Santa Barbara County Office of Arts and Culture

The Santa Barbara County Office of Arts & Culture serves as the local governmental umbrella for arts and culture projects and programs within Santa Barbara County. Through robust public-private partnerships, the Office seeks to support and catalyze art, culture, and creative expression; inspire local identity and belonging; bridge across differences; strengthen community resilience; uplift our creative workforce; and help communities to imagine and build more equitable futures. The Office represents a remarkable longstanding partnership between the County of Santa Barbara and the City of Santa Barbara. For almost 40 years, both governments have shared resources and staff to maximize support for arts and culture institutions, practitioners, programs, initiatives, and projects. As the regional arts and cultural development agency, the Office serves as a State-Local Partner of the California Arts Council. This collaboration includes funding, information exchange, cooperative activities, and leadership. The Office is involved with numerous City, County, State, and Federal arts and culture advocacy initiatives, supporting the arts and culture sector in regional economic planning, including the Arts and Economic Prosperity longitudinal study. Coordination of countywide and regional arts initiatives and cross-jurisdictional policy recommendations is a major focus. Staff provides administrative support for the following publicly-appointed government advisory bodies: the County Arts Commission, the City of Santa Barbara Arts Advisory Committee, and the City of Santa Barbara Events & Festivals Committee. In collaboration with these groups and local government, the Office administers four separate grant programs: Arts Making Impact, Community Arts, Events & Festivals, and Organizational Development. In concert with public arts advisory bodies, the Office curates exhibitions in public spaces such as the Channing Peake Gallery, the Santa Barbara City Hall Gallery, and the Joseph A. Centeno Betteravia Gallery; staff also produces public art commissions and public art installations at outdoor public sites countywide, including Santa Barbara’s State St. corridor. Public poetry programs and collaborations include the Santa Barbara City Poet Laureate, County Youth Poet Laureate, and Poetry Out Loud. Finally, the Santa Barbara County Office of Arts & Culture partners with local government, community leaders and civic organizations to host community roundtables for shared discourse and collective ideation.