 artists downtown
- Improve public spaces with 11 new public art projects
- Seek ways to increase participation in the arts for all segments of the community through a new Cultural Equity Roundtable Series