 We are celebrating the grand reopening of Spinoff Studio, which is a spinoff of Spindle Works Arts Center in Brunswick, and Spinoff was founded in 2011 in Hollowell just down the road. And we finally grew to capacity to where we needed to move to a larger spot. So we found that, a new home in Gardner. Spinoff Studio is a program for adults with intellectual disabilities. We provide studio space, materials, gallery and store space, and promote and sell their artwork here as well as other venues. The artists come here from ten to three, and we provide the artistic support as well as workshops, teaching new techniques and so on to help them express themselves. Inclusion is core to what we do, both at Spinoff and Spinoff and of course at Independence Association. So we absolutely will be exploring Gardner. We already were in Hollowell doing anything we could to get out and about in the community. We have artists from the community come in and do workshops. We have a program called Lunch with an Artist, where an artist from the community will come in. And for example, we had one woman who works in transforming books, taking old books, cutting them up, turning them into other things. We're excited to collaborate with folks at Art Dogs and the Circle and the Square Press, and hopefully making friends with some of the galleries that are nearby, so that we very much feel part of this artistic community. We team up and collaborate with other local businesses. We teamed up with the Harlow Gallery in Hollowell quite a bit. We're working on a collaboration fashion show with some of the local shops downtown here in Gardner, funky fashions and girl trends. One of our artists has developed a really great relationship with one of the artists in the community. They were part of the community supported arts together and so they work together going to farms and painting together and then they showed together in the show and it's turned into a friendship that is ongoing. One of the staff wants to start a fiber circle here. That's something we also do at Spindleworks, where on Thursdays from 10.30 to 12. There's anywhere from five to 10 people, half of whom are community members who come in to work on their stitching or knitting or quilting or whatever it is. So, yes, we very much want this to be a community space that breathes back and forth between the members that are here, but the community members as well. All the staff at Spinoff Studio come from an arts background. Everyone has an art degree. Everyone has been a working artist of some caliber in their lifetime and still are. This is not restricted to the visual arts. We really follow the lead of the individuals who come to the program. We work in everything from drawing, painting, weaving, silk screening, block printing, music, a little bit of graphic design, stop animation. We have an individual who before he came to work with us was already writing his own songs and recording his own songs on his iPhone. We had him with the help of staff compile sort of the best of and make a CD. And those are for sale tonight. So we're doing our best to help him take it to that next level. I used Nautil to map on an iPod on the iTunes App Store. You can get almost anything in the App Store. We have people writing stories. We have a young woman who is absolutely into I don't know what chapter she's on of a very long story, maybe chapter 2021 of a fantastical story that she's working on. So we'll follow them in whatever direction they want to go. Pretty much anything one of the artists is interested in, we try and figure out a way to make that a possibility for them. Some of our people come in, really don't have much artistic experience. And so it's amazing to watch the evolution of, you know, the quality of line and learning how to layer things and then learning how to express an idea that may not come out in words but in visual imagery. The artists, some of them come with backgrounds already. Some of them have shown a little bit of work here and there or just done a lot of drawing and painting in their lives. Some of the artists come to us having never done any artwork before and quite often those are some of the artists that really start to flourish. Through the process they're going to be learning problem solving, they're going to be learning critical thinking skills, decision making skills, how to present themselves as a professional artist in the community. So it's a very simple idea but with so much more to it. I've seen a lot of blossoming which is really exciting because I think having something you can take ownership of and something you can be proud of really gives you confidence which then helps you overcome things that you may not be as confident about. Art is a tool through which any of us can grow and expand, learn and become the best person we are. We all learn from each other a lot and I think that artists as a general population can be always are a little different and so I feel like at Spinoff we're all equally individual but we relate as artists. If you would like more information about Spindleworks or Spinoff Studio, both have websites Spindleworks.org, Spinoff Studio.org, both have Facebook pages which are accessible from the websites. We're just getting started on a really great exciting adventure and I'm excited to see where the artists are willing to go with it.