By Melissa Fields
Each weekday after school, as he travelled between his suburban Sandy home and downtown Salt Lake City’s Ballet West Academy, a middle-school-aged Lucas Horns would press his forehead against glass from inside a TRAX car, fascinated as he watched the evolving cityscape passing by. “I’d spend the whole ride looking out the windows,” he says. “I loved watching new buildings go up or see new businesses opening up along my route.”
He didn’t know it then, but those adolescent hours spent on TRAX sparked the professional path Lucas finds himself on now; a journey that’s led to landing a coveted spot with Ballet West’s professional company, studying urban planning at the University of Utah, and launching a nonprofit celebrating the city’s LGBTQ+ community. And so, it’s hard not to think that perhaps it was meant to be when, in November, the Downtown Alliance tapped him to become THE BLOCKS Arts District’s new program director. “Lucas has spent his life at the intersection of art, community, and placemaking. He understands how art transforms cities and brings people together,” says Downtown Alliance Executive Director Dee Brewer. “He is a resident of Downtown and his pride and love for Salt Lake City are tangible. We are thrilled to welcome his energy and leadership to THE BLOCKS Arts District.”
THE BLOCKS is a collaborative initiative between the Downtown Alliance, Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County, launched in 2018 to draw attention to Downtown’s deep well of artistic talent. As THE BLOCKS program director, Lucas is charged with developing and carrying out programming in Downtown’s underutilized public spaces while supporting and convening Downtown’s established arts organizations. Examples of projects and programs spearheaded under THE BLOCKS’ umbrella include Key Changes with Bachauer Foundation, Exhibitions on Main, Co-Create Artists in Residence (Including the now-on-display Abslty Amzng Anmls installation), Steppin’ on Main summer performance series, and En Plein Air, where selected artists capture scenes at the Downtown Farmers Market. “I’ve wanted to be part of the Downtown Alliance team for a long time,” Lucas says. “Landing this role is truly a dream come true.”
After his graduation from Ballet West Academy, Lucas was invited to join the renowned ballet’s professional company; a position he would hold for eight years. “Though it’s not unusual now for local academy dancers to go on to dance with Ballet West, when I joined the company, I was one of only one or two other dancers from Utah,” he says.
One summer while with Ballet West, Lucas noticed several rainbow flags appear along a residential street not long after Boy Scouts had staked American flags on lawns around Salt Lake City to celebrate Memorial Day. Seeing the flags gave him an idea. “I thought how great it would be to create a fund raiser where homeowners could order a rainbow flag to be staked in their lawn to celebrate Pride month with the proceeds going to support LGBTQ+ organizations throughout the city,” he says.
That idea grew into Project Rainbow, a nonprofit Lucas founded in 2018 that continues to thrive today. Now, in addition to staking flags on lawns throughout the Wasatch Front for Pride Month, Project Rainbow’s flag campaigns include Trans Day of Visibility in March, Southern Utah’s Pride week in September, and Trans Awareness Week in November. Recipients of Project Rainbow’s 2025 grants included Mobile Moon Co-op, Queer and Sober SLC, We’re Here Utah, and many others.
After pursuing Project Rainbow solely as a volunteer effort for a few years, Lucas served as the organization’s executive director and then chaired its board for a year after hiring a permanent executive director. He’s now happy to limit his involvement in Project Rainbow to day-of volunteering. “This year I showed up to volunteer during Trans Week of Awareness, and it made me so happy that the person at check-in didn’t know who I was,” Lucas says. “It’s amazing to see Project Rainbow be sustainable and have a life beyond my direct involvement.
In 2021, multiple COVID-fueled schedule interruptions accelerated Lucas’s plans to retire from Ballet West. “Being a ballet dancer is tough. It takes 100 percent dedication, and the pandemic made it even harder,” he says. Freed up from the demands of professional dancing, Lucas finished the master’s degree in urban planning he’d been chipping away at for almost a decade and took an internship with the City of South Salt Lake, coordinating a digital inclusion project and helping open the South Salt Lake Community Center. Working remotely from Mexico City and New York City for an urban planning GIS firm followed, until Lucas and his husband, Josh Shutkind, realized that Salt Lake City was where they wanted to be. “We made a visit back here while we were in New York and realized how much we missed being involved in the community and feeling like we were making an impact,” Lucas says.
When we spoke in November, Lucas was just beginning week four with the Downtown Alliance and was still in the orientation phase of his new role. It was obvious, however, how energized and excited he was to embark on the next chapter in THE BLOCKS mission to “uplift and amplify the arts in Downtown.”
“The vision I have for THE BLOCKS is creating an ecosystem of culture and art from around the state that converges in Downtown, embracing everything from the big spectacles, like Utah Symphony and Ballet West, to street muralists and DJs, all contributing to this amazing super organism of art,” he says. “There’s a lot of development happening in Salt Lake City right now, which some view as a threat to Downtown’s arts and culture. But I see that investment as an opportunity to promote the arts. I think the arts are why Downtown is an attractive place for development in the first place. It acknowledges the Downtown’s arts community as an amenity that’s unreplicated anywhere else in Utah.”