Media Release for Ortega Park Mural Rescue Project

Various community organizations have come together to provide door to door bilingual outreach for an April 24th Ortega Park Community Workshop. The event will be held in Ortega Park and will start at 1PM. The event is being organized by City Council member Alejandra Gutierrez with Parks and Recreation Staff, City administration, members of the Santa Barbara Arts Advisory Council, the County Office of Arts and Culture and the One Community Bridge Project. A special thank you to City Rep. Kristen Sneddon for also providing leadership for this important neighborhood event.

The One Community Bridge Project signed on to assist with neighborhood outreach for this event with the support from the Fund for Santa Barara, Bienstar Latinx, the Association of Raza Educators, Ethnic Studies SBHS, Chicano Culture SB and many volunteers.

The event is a continuation of the City of Santa Barbara’s efforts to revitalize Ortega Park and to reverse its decision to destroy the historic Chicano murals that have lived in the park for 42 years.

The purpose of the event is to hold space for the Eastside neighborhood and the surrounding community to express their thoughts and ideas regarding the significance of the murals. They are a historic cluster related to a band of Chicano murals from San Diego to San Francisco. This feedback is needed so the City of Santa Barbara can submit a required California Environmental Quality Act report for its 8.5-million-dollar revitalization grant to the State of California.

Equally, the event is to also center the Ortega Park murals within the redesign concept to revitalize the park. There should be an acknowledgement that the Eastside neighborhood was not reached during the planning of the park’s redesign to discuss the significance of the historic murals, and that there needs to be an ongoing healing to honor and to memorialize the cultural significance of this cluster of public art.

For more information about Saturday’s event contact Mark Alvarado at mark@onecommunitysb.org or at 805.636.2217.