A working cultural archive of Laguna Beach — already built and online — and a founding partnership with The Susi Q to preserve, publish, and tell the city's story before its centennial.
Laguna Beach turns one hundred in 2027, and the people who remember its hidden cultural history are still here.
Every season we lose voices that carry the town's memory — artists, surfers, activists, caregivers, elders, neighbors — whose stories rarely enter the official record. The Atlas records those stories now, in their own voices, anchored to the streets, studios, beaches, and canyons where they happened.
A place-based cultural project that preserves Laguna's community history and tells it back through five lasting forms:
This is not a proposal for something that might exist. The Atlas is live and working today.
Laguna Beach Seniors operates The Susi Q and reaches beyond its walls through Lifelong Laguna. Its members hold the living memory the Atlas exists to preserve — a natural founding cultural partner.
A founding pilot with The Susi Q that grows into a Laguna edition paying its own way — and a method for telling California's larger story.
Record a first cohort of Susi Q elders and culture-bearers, expand the live Atlas, publish a printed pilot map, and secure founding cultural investors.
A guided walking-tour program, school partnerships, public events, a collectible printed map and book, and a locally stewarded community archive.
Extend the method to other California communities to record and contextualize their own memory — Laguna as the first chapter in a cultural memory of the state.
| Per stage | Stage 1Laguna pilot | Stage 2Laguna growth | Stage 3California |
|---|---|---|---|
| Money in | $130.5K | $244.5K | $414.0K |
| Money out | $80.1K | $164.8K | $309.2K |
| Left to reinvest | $50.4K | $79.7K | $104.9K |
Working assumptions from the current draft model — to be refined with sponsor tiers, fiscal terms, and a written partner agreement.
A founding pilot range, scaled to how many interviews we record, the print and production polish, the public-launch scope, and the first season of tours and events.
Funders join as cultural investors in a living archive — founding supporters with visible community impact — not one-time donors to a history project.
The broader vision is not a software rollout — it is a way of telling California's story. Laguna is the first chapter: a town shaped by art colonies, surf and counterculture, migration, and ecology. The same method helps other California communities record and contextualize their own memory within it.
The strongest message is not technology or maps. It is this: the people who remember Laguna Beach are still here. If we do not record their stories now, those stories disappear forever.