A CITY DRIVEN BY CREATIVITY
Few municipalities in California carry the creative inheritance of Culver City. Within roughly five square miles sit Sony Pictures Studios, on the lot that produced The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind, and The Culver Studios, the former DeMille/Selznick property now operating as Amazon Studios headquarters. Apple TV+, NPR West, and a dense network of post-production houses, animation studios, and design firms extend across the Hayden Tract, the Helms Bakery District, and the Washington and Sepulveda corridors.
The work ahead is not to invent a creative identity. It is to broaden who participates in one. The Plan envisions a Culver City where the creative life of the city is visible on a residential block, in a public park, and inside a neighborhood school as fully as it is on a studio lot. Residents at every income level have practical means of participation, whether as professionals working in the industry or as artists, makers, and cultural workers operating outside it.
CULTURAL INFRASTRUCTURE AS CIVIC INFRASTRUCTURE
The Kirk Douglas Theatre, the Wende Museum, the Robert Frost Auditorium, the Culver City Public Art Program, and the cultural programming of the Helms Bakery District each carry independent missions. They also function together as civic infrastructure: shared spaces where residents encounter one another across lines of background, age, and politics. The Plan treats these institutions and the programs they host as public goods on par with parks and libraries, and looks for ways to deepen resident access to them.
A PLAN BUILT LOCALLY
The Plan will be developed with the people who already do this work in Culver City. That includes artists and cultural workers, neighborhood residents, the Cultural Affairs Commission, school district staff, small business owners, studio government affairs representatives... and you!