 Hi Longmont! My name is Karen Stallard. I'm the membership director with the Longmont Area Chamber of Commerce. The Longmont Chamber has been working hard to support our local businesses and connect the community during this challenging time because we don't think that being physically distanced means that we can't still socially connect and support one another. So I'd like to tag in Jessica Wanasek, the Chamber Event Director, to tell you a little bit about what we've been up to. Hey everyone! So the Longmont Chamber of Commerce has been hosting daily Facebook Live events Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. over on our Chamber Facebook page. We are featuring a local business or a non-profit while having fun interactive activities, giveaways, and just connecting with our community. We wanted to share the fun with you after the facts, so we are airing all of our episodes from last week with you here now so you can enjoy. And we hope that you see some familiar faces from around Longmont. And remember, if you ever want to see the live thing, just tune in to the Chamber Facebook page at 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. Or check out a themed list of businesses over on our Chamber website. www.longmontchamber.org forward slash llama is open. And find a business that you would like to support. Enjoy the show! Hi everybody. Come on in. Welcome, welcome you guys for another episode of our Tuesday Tunes and Arts. We're going to let the audience kind of come in and get comfortable and let us know when you guys are here. Say something to us in the comments. We have kind of a fun show, episode, whatever you want to call it today. And a really fun special guest to join us today. So we're really happy that you guys are here. As you come on, say hi to me in the comments. I hate to feel like I'm in here talking by myself. The looks that my dog gives me is I wish I could just video him because he thinks I'm nuts. So come in. Also share and like these videos. It helps us spread the word throughout Longmont and the Facebook world about what it is that we're doing for these businesses. So if you could do that, that would be great. Share and say hi, hi Karen, hi Mike. Glad to have you guys on here. So we are well, well we're on our way into the third week of our Longmont is open for business. These are our daily Facebook lives that we're doing at 4 p.m. every day. And we're going to continue to do them until we don't need to do them anymore. But for right now, we're just going to keep the fun rolling. And as long as you guys are having fun watching it, we're having fun putting them together for you guys. If you want to see a list of the businesses that we are highlighting each day, we have a category, like a themed list over on the our Chamber website. Sorry, just completely did a brain part. And you can reach that list at www.longmontchamber.org forward slash Longmont is open. So go check out all of the businesses that are open in in some way or another. And that we're helping them through this. So my name is Jessica Wanasek. I am the event director. Apparently I had a problem with that yesterday over at the Longmont Chamber of Commerce. And like I said today is Tuesday tunes and arts where we highlight all these fun businesses who are doing some sort of, you know, it's the arts or the music scene. Longmont has a really strong arts scene. So we wanted to kind of highlight the businesses in in Longmont that are kind of fall into that category. So today I would like to bring on our special guest. You might know him. His name is Justin Veach. And he is the manager of the Stuart Auditorium over at the Longmont Museum. Hi, Justin. Good afternoon. Thanks for having me in the museum on a lovely Tuesday. It is. Isn't it? It is. I wish the sun was out, but I kind of like a good rainy kind of cloudy day. I get more done. It's weird. I'm kind of the opposite of what everybody likes. But I'm perched right here. I'm looking out the window. I've got my computer set up in front of me and then the window behind it. And it looks good out there to me. Nice. I feel like we should Justin, give us the forecast of what it looks like out your window today. Well, the kids have built a little ramp. And they're doing jumps on their BMX bikes. Oh, God. And it's a cloudy and kind of blue. Nice. Nice. Very similar over here in Firestone. Justin, thank you for that one forecast. Anytime. Anytime. So Justin, you are the manager of the Stuart Auditorium over at the Longmont Museum. I do have the pleasure in the honor of managing that venue for the museum in the city of Longmont. It's a beautiful facility. I actually snuck over there. We were supposed to have one of our chamber events towards the end of March over there, but things, the world happened. And so I was able to kind of get over there and check out the auditorium. And it's a beautiful site. Thank you. It's about to celebrate its fifth year in existence, the auditorium that is. Nice. It was unveiled five years ago this summer. Very cool. Well, that kind of leads me into my next question. We like to let the audience know a little bit about the museum and stuff. Can you tell the audience how long the museum has actually been open? Well, the museum has been around since the 30s. I think we've celebrated our 84th year, I think, in 2020. Started off as a kind of, you know, small kind of mom and pop community run history museum, local history museum. Oh, cool. It was a storefront, basically just filled with a whole bunch of old stuff. Was it in the same location that it is in now, or was it on a different site? No, it's been in various locations over the years. The current building was built, I believe, in 2003, I believe. It was at one point, the museum was housed, or the museum's collection, at least, was housed in what's the Cheesecake Factory now. So we have a special connection to that place. So it was, I think, across from the Civic Center at one point. It's bounced around a good bit. I think it was actually originally in the carriage house of the Callahan. Oh, very cool. Okay. Cool. So it's kind of had a bunch of different locations, which is pretty cool. I'm going to bring up that. Right. Let's see. I know. Hang on, Justin. Right there. Cool. And the museum, or the auditorium you said, is about five years old, right? That's right. 250 seats. I like to describe it as a multi-disciplinary performing arts venue. So kind of designed, it's actually probably most, I mean, it's really designed as a kind of acoustic concert venue or a recital hall. We've worked to really expand our offerings to kind of reflect the museum's mission, which is pretty broad. It is. It's very cool. I love it over there. I think it's pretty cool. So the other questions that I like to ask is, see, where are you located? We're at 400 Quail Road, just east of 287, just east of Main Street. If you know where the rec center is, we're in that same kind of complex. We share a parking lot with them. Very cool. We just like to, you know, most people do know where it is, but you know, I like to share that just in case. Right. So, okay, like I said, the world happened, and can you share what the museum is actually doing during this time, these crazy days that we're having? Well, definitely a little crazy. I mean, we went from being, you know, we, the spring is our busiest time of year. February, March, April is just completely slammed. So we went from going, you know, roughly a million miles an hour to a dead stop. So that was interesting. We had lots of great programming planned. A lot of it had to be canceled, of course. But we've, you know, we've rebounded. And, you know, what something we launched last fall was our Thursday nights at the museum series, which is so every Thursday night, we would be open late and we would offer a film or a talk or a concert. And then early in the evening, we would offer art and sip classes through our education department. So Thursdays were a big night for us. So we've carried on that, carried on with that programming on Thursday nights. Every other week, we switch off between our education department's popular art and sip program. That's where, you know, normally you would come to the museum and paint or learn how to do some kind of art project and drink. I love it. Now you can make art and drink in the privacy of your own home. Every other Thursday. And then on those other Thursdays, I present a talk. I'll do like a little interview or a conversation with someone. For instance, I've done two conversations with our curator of history, Eric Mason, who is actually just finished a book on the history of Longmont. He's writing the book for the 150th anniversary of the city, which is, that book should be available right around Christmas time. So I was just going to ask where would people, because I know people are going to ask, do they buy that through the museum or like Amazon or something? They'll be able to buy it directly through the museum. Very cool. Probably other places as well. Nice. So that's exciting. So we, our first program I did with him was kind of, you know, on an overview of the book and his background as our curator of history. Eric's been with us for 24 years. So that's rather astounding. Yeah. He's not, he's not an old man either. So he started when he was 12. I think so. 13. And then we did a, I did another program with him, you know, part of that book covered the 1918 pandemic flu here in Longmont. So we did a really interesting conversation last Thursday, last week on his research into that period, how Longmont responded to that flu pandemic, and kind of the parallels and lessons learned and that sort of thing. Yeah. Fizingly similar, really, you know? It's crazy. And then we had a program, we also did a program. Oh, I did a special tour, home tour, home and studio tour of Terry, with Terry Maker, who is, who's the artist we're currently featuring in our temporary gallery. Very cool. And I actually, I'm going to bring up, I so wanted to include the 360, let's see if I can show this here, kind of small, but I wanted to upload the 360 virtual tour, which is a really, really cool thing. And if for the audience that's watching, if you go over to the museum website, you can just click on the little link and it's cool. It walks you all the way through from the beginning to end of the Terry Maker exhibit, right? Because the world is round exhibit. That's right. And you can kind of, I mean, you can just kind of let the video play or you can really interact with it if you want and kind of explore the exhibition, which is pretty cool. It does not beat being there in, in the flesh in real life, but it's, it's pretty great. And I'm just thrilled by that exhibition. I think Terry, Terry's work is really fantastic. And if you really love the work, if you spend some time in that 360 tour and you want to learn a little bit more, we do have a, an archive of the video I did with her, the tour of her home and her art studio a couple weeks ago. Oh, very cool. Very cool. So this big, that big round ball, can you tell everybody what that's made out of? I thought that was pretty cool. That is made completely of cowboy hats or cowgirl hats. They're inverted. So it's our curator of exhibitions, Jared constructed this framework and Terry just put cowboy, inverted cowboy hats all over it. So it's really, it almost looks like one of those batting cage balls or something. Yeah, right? Like a wiffle ball or something. It's really cool. Kind of, it's immense too. And the inside of it is really, Oh, I bet that would kind of cool to see on the inside, right? We have put it in our comments of for the audience who's watching, if you guys want to check out, we put the link to the 360 virtual tour in the comments to go check that out because that's, it's really pretty cool. And that's extended. That was supposed to close, that exhibition was supposed to close, I think right around now or in the next week or two. And it's been extended into September. So when we, which we hope will be in the not too distant future, you'll be able to see that in person this summer. Very cool. I know I want to get over there. When I was there, I kind of played around in the atrium and checked out the auditorium, but I do want to get over into the museum, see some of the exhibits, because I have been kind of poking around on your website. It's pretty cool. I like the stuff over there. We have quite a few 360 virtual exhibition tours up on our website. You can see Terry's show, but you can also see our permanent exhibition, which is called Front Range Rising, which is a history of Longmont and the Front Range. We all, we have our World War One exhibition up on there. It's exhibition tree houses, Ansel Adams, our last exhibition, Ruckus Rodeo, a bunch of stuff, a bunch of content, if you want to check out our previous exhibitions. We also have our historic photo collection, and we continue to offer our popular Discovery Days programming for kids, which is not a live thing, but kids can, kids and their parents can tune into our Discovery Days programming. Very cool. That is, it's really cool. And I, the historic pictures that you were just talking about, that's one of my loves. I like to, to look and see, you know, where we came from and what we look like now is, is pretty cool. Yeah. So I'm just reading some of the comments here. Let's see, Kathy Stevens, Longmont Museum, especially with my grandkids, lots of interactive stuff. So she loves that. Lenore Knox says the 360 tours are the best. So that's, that's pretty cool. Glad you liked it, Lenore. Heck yeah. So as you guys are coming in, Justin is just sharing a little bit about the Longmont Museum. So make sure that you're saying hi in the, in the comments, or if you have questions for Justin and the museum, throw those in the comments as well. And we'll try and get through some of those. You guys, one of you lucky viewers who, who comments something today is going to win not one, but two really cool prizes today. So you're going to have to hang in there towards the end of this stream. There's going to be a little bit of a quiz. And so some, one of you guys is going to be really lucky. Let's see. Lenore also says Discovery Days saved me when the kids were little. For sure. Kim, Kim Berger says hi. Hi, Kim. Good to see you guys. Okay. So as you guys are coming in and you're commenting, Justin, every day on these daily Facebook live videos, we've been giving away a prize. And earlier I introduced you and I actually said it two times. So hopefully that the audience was listening. But okay. So I'm going to throw it out to the audience. And then Justin, you're going to help me watch the comments to see who comes in first with the correct answer. Okay. And that person who comes in with the correct answer is going to be our big winner for today's prize. Okay. All right. All right. So audience, those of you guys who are paying attention and have commented, here is your question. What is the name of the auditorium over at the Longmont Museum? Ready, set, go. First one who puts it in the comments will win today's prize. I feel like we need to have like, I need to get like a drum roll. You know, they have those sound effects machines. Yeah, you need a sound effects machine. Right. Like little bells and whistles and things. So Justin, while they're thinking, is there anything else that you feel like the audience needs to know that we haven't covered about the museum? Oh, we barely even scratched the surface. Right? Okay. So this this Thursday, we'll be doing one of our art and sips. A week from Thursday, we will be doing a we will be offering a special concert with with a really great musician from Santa Barbara named Pete Muller. Some of you may have experienced his concert with us last fall. He actually picked off our fall programming last year. But he's a really interesting guy. He was a big hedge, really successful hedge fund guy, who was a deep love for music. And he's a he's a surfer. He's a crossword puzzle master. He writes crossword puzzles sometimes. He's a surfer. And he's really a musician. And he's also a philanthropist, and he supports emerging young and emerging musicians and venues that support them. So he's doing a special live streaming concert from his compound in Santa Barbara, just for the Longmont Museum. That's from this Thursday, May 21. He'll be doing a live concert at 4pm. And then we'll be broadcasting at 7 30 on our Facebook page. And he we're doing a little fundraiser with that. And he's going to match every dollar we bring in to the museum. So it's going to be cool live from Santa Barbara. And then our summer concert series is also going to be going online. We're going to be streaming that we're moving forward with that. We've got Hazel Miller. It's going to kick things off for us. And we've got the Filonia Smith trio on June 25. Bonnie and the Clines will be coming back on July 2. They're all the same favorites, the 101st Army Dixieland band on July 9. The Delta Sonics, Megan Burt, Camando, all kinds of folks are going to be joining us. So they can find, can they, can the audience find these concert dates on your website? That's going to be, they're going to be posted there shortly. I am cracking up at some of the comments. So Sherry Ingalls LeGrand is trying so hard. She's close. She's got another name of an auditorium in Longbott, but not quite the one that we're looking for. So we're looking for the name of the auditorium over at the Longmont Museum. So I don't know. I said it, well, maybe two or three times, even when I introduced you, Justin. You did. All right. You did. It's, if it helps, it's, how many? Let's see. Well, it's, it's one. The answer is the Stuart Auditorium. Congrats, Sherry. You worked really hard for that one, and you got it. So Justin, do you want to let Sherry know what she won today? Well, Sherry, let me tell you, you've made a pair of passes to the Longbott Museum. Of course, you won't be able to use those until we reopen. But when we do, you and a guest will be able to join our exhibitions. That's awesome that, that you're donating not one, but a pair of museum passes. So that is pretty cool. Congrats, Sherry. You worked hard for that one. Will you email me? And you can reach me at Jwanasek. It's W-A-N-E-C-E-K at LongmontChamber.org. And I will get you in touch with Justin and we'll get those passes over to you. So that's, that's pretty cool. Way to go, audience. And hi, Teresa. Nice to see you guys. Hi, Kim. Hi, Sherry. Okay. So Justin, it has been a lot of fun having you on with me today. I, I love the museum and I can't wait until the doors open and we're able to get over there. You know, to see you guys in person. Like I said, I'm missing my people. This is, this is my way of seeing faces and really happy that you were able to come on with me today. Oh, absolute pleasure. Anytime. Right? Anytime. You could be my, my partner in crime. I'll be your Ed Mcmahon. Oh, right? I know. I feel like I need to have some sort of, yeah, game show or something that's happening over here. I don't know. All right. Well, at this, we're going to let you go, Justin. You enjoy the rest of your day and, you know, we'll, we'll send some, some people your way. Hopefully they can go check out the 360 tours. Sorry. I keep like, I feel like it's on Monday today. My brain is just not catching up to keep up the great work. Longmont Chamber Museum loves you guys. Thank you so much. And we love you guys too. And have a good rest of your day. Thanks so much. Take care. Thank you. I love Justin and the whole crew over at the Longmont Museum. They're a lot of fun. And I'm relatively new to this event director position. And so just in this short time that I started in February, I feel like I've made some really lifelong connections and friends. So thank you to Justin and the crew over at the Longmont Museum, especially for donating the pair of passes too, which is really cool for some for Sherry, you lucky winner. So we have some fun, fun stuff lined up for the rest of the week. And you guys want to check in tomorrow for Wednesday We Shop. Come back here at 4pm. You're going to see me come out of my comfort zone just a little bit. It should be quite comical. But I have another exciting guest who's ready to come on for Wednesday We Shop. And then Thursday and Friday, we have some other great businesses lined up. So again, help us spread the word about these live videos. It helps us support the businesses who are working so hard for everybody out there in the Longmont community. So come back here 4 o'clock tomorrow. In the meantime, be well and know that you guys are doing an amazing job out there. And we'll see you soon. Bye