When people come to visit Santa Cruz, where do you take them to show them what Santa Cruz is all about?

If you want to show them our glorious natural setting, you can take them to the redwoods. You can take them to the beach. But where do you take them if you want to show them the creativity at the heart of our community?

Over the past four years, we've made the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History a vibrant cultural center. We’ve worked with over 5,000 community partners and over 120,000 local visitors to breathe new energy into the museum. And yet, I don’t think the museum is the place that best showcases our City's artistic identity. I don’t think any place with walls can be that place. It has to be a public place, outdoors, 24/7, a place where kids can play, a place we can walk by every week, a place we can drag our friends late at night, open up our arms, and say, "See! This is who we are. This is what Santa Cruz is all about."

I don’t think this place exists yet. And so we are creating it, in Downtown Santa Cruz in Abbott Square.

Right now, Abbott Square is a leftover place from the rebuilding of Downtown after the earthquake--the concrete wedge between the Museum, the Octagon, and Cooper Street. We are transforming Abbott Square into a community place—a place to be inspired, to connect, to hang out. A place to call our own.

Abbott Square will be a plaza, a market, a garden, and a performance space. Build a fort with your family in the secret garden. Dance along to the extraordinary performers and cultural groups onstage.

Eat tamales with an old friend. Grab a beer with someone new. Abbott Square will be an inclusive place, bringing together people across differences. It will be a welcoming place, both for those who love Downtown and those who are unsure of it.

It may sound impossible to build this kind of place downtown. But I know it’s possible. Because all the things we want Abbott Square to be are already in our identity as a community. That openness, the creativity, the sense of welcome—that’s who we are. We've already raised $4.5 of the $5 million needed to make this project a reality. With just a bit more community support, construction will be underway.

People in the arts often talk about this kind of work as “place making.” Art can help turn a concrete wedge into a place with a story and an identity. Art connects us to place and to each other.

Art is place making. It is also future making. Art rejects the limitations of what we are and what we have been. It inspires us to imagine what we will be. I want to imagine a future Downtown in which creativity, commerce, and community are all welcome. I want to build that future right now in Abbott Square. And I want to invite you to do it with me.

Get involved with Abbott Square today: www.abbottsquare.org