 The Alarge Mat project officially started in 2005 when we were incorporated and recognized by the state. But this is really a kind of dream and vision I was holding in my belly in 1999 forward. And Alarge Mat was a place where you not only had a gathering of a cross-section of communities but that you had down time. And it was also a space where if you inserted art it was just absurd enough to get people's attention but also a safe enough and familiar enough space for people to sort of feel ownership around kind of asking what is that about. We really are seeding and working with and developing and connecting with artists who want to do this work doing a lot of collaborative creative making and it's not always actually easy to do that. And many of them have done projects with us that have gone on in a variety of ways and lived past their official LP incubation phase. And there's something really beautiful about being able to support artists as they're thinking about these ideas allowing them to test out those ideas with resources, with support and then see them continue to blossom and change and grow over time. It gave me a great opportunity to actually experiment with some of my ideas in a public forum in a forum where people weren't used to engaging with art and I was able to learn a lot from that. I think it helps people understand that art is something that should be part of daily life and is for them. To see the engagement on the part of the community and how the artists are kind of making a conversation and to just stumble upon that to me is pretty magical. The Launchement Project works in three anchor neighborhoods, Harlem, Bed-Stuy and Hunts Point. And since 2013 we kind of made a shift to focus our attention in these three neighborhoods. So as an organization we were able to get to know the neighbors that are living in each community better. I think there's always kind of work in communities like this to bridge the gap and make people understand that the everyday stuff that they're doing is creative work and is valid. I think the value on really working through partnerships and coming into a community with listening. And it was less about the actual product and it was more about the dialogue that was happening. It's just nice to see the community getting together as well as the people that don't know each other, get to know each other, bond with each other in a positive way. It is that process, it is the opportunity for building connections in your own backyard that is possible when you make art together and to turn strangers into neighbors. I live very close so I'm able to come like every week in the summer when they're here and then I can be able to do the project that they're doing. And they have lots of very fun and creative projects to build. Z-Mobile is the important thing to me. With Z-OM, creative interest is sparked in my daughter. She's really into art now and she can't go a day without creating something. The kids, you know, you're changing their frame of thinking and I love that about it. We continue to move ever closer to the larger vision for this organization. Which is to really be in residence in a particular community, to have our own building, to have our own laundry business. We believe that we all have amazing creative capacity whether we identify as artists or not and we want to be able to ignite that and amplify that and connect it with our artists, our meeting with everyday people and they're, you know, kind of envisioning what are the kinds of neighborhoods they want to live in and making those neighborhoods together.