photo by: Shawn Valverde/Journal-World

Tents line the sidewalk in South Park on Saturday, June 15, 2024, during Lawrence's Juneteenth celebration.

With the new year comes a slightly new name for Lawrence’s Parks and Recreation Department — going forward, it will be known as Parks, Recreation and Culture.

The change is now official after the Lawrence City Commission approved it during its final meeting of 2024. Porter Arneill, an assistant director with the department, told the Journal-World that the department’s work today encompasses many cultural programs, and that the name change was intended to reflect that.

“(We wanted to) fold that into the department and be intentional with making sure this was integrated in the best possible way,” Arneill said.

The department had already unofficially changed its name for that reason in 2022, calling itself “Parks, Recreation, Arts and Culture.” But that name was “somewhat redundant,” Arneill said, because “culture” already covers the arts, and the department wanted to simplify it and make the change official.

That new name doesn’t mean the department will do away with its arts focus — in fact, the name change won’t change anything about the department’s public-facing operations.

However, the new name is intended to tie into the department’s new master plan, which will be presented to the City Commission in 2025. In addition to recreation and parks programs, the plan’s goals include some arts initiatives, such as expanding grants for artists and encouraging more public art. And Arneill said it also has culture-related goals that don’t really fit in the “arts” category, including creating more signature local events.

Arneill emphasized that the department’s different areas of focus often intersect, because city parks are often the gathering spaces for all types of cultural celebrations, from musical performances to art shows to cultural celebrations like Pride or Día de los Muertos.

“Culture really gets to everything we want to do with this,” Arneill said.