Cultural Action Plan

CANVAS: Cultural Action for Neighborhood Vitality, Arts, and Spaces

We're building CANVAS, a citywide plan to strengthen and preserve arts and culture across Seattle. Our goal is to connect communities, support artists, and ensure culture is a core part of how our city grows.

If you have questions or comments about CANVAS, please contact: CANVAS@seattle.gov.

The Basics

CANVAS stands for Cultural Action for Neighborhood Vitality, Arts, and Spaces.

It will be made up of two reports:

A State of Culture report that answers:
- What is the current condition of Seattle’s cultural ecosystem?
- Who is being served or left out?
- Where are the greatest pressures and opportunities?
The CANVAS Cultural Action Plan that addresses what communities prioritize by asking:
- What should we, the City, and partners do?
- How will these actions be funded, delivered, and tracked?

CANVAS will:

Link existing cultural work across the city.
Define our role and theory of change.
Identify gaps in support for artists, cultural workers, and organizations.
Connect arts and culture to City priorities like housing, parks, climate, and transportation.
Build a shared roadmap for future investment and action.

Community

We want to hear from you. Artists, cultural workers, organizations, and residents all have a role in shaping CANVAS. We'll share engagement opportunities at each phase as the process moves forward.

We'll begin by reviewing what the City has already heard through past planning, engagement, cultural district work, and community conversations. This helps avoid asking you to repeat what you've already shared.

We'll then identify where gaps remain and where communities may have been underrepresented in previous efforts. Future engagement will focus on understanding what still feels true, what has changed, what actions communities want to help shape, and how we can share progress.

Partners

We're developing CANVAS with City departments, cultural organizations, community groups, and partners from across Seattle. Getting this right requires collaboration across sectors.

Consultants

We'll bring in qualified consultants to support the planning process where needed. Consultant selection will follow City procurement standards and be shared publicly.

Arts and culture do not exist in isolation. CANVAS will align cultural planning with key City priorities, including:

Housing and economic development
Public space and transportation
Parks and libraries
Climate and sustainability
Tourism and neighborhood planning

This alignment ensures that cultural investment supports, and is supported by, the broader work happening across City government.

Our Goal

We want arts and culture to be recognized as essential to life in Seattle, not treated as an afterthought.

CANVAS will give us a clear, accountable framework for supporting cultural spaces, neighborhood vitality, and the people who make Seattle's creative life possible.

Audiences

For community members, residents, artists, and cultural organizations: CANVAS will make it clearer what we're doing, what decisions and actions are ahead, where accountability lives, and how you can stay connected.

For City departments: CANVAS will show where arts and culture connect to shared work, where partnership with us may strengthen existing priorities, and how collaboration can happen now and in future implementation.

For the Mayor’s Office, City Council, and other decision-makers: CANVAS will ground policy, funding, and investment conversations in community priorities, data, and a fuller understanding of the role arts and culture play in Seattle’s economy, public life, and neighborhood vitality.

Pre-Scoping

This phase defines the purpose, scope, timeline, engagement approach, data needs, and consultant needs for the planning process.

Cultural Ecosystem & Needs Assessment

This phase will examine Seattle’s cultural landscape, including cultural assets, spaces, participation, creative economy conditions, prior engagement, and community needs.

Cultural Action Plan Development

Drawing on findings from the prior phase, we'll develop the full action plan that includes community-informed actions, partners, strategies, and priorities

Implement, Fund, & Adjust

The final phase will establish how CANVAS will be put into action, its funding, and how progress will be measured and reported publicly.

Expected Outcomes

When CANVAS is complete, we're aiming to have:

A clear, coordinated roadmap for cultural action.
Stronger support for artists, cultural workers, and organizations.
Better access to cultural spaces and programming in every neighborhood.
Less duplication, more impact.
A shared framework for how arts and culture serves Seattle's civic priorities.

Other outcomes:

A cultural ecosystem and needs assessment.
A cultural asset inventory and map.
A set of priority actions for the next five to 10 years.
A long-term vision and goal for our office.
A funding and partnership strategy.
A framework for tracking progress.
Stronger coordination across City departments.
Better data to support advocacy and decision-making.

Our Values

Racial equity and social justice guide everything we do in CANVAS.

We'll actively center the voices and needs of communities that have been left out of past cultural investments. We'll look honestly at systems and how resources and are distributed, and we'll prioritize strategies that create real access for all Seattle residents.

We are committed to conducting the CANVAS process openly and with accountability.

This means sharing information about the planning process, making engagement opportunities widely accessible, and reporting clearly on how community input shapes the final plan. Progress updates will be made available to the public as the work advances.