In May 2021, Denver Arts & Venues was still sending out releases calling the city s cultural plan Imagine 2020. Looking back over the past year, who d want to do that?
In 2014, then-Arts & Venues head Kent Rice and his team, which included current agency director Ginger White, did. At the time, imagining far-off 2020 seemed a little sci-fi, but in a hopeful way. Only a prophet of doom would predict the dystopian hellscape of fascists attempting to do away with democracy, police killings and riots, and mass death from a pandemic that marked the actual 2020.
Last year, we saw mass layoffs in the cultural sector and venues dark as catacombs, some boarding up for good. We couldn t physically escape into entertainment, liberating ourselves if only for a night at concerts, either: Even outdoor amphitheater Red Rocks, which generates a massive amount of the cultural agency s revenue, sat mostly empty.