 Nothing? Any final thoughts, takeaways? I think somebody's going to come up here and say something. Just an appreciation, because this week has been really eye-opening for me. I came here at the invite of KJ Sanchez because she couldn't be here. And although I had done some work with veteran programs, I didn't know the extent to which people were really working on this. And this week has just been, I can't even begin to express how full my heart is right now at the work that is happening and the love that is coming from everyone and the conversations that are happening and the thought that's going into it. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you. Thank you. I wanted to jump in, and I was feeling remiss earlier. I was speaking out from our group, and I felt like our group had said so many brilliant things that I didn't get to represent. And Linda's coming, especially about reciprocal healing. And I saw that so much in the performance just now, so I did just want to underline it. There's been a lot of conversation about trauma and healing and I think how many of us have healing to do and find that here, and it's not a one-way, it's not a transactional thing, it doesn't happen one-way, but that it's a part of the reciprocal art-making process. And this has been a really healing and life-affirming convening for me, so thank you all. We've got a comment back here. Hi everyone. This is just an appreciation and a thank you. Thank you, Joe Good. Thank you, Axis. Thank you, Judy, for your effort, your ideas and visions to put this into action. When you asked us to, Joe Good, when you asked us, how do you feel? What are you thinking? I'm still, my heart is beating really fast. And I just pretty much wanted to thank each character that you saw dancing on stage was as unique in person as they are out of play and on stage. So to me, I was very, I'm recently, I'm sorry, I'm recently an apprentice for Axis and it's been a couple of months in the dance studio learning about movement and body and it's been a very huge appreciating journey for me recently and I just wanted to share that because their talent has inspired me and has made me believe in dancing and in myself again. Thank you. Do you want to grab this one? Thank you. It's just hard to come down. Yes, yes to everything. And also, I feel like I want to acknowledge the way in which all the work of the people in this room is about gift giving and particularly want to say that I feel like I've been the recipient of many, many powerful gifts this weekend and I know we all have been, but I also want to point out that we're all trying to navigate this world when we talk about Michael's wonderful word of operational is, you know, it's like the continuous navigation that we're all making between the worlds of commerce and, you know, and pragmatic existence and the gifts we want to give and our giving and managing to figure out how to give in spite of the complexities of navigating these two worlds and I just want to acknowledge that the gift giving is really coming through. Thanks. Let me use these things. I just wanted to say thank you to all of you and to Hal Round and to Nepha. When I started this work in 2007, I'll paint a picture for you. The only mailed answer that I could get that knew how to move like a marine and could bring that element to our productions was my roommate in Fallujah. Joe, at the time he was Sergeant Joe D'Amico, he's now in the Air Force and we were two marines that would go to these showcases in New York City of Dance with all these modern dancers and ballet dancers and performance art and then we'd get into our camis and we'd get our prop M16s and we'd bring this picture of the combat zone to these stages and there was very little work going on in the arena and there was smatterings here and there and then as time went on I got connected to people like Victoria. I got word of work that she was doing in California and Liz and other people that were working in this paradigm and so to see this work develop and the importance of it grow and then to come here and to see this community come together I think Hal Round did a great structuring of this in that all the boundaries were broken down and we were able to come together as a community and really create not only something for the future but motivation to keep going so that's my way of just saying thank you. I just wanted to follow up on... I'll coordinate with Jamie on the one pager that's been requested it's always a little complicated, the NEA cannot advocate for the NEA but since you've requested it we can provide you with the requested materials and the caveat that I would say and we'll try to figure out how we can communicate this appropriately but the one pager really focuses on ten geographic areas some of them are embargoed and so I'm going to have to adjust that we're going to be announcing the final four selection sites on March 27th right after that so in some ways you can say there's about to be an announcement where it's growing even further or whatever so I just wanted to let you know what we'll make sure that you all get that there's also a link to a video that's been pretty effective as well that we'll give to you the other thing I think it's great to echo the two veteran artists who express their gratitude this is really gratifying work and I just wanted to encourage you to keep leaning into it and if you do be prepared to have a very complicated response for someone saying to you who has served thank you for your service there's no better reason to have a difficult emotional response than to try to sort out why this is good and why it was worth it so I was just thinking during the talk back because I'm too short for this Axis has been in Tampa Dwayne is partially based in Tampa and has actually done workshops with some of the same veterans that I do workshops with and we just had this convening with Americans for the Arts in Tampa with the R&R Festival and some of the veterans that I work with on a regular basis went to see Speed Kill My Cousin also the dance concert so they saw Healing Wars and Dwayne perform and Roman and Makoto who's not here is amazing and it was so so inspiring to them to feel like they are part of something much larger than what they're experiencing locally and so I just want to say that what occurred to me is if there's a way for us to continue not only convening but maybe to do exchanges or maybe some way that these projects who work with real veterans in local communities get to connect with each other and know that they are part of something larger and something national and that their voices are in the room with us even when they're not here but it would be fabulous to see some of them here, here so I just wanted to offer that, thanks Great, thank you and I'm going to give you the final word over there in that corner Wow, final word It won't be the final word but it'll be a final word Well, maybe gratitude, a final word I want to echo that, I feel I learned so much personally and also so much that I think will be important for the work we're trying to do I wanted to echo what is it that makes a life worth living you know, we heard that kind of in the bigger sense from Liz about risk, purpose and love and I felt that and saw that and I feel so grateful for that and I wanted to share two other things I learned that so much of the power of what I was exposed to was in the particular and I think all the artists know that the power is in the particular but I was also struck that the importance in a way the healing importance is in the universal in particular as I watched that last piece around trauma and sharing stories of trauma that's universal, it's human and that magical dance between the particular and the universal I think is the empowering structure for this whole area of work and I think if we put it out there I mean I had the feeling that I'm sure many have had why couldn't more people see what I just saw I had this fantasy actually that you know could the new secretary for veterans affairs have been sitting with us watching, just watching not to have an opinion although he would because he's a very humanistic person, I know him and I just had that fantasy but I think it's achievable because the power of the work is in the universal and if we put it out there it will connect so closed by gratitude Great, thank you So just one final thing from my end is to say that as you know it takes a ton of people to put a convening together but there's always a kind of the heart of the convening and so Jamie named a lot of the people that have helped but really the heart of this convening and I know because I saw the meeting for like hours and hours and hours and hours over the last months one who we mentioned earlier, Jamie Gloon who's sitting there made this happen and then finally the last person I'm going to introduce to close this out is Jane Preston from NIFA who has done just a tremendous amount of work so thank you Thank you Back at you Tomorrow is Judith Smith's birthday so perhaps we could have another group sing along and sing Happy Birthday to Judith Very day to you Happy Birthday Sarah, no one tipped us off about you so sorry about that Thank you all There have been a lot of thank yous but I get to wrap them up and my favorite thing to do is express gratitude so I'm going to do some more of that and first of all to all of the artists who were with us from the beginning of planning for this convening and really were the core of building here and gave us the art and the performances that wove throughout the time thank you to all of the artists and then to call out again the HowlRound folks Carl, David Jamie my pal forever and the amazing HowlRound staff and the technical folks who just always are so much the collaborators in making these things happen so thank you all this was beautiful I also and then I have to thank my NIFA colleagues particularly Kita Sullivan and Sarah Nash who do this work every day such a pleasure to work with brilliant strategists and designers and program folks so and thank you to the funders Duke, Mellon, NEA and I think this is a beginning of coalescing with other funders to build this work so thank you for getting it started ok we're going to be sending some stuff out we're going to be sending out a contact list which many people have been requesting and we're on it we're going to get that out to you we're going to send out a brief evaluation and I think I will just bracket that by saying we also want to spend some time thinking about the questions that we want to continue to feed out and get back and build all of this conversation over time our amazing documentation consultant Maureen White who has been quietly with us the whole time I can't believe she still has fingers but Maureen has an amazing way of synthesizing themes and big picture she'll help us with some of the questions and some of the themes and we will get a report back out to you and then out to the field as soon as we can can do that and start to build on that we also as you know work a lot with Chris Dwyer and we'll continue those conversations with Chris about some follow ups in case studies and building lexicons and the aesthetic conversation in particular HowlRound as Jamie and Carl and David have pointed out is an ongoing resource it's an ongoing place to post thoughts and writing about this so consider yourselves all connected to HowlRound and of course Danifa this is the core of our work and this has been such a revitalizing project for me so I thank you all thank you and as a last thing if people can kind of move down for those of you who are left here we would love to capture one last photo let's actually is it possible for everyone to come to the stage that would be no no no of course that was the original location actually yes thank you