You’re invited to join artists, city officials, arts administrators, cultural workers, creative entrepreneurs, and community advocates from across Contra Costa County for a night of meaningful conversation and collaboration. The information collected through this project will illuminate the economic barriers artists face, gaps in funding and resources, housing and workspace challenges, professional development needs, what artists want to see invested in locally, and more.

This meeting is to discuss how to turn our shared challenges into collective advocacy and real institutional change. Share your struggles, your aspirations, and your ideas for what a thriving creative community should look like. Your voice directly shapes the development and focus of this census.

Creative Voices, Collective Power is hosted by Nichole Talbott and Rhys Nguyen, the Contra Costa fellows for Vital Arts’ Bay Area Artist’s Census (BAAC). Vital Arts is an Oakland-based nonprofit working to prevent the displacement and disenfranchisement of artists in the Bay Area. BAAC is an artist-led initiative, working to build a census that gathers information directly from our fellow artists.

This gathering is October 1st, 2026, 5PM - 7PM at CoBiz, 1503 Macdonald Avenue, Suite A, Richmond, CA 94801. Admission is free, but please RSVP: http://bit.ly/BAAC-ContraCosta