Denver Arts & Venues, in partnership with Mayor Mike Johnston, announced on Wednesday a new commitment to supporting arts and culture called DENVER CREATES Wednesday.

The commitment, which was put together through a process of community surveys that gathered feedback from more than 2,500 people, will establish the first new cultural plan for the city since 2014 and outline three main goals for developing arts and culture.

“This is an opportunity to bring people together to talk about what challenges they are facing and then start moving the needle to make the sector better,” said Brooke Dilling, director of grants and cultural programs for Denver Arts & Venues. “Our job is to lead, steward and facilitate the work of smaller community groups on the issue they want to tackle and bring in other partners as necessary to move that work forward.”

The initiative has three main goals: broadening access to arts and culture; cultivating the cultural community; and supporting the economic vitality of Denver’s cultural sector. All are aimed to grow and strengthen Denver’s arts and culture ecosystem as well as expand access to and awareness of funding opportunities for artists and organizations, according to Dilling.

At the launch event Wednesday afternoon, held on the third floor of the McNichols Civic Center Building downtown, hundreds of people affiliated with Denver’s arts community caught up with one another over cookies and coffee — and with a live band providing a jazz backdrop — sitting and listening to speeches from several people who worked on the initiative as well as Johnston.

“This is an arts city,” Johnston said. “We are incredibly proud of the fact that this is core to our identity.”

Denver Arts & Venues will launch four programs to meet community needs identified in the initial surveys, including expanding cultural-partner programming at the Performing Arts Complex, the creation of a downtown Arts Marketplace with a pilot artists-in-residence program and new arts and engagement opportunities for children age 12 and older.

“We see ourselves as the stewards, the leaders and the conveners of the work ahead,” Dilling said. “I don’t think that any one organization or one person can do this work alone, but by bringing people together there is strength in numbers and strength in community work.”

Dilling noted that Denver Arts & Venues will be funding “some of the mechanisms” of the commitment but there would also be “opportunities for other organizations or businesses to step in and help” with sponsorships and such.

“There’s never enough money in the arts in Denver,” Dilling said. “Hopefully as a sector, we find creative ways in order to continue to find additional funding for this work.”

Work with community members on the commitment officially began after the launch Wednesday afternoon and will continue throughout the year with several other events, Dilling said. Then, in 2026, Denver Arts & Venues will host the first in what will be a bi-annual summit aimed at bringing together cultural leaders and artists and discussing effective strategies for community outreach.

“As a collective community, we will decide what areas that we think will be the most important to tackle first,” Dilling said.