Create Boulder is a 501c3 non-profit powered by a community of leaders and arts advocates who believe that creativity is the essence of a vibrant and just community. We are committed to leveraging our resources to sustain a thriving and resilient arts and culture ecosystem in the City of Boulder.

HISTORY

Founded in 2016, Create Boulder set out to increase and stabilize public and private support for arts and culture to fortify the creative ecosystem in the City of Boulder. Initially working behind the scenes, our board forged relationships with City officials, the City’s Office of Arts & Culture, and community leaders. When the COVID-19 Pandemic struck in March 2020, Create Boulder swiftly mobilized some of the earliest private and public relief funding made available to Boulder’s artists and arts organizations. Create Boulder also led multiple advocacy campaigns that successfully thwarted proposed cuts to the City of Boulder’s cultural grants program, helping to stabilize an arts and culture sector ravaged by the pandemic, and secured additional City support from short-term federal relief funds.  

In 2023, Create Boulder initiated and led a campaign to secure long-term, dedicated City of Boulder funding for arts, culture, and heritage. An overwhelming 75% of Boulder’s voters approved Ballot Measure 2A, which is expected to provide over $75 million of funding over the 20-year life of the tax ($3.8 million a year) starting in 2025.  (See 2A for more information.) 

Create Boulder is also working to address critical gaps in cultural infrastructure essential to supporting the work of local artists and arts organizations.  These infrastructure gaps include spaces for performances, rehearsals, classes, offices, community celebrations, and more.  See Arts Complex page for more information.

Our Team/Our Board

  • Jan Burton is passionate about art and music, serving on numerous music boards in the past, including eTown and the Colorado Music Festival and currently serves on the University of Colorado College of Music Advisory Board. She regularly hosts concerts in her Boulder, Colorado home and is dedicated to creating a sustainable future for art and cultural organizations and musicians.

    Jan was a Boulder City Council member from 2015-2017 and enthusiastically advocated for the passing of the city’s first Community Cultural Plan in 2015. She is still actively engaged with the City of Boulder Office of Arts + Culture and city council around arts initiatives as well as other topics of interest in the Boulder.

    Jan helped to create the Colorado Music Festival’s “Mashup” series in 2013 to reach new audiences and create a social atmosphere for orchestral performances.

    She chairs the Open Boulder Foundation, an organization focused on various good governance initiatives and support of Boulder’s open space. She is an active pilot, aircraft owner, avid outdoor person, photographer, and art lover. Since 2014, she has traveled to 28 National Parks in her 1961 Airstream, blogging about the experience. She is a volunteer with Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks, helping to monitor and protect raptors in their mating season.

  • Deborah Malden is a co-founder of Create Boulder and has been the volunteer Arts Liaison at the Boulder Chamber since 2013. She is a life-long dancer and enjoyed a 20-year career in banking. Her specialty was financing hard infrastructure: roads, energy, and telecommunications. More recently, she has focused on building ‘soft infrastructure,’ the other assets needed for a healthy, vibrant, and just society.

    Working in collaboration with the City of Boulder’s Office of Arts & Culture and other arts leaders in the community, Deborah helped launch Boulder Arts Week in 2014 and continues to serve on the City’s Boulder Arts Week advisory group each year. Deborah was the Boulder County appointee to the Scientific & Cultural Facilities Board (2017 to 2022) and has served on the boards of Boulder’s 3rd Law Dance/Theater and The Dairy Arts Center, where she later served as interim executive director. She is a member of Social Venture Partners Boulder County, a nonprofit that strengthens many of Boulder County’s nonprofits through skills-based volunteerism and financial support.

    Deborah is a 2021 certified Change Leader with Colorado Creative Industries and co-chair of Colorado Cultural Champions, a state-wide arts advocacy initiative launched in late 2021 by the Colorado Business Committee for the Arts. She completed CBCA’s Leadership Arts program in 2014, which launched her ‘second career’ in arts advocacy.

    Deborah received the Dairy Center Honors from the Dairy Arts Center (2017), was honored by the Boulder Chamber as a recipient of the Women who Light the Community award (2022) and was awarded the PNC Bank Cultural Leadership Award by the Colorado Business Committee for the Arts (2023).

  • Nick Forster is a co-founder of Create Boulder, a professional musician, record producer, arts and nonprofit entrepreneur, and radio host/producer. He is most widely known as a longstanding member of the award-winning bluegrass band, Hot Rize, and as the host and founder of the musical and environmental radio and podcast program, eTown, based in Boulder, Colorado.

    As a 30-year Executive Director of an arts nonprofit in Boulder, Nick has experienced firsthand the impact of major gaps in funding for artists and arts organizations.

    Born in Beirut, Lebanon, and raised in New York, Nick has called Boulder home since moving here in 1980. Married for 30 years to his partner in life and work, Helen Forster. She and Nick live in west Boulder with the cutest cat in the world (sorry, not sorry) named Emma. Nick has three grown daughters, and three grandchildren that keep him at his most playful.

  • Fran is the Publisher of Boulder Weekly. Formerly the CEO of Colorado Springs Newspaper Group and the New England-based New Mass Media companies. An advocate for the arts throughout his career Fran has served as member of the Boulder County Arts Council, Executive Committee member and Trustee of the Fine Arts Center in Colorado Springs, Vice President of Marketing for the Greater Hartford Arts Association and President of the Durham, NC Chapter of the American Dance Festival.

    Born in Syracuse and raised in Fayetteville, NY, Fran moved to Boulder in November 2016.