The city’s Arts and Culture Commission held a special meeting on Dec. 3 to begin planning for a Jan. 25, 2026, Arts Education Forum cosponsored by the Healdsburg Unified School District. That made the meeting a perfect opportunity to introduce the newest Arts and Culture Commission member, Camila Rauda Soto. The high school senior becomes the first Youth Member of the body, appointed to fill a seat created by the resignation of Crystal Lopez. She will be a full voting member for a two-year term.
The forum project is spearheaded by an Arts Education Committee of commissioners Gina Riner, Gianna Davy and Rauda, plus Erin Partridge of The 222, teachers Linus Lancaster and Monica Chavez, and 11 other students from HHS in addition to Rauda.
“Our first goal is to organize a Community Arts Education Forum, a partnership between the commission and HUSD, which is scheduled for Jan. 25,” Lancaster said. “Part of the forum will be student-led. Commissioner Rauda will help organize the event and lead the youth voices panel.”
The forum will take place at The 222 Performing Arts Center, from 2-4:30pm at 222 Healdsburg Ave.
The Arts Education forum is the latest step by the commission to explore an aspect of their original charter that had been left out—education. It’s an area that Commissioners Davy and Riner have made a focus; they invited Rauda to join them in the Dec. 3 meeting and she quickly accepted.
The community forum “would focus on themes related to arts education, arts therapy and wellness, highlighting the important role that creative expression plays in personal, social, and community well-being,” according to Taryn Nicoll, the Arts and Culture program administrator. Programs for both K-12 students as well as “lifelong learners” will be part of the forum.
New commission member Rauda was an attentive study in the meeting, but the high school senior is no newcomer to the “youth seat” of local boards: She is a member of the Commission on the Status of Women, Sonoma County, and of the Young, Empowered Women’s Club at HHS.
“I believe this community could use youth representation, and I have always been very involved in my school and advocating for what people want,” she told The Tribune. “I’d love to contribute my youth opinions.”
The special meeting was called because the end-of-year holidays are expected to cause the cancellation of several city meetings, including this commission’s. All city offices will be closed Dec. 24, 2025, to Jan. 2, 2026.
More about the commission is available online at healdsburg.gov/1140/Arts-and-Culture-Commission.