City of Tucson

Lord Cultural Resources was engaged in 2023 by the City of Tucson to develop the City’s first comprehensive cultural plan. ¡Somos Uno! A Cultural Heritage Strategy for Tucson was published in October 2024 and unanimously adopted by Tucson Mayor and City Council in January 2025. This strategy charts a path toward sustaining the city’s cultural heritage while promoting economic growth, social cohesion, and creative innovation through a unified vision for the city’s cultural future. The plan focuses on four key priorities—Governance and Policy, Creative Placekeeping, Belonging and Cultural Equity, and Cross-Sector Collaboration—and provides targeted strategies to achieve meaningful progress toward actionable goals.

The planning process included extensive background research, an analysis of peer cities and Tucson’s existing arts and culture ecosystem; six months of robust public engagement that reached over 2,000 people; and an economic and fiscal impact analysis of the creative economy and arts and cultural industry, which resulted in the important finding that Tucson’s overall arts and cultural economy contributes $8.4 billion in business revenue in Tucson and cultural tourism generates approximately $431 million in annual visitor spending.

Quotes:

“Somos Uno captures the essence of what makes Tucson special. It successfully represented the layers of what contributes to a rich cultural heritage and how so many partners can collaborate on a journey to increasing investment, awareness and activation of more art, food, historical endeavors for the benefit of visitors and residents.” - Lara Hamwey

“The Cultural Heritage Strategy for Tucson is the result of hundreds of hours of in-depth conversations with artists, performers, culture bearers, craftspersons, cultural workers, and others who have maintained our local heritage for generations. It genuinely reflects the dire needs, hopes, challenges, and potential of Tucson's arts, heritage, and culture sector. Its recommendations are critical to the health of our city's cultural assets.” - Marc Pinate

“The Lord consulting group did a fabulous job of listening, organizing what they heard into coherent topics, and then developing realistic goals and objectives derived from those topics. The process was inclusive and thorough and represents a practical and aspirational blueprint for the future of art and culture in our community.” - Corky Poster