Enhancing Cultural Vibrancy for Our Community

The MAH bolsters creative economy and community development in the following ways:

• Driving economic development – Joining forces with County and community partners, the MAH transformed Abbott Square and Abbott Square Market into a hub of creative happenings. By bringing people together around meaningful objects, stories, and experiences we build cultural vibrancy, and there is a return on that investment. The market is now a venue for local businesses, and our revitalized downtown center attracts investment in the form of residential and business developments. It has also become fertile ground for creative innovation.
• Investing in creative entrepreneurs – The MAH supports many local entrepreneurs—from food vendors in the market, to artists and historians pushing the boundaries of their fields, to innovators finding new ways to disrupt an industry. Our commissions, residencies, awards, and publications support new works, and our programming is a wellspring of inspiration. We continue to look for new ways to wed our community’s strong entrepreneurial spirit with our rich creative culture.
• Operating a fiscally sound organization – The MAH must remain attractive and relevant to ensure visitation, earn revenue and support, and optimize our resources. We do this by offering programming that keeps our patrons coming back. One of our defining tenets is to learn from experience. Thus, our current strategic planning process is based on assessing the economic and social impacts of our initiatives, so that we can make any changes necessary to better serve our community.
• Synergistically building vibrancy – The MAH is one of many cultural organizations that make Santa Cruz what it is—a quirky, caring, creative, vibrant place to live and work. Partnering with one another results in a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. It is crucial we work together to enrich and grow the creative economy, infusing it into all aspects of our County and City. Not only does this benefit our minds and spirits, but our cultural and economic vibrancy as well.

Our plans for the future involve the following emphases:

• Placekeeping – Placekeeping elevates local culture, heritage, and landscapes through artistic and historical interpretation, growing pride in place. Not only do the MAH’s exhibitions, festivals, and programs encourage localism as well as the tourism that financially benefits businesses, workforce, and City and County tax revenue, they also invest in our cultural profile to enrich our local community, invite participation, and ensure we remain attractive and relevant.
  
• Community belonging – Cultivating a sense of belonging helps to transform communities. By encouraging culture and identity to flourish, we increase civic participation. Recognizing and nurturing belonging should be a cornerstone of urban planning and social policy. We seek to enhance it by animating our museum, historic sites, and public spaces in a way that honors our diverse cultures and histories, while encouraging interaction and community building.
• Social connectedness – By crafting experiences around social connectedness, we encourage people to come together and interact, sparking investment in the MAH and one another. In our view, the museum is a civic commons, or public space. This is true of the MAH itself, as well as beyond the museum walls in physical, intellectual, and emotional space, where we embrace shared heritage, lifelong learning, cultural literacies, physical and mental health, and more.