 Hello, everyone, and welcome to this edition of Talk of the Town. Today I am with a couple of folks who we have spoken to before and always enjoy the experience. Cecily Miller and Stuart Iketta are here from Arts Arlington. Cecily and Stuart, thanks for being here. Thanks for having us. I want to start off by just, you know, acknowledging, of course, we continue in COVID-19 era and undoubtedly it's had some effect on the work that you guys do, but let's start with a general introduction and then we can talk about how you are continuing to do what you do under the current constraints. So, Stuart, why don't you tell us a little bit, just introduce the audience, though many may be familiar with Arts Arlington already. Give us an introduction. Sure, thanks. Arts Arlington is really the front-facing brand for the Arlington Commission for Arts and Culture. We're an umbrella organization that was activated in 2014 to coordinate arts and cultural activities all throughout the town. We work with the town department of planning and community development and bring together what used to be several separate cultural entities. The Arlington Cultural Council, Arlington Public Art, Art Links Artist Network, the Arlington Cultural District Planning Committee, Live Arts and the Poet Laureate Office, among others. So, we promote and develop arts and culture programs, events and resources with the mission to create a sustainable and vibrant art scene in town that will engage and attract not just artists but all the residents, businesses, attract more visitors to the town. Our commissioners and our committees engage in activities such as grant making and supporting artists through direct grants, the fundraising, we create public art installations in town, we run performances, live arts, busking performances around town, many of the festivals, artists networking and development services, destination marketing, and we oversee, we work with other town entities to help them incorporate arts and culture into their own planning, from the parks to the schools to tourism and economic development. So, I guess I have a couple of things to do there, huh? I guess the audience can tell that we're going to have plenty to talk about in this app. We are and the thing is much of our work is unseen because some of it's front facing and there are things that people would recognize, like the wonderful pathways project that Cecilia's been so central to, the transformer boxes, youth banners, the live arts performances like garage band and celebrations like Arlington Alive Block Party and those sorts of things, but equally important is that we're providing an infrastructure that fosters a supportive environment for the arts in all aspects of town life. Excuse me for interrupting, but why don't you just remind our audience of what your own role and Cecilia you can jump in also and just explain what your role is and then we'll keep going with the projects that you've got that you've begun to describe. Oh, sure. Currently I'm a co-chair with Kristen Canterbury-Bagnall of the commission, it's a 13 member commission that's appointed by the select board and the town manager and Cecilia. I'm the curator of public art and I work to develop public art projects in Arlington Temporary, they're all temporary projects that have a pretty strong community engagement aspect, often people in the community actually work with an artist to create the public art. All right, thanks very much, sorry for the interruption Stuart. No, no, sure. So some of the other front-facing ways that we interact with the public through presenting Arts Arlington website and social media channels, these are free resources, we have a town-wide cultural events calendar, everything that's happening in arts and culture in town is on there, it's all free resource, artists can list their services there, venues can list their rental opportunities, arts educators can list their classes there. It also has an interactive map that helps people wave find through the Arlington cultural district which we're helping to develop. It's got networking resources, calls for art and different ways that artists and find support. Since COVID-19 we've been working with the town to present support information for artists and for business arts related businesses that have been impacted. Yeah, I was wondering about that. I imagine that obviously COVID has had a profound impact on everybody's operations and what I'm understanding from what you're saying is that in your case you've really, you have lost the ability to do in-person events like everybody has but you've kind of shifted your focus as a result in terms of the way that you collaborate and support what's going on in town. It's really caused us to focus on our long-term planning, how we can build an infrastructure for community building through the arts. A good example of a COVID pivot is one example of the COVID masks project that was installed at the Arlington service station on Mass Avenue. We've seen it. We worked on connecting local businesses like Arlington service station heritage flag company with local artists Johnny Lapham, Larry Bobden and Kimberly Harding and a network of volunteers to create a series of giant, giant-sized artfully designed mask banners that thank frontline workers but they also reinforce the town's public health messaging about wearing masks. We brought together public and private business and artists and in collaboration and here proud and honored that the statewide mass creative recently spotlighted town of Arlington as a model for this kind of community network through art and so it's those relationships building that in the long term helped us pivot pretty quickly and create something like that that just improves the quality of life in the neighborhood. We've similarly pivoted in finding ways to present many like so many organizations, many of our planned life programs through virtual means and Cecily has been an absolutely amazing innovator in bringing to life some of our planned events we had to cancel our traditional fox festival parade our first ever town-wide artists and residents program and I'm really looking forward to her sharing some of these things we've been doing out of there. I'll just say one more thing I think we're also working on our own operations plan as a commission and really building out a strong organization. So we've taken the time of COVID to review our strategic plans and goals which include not expanding our performance as providing more services to other town entities and also really focused on building cultural equity as one of our core goals for the next couple of years. We're planning a number of activities to reinforce the town's responses to social inequities and racial justice. I'd like Cecily to tell us about the Cedric Douglas talk that we've got coming up. Cecily? Yeah so actually Cedric Douglas is a wonderful artist who came to Arlington three years ago when I did my first project in the town to create storefront stories which was collecting personal stories from the owners of small businesses in Capital Square and then creating these huge wheat paced murals on the outside of buildings there. So we have a relationship with him and he does wheat paced he does large-scale murals but he has a whole other body of work that's called tools for protest where he has been creating artwork about black people, black men and women killed by police. He's figured out these very innovative ways to memorialize people in public spaces and created some caution tape actually emblazoned with the last words of some of the victims of police violence that are being used. They were made three years ago but they're being used in actions today in some of the protests we see in Boston. So he's going to come on August 11th and just share the story of this work that he's been doing as an artist and as an activist. I think it'll be really interesting for people in the town to hear about and we're working with the high school art department to co-present that and also recruiting some other partners. In fact it'd be great to have ACMI as a partner so yeah we would be happy of course to collaborate with something that's first of all sounds as powerful as it does because I imagine it will have you know just Cedric sharing that is going to be powerful in and of itself but also what a great illustration of the way you guys you know came together as an organization and a kind of umbrella organization all about making connections, maintaining and strengthening connections in different ways. Just this is a great example both for the people the folks that you'll be collaborating with to do it but also because it brings value it kind of focuses on that very again powerful intersection between art and activism art and social justice etc so looking forward to that for sure and yeah I can I'm happy on record to commit ACMI to to helping out in whatever way we can. Cecily when we last spoke to you the world was different and the art project the public art project major public art project for this year in Arlington was just getting going at that time as Stuart has already referred to. Why don't we start there with you just giving us an update on what is going on reminding folks first of all what the project is and who Michelle Lugia is and and just you know bring us up to date with what's going on. Great yes I'd be happy to as you say we Michelle and I were both on your show I think maybe in December. Yeah it was back yeah it was again back when the world was different yeah for sure and that was a great way to launch the project and we did have a formal launch at the Robbins Library also in December and it's a wonderful project where Michelle has been serving as the town's artist in residence teaching people how to crochet with a kind of yarn made from disposable plastic bags single-use plastic bags that's called Plarn and the message of the project is that we really have to reduce single-use plastic to protect the environment at the same time we're making something really beautiful for installation along the Minuteman bikeway. We've been working with a whole group of great partners so we've had really wonderful participation at workshops at the Fox Library, at the Council on Aging, at the Thompson School and just before we had to close down we've gone to visit the Green Team at the Addison School and the Art Club the afterschool art club there and the kids were so psyched about doing artwork that was also a part of environmental activism and then we had to shut everything down so we had basically been weaving this community through crocheting um and had to switch to virtual so we made a series of how-to videos and posted them on our website so that anyone could participate at home we stopped sharing plastic bags we had probably collected over a thousand plastic bags and you know understandably people had a lot of priorities with COVID to do with homeschooling their kids suddenly or caring for maybe an older person in their family a lot of our craftivists ended up being mask makers for the major effort that was going on in Arlington to donate masks to to Chelsea and other places so we lost a little bit of momentum in that sense but we had a core crew that were continuing to make things and we've heard from people as far away as we had an artist in New Orleans who kind of came across our project on the web and she has sent us a whole bunch of hot pink kind of funnel shapes that are going to be incorporated into our sculpture so I can just interject for a second um that is a that is a really interesting thing that we should all um you know be reminded of which is there's a lot of reasons to lament all the things that have been lost um again kudos as Stuart was saying to you Cecily and others for you know being flexible enough to figure out how to keep moving these projects forward under the constraints but as you said moving things online all of a sudden you know expands your audience or those who can be exposed to or participate uh in this community project so that it becomes a very large community in a sense and that's a second going yet it's sort of we have been constructing our projects and thinking of our projects as hyper local but and and so it took a little while to realize oh my god these now can be international you know and um not only that but it also helps with say people who have disabilities or a busy schedule or for whatever reason can't leave their house for gathering even if it's just you know half a mile away so um it's it makes the programming accessible even on a local level so as I say we I'm going to just share a few pictures because the stage we're at now is Michelle is assembling the components that people have been making and building building building them into sculpture and so here are a couple of pictures from a pickup that I did recently um where I just went around town and picked up some elements from some of the folks who are still hard at work making things and um this is a scene we did a photo shoot with Michelle and a wonderful Arlington photographer Asha Kepka so that we would have some imagery for when we're really getting going so here you can see that these individual what we've been calling the blue bowl or the orange tube have been assembled into these really cool structures and here is Michelle on the left and Laurie Barenberg on the right and we're masked up for a walk along the bikeway to start thinking about where these items these pieces of sculpture could go and our plan is to use sort of the negative spaces and trees and and hang the works um under the canopy me trying to climb up 12 and how delightful though I mean really that's just you know such I mean for people who are aware and looking for it great but also obviously everybody who uses the bike path is going to come on come upon these things and it really is going to just further enhance the experience of being in one of the lovelier areas in Arlington anyway yeah so we'll actually be trying to work with professional arborists to get the get some of them up um in spaces that there's no way we could tackle and others will be trying to put up ourselves so that's where we are with that project and it really we we've we've probably had contributions from 100 or so people in the end we counted everybody who's done done things for the project so it's been great really wonderful that is that is great and and really nice again having had a chance to be there uh to talk to you guys at the launch of the whole project and then kind of you know shaking my head like a lot of other people when COVID descended and I'm thinking how can that move forward anyway things are actually happening and you know maybe on a different timeline but congratulations because it really is going to be the public art uh celebration that we uh that we had hoped for um Stuart had also mentioned though that there are other things going on that you've had to pivot around and one one that we've talked to you about before and that people are familiar with it happens every year is that the Fox Festival my understanding is that you've had to change that obviously um what's what's it look like right now right so the Fox Festival used to be live workshops in the Fox Library and the Thompson School and kids and families would build uh masks and giant puppets and it was very hands-on like you know here are some great materials go to town and whenever a kid got stuck they'd come over and we'd fix what they're doing and help help them out and uh people made amazing things and then we would have a big parade with the brass band as part of Feast of the East so I met with our artist team which is Carrie Percival and Greg Cook and Sarah Petey and we brainstormed and we came up with the idea of um inviting people to make home puppet shows so we're and we wanted to kind of expand the amount of environmental education and the advocacy for local wildlife so I made two videos interviewing Diane Welch our fantastic Arlington animal yes always a popular guest yeah and so on Arts Arlington you'll find two videos and one is about foxes but the other one is about owls because Diane showed up on zoom um with her great horned owl perched on her wrist her owl named Nula who she adopted as a baby owlette so we thought all right we're going to have the epic adventures of fox and owl and so Carrie drew these really charming little puppets paper puppets that anyone can print out on our website which is artsarlington.org and you'll get a piece of paper like this and you can pretty quickly make them your own by coloring them collaging them making them look the way you want them to look cut them out and stick them on a piece of a twig or a chopstick or a pencil here's our little tiny fox um and make up a story that you'd like to share with Arlington and so there are levels that you can do this in because it's pretty complicated to make even a short movie as I'm sure you James as we might know yes very well so um you can do something as simple as a puppet show at home for your family that we never even see you know um you can cut out fox and owl and put them into a drawing that you make of a forest or of your favorite place in Arlington and put that up in your window to make a message for your neighbors from Fox and Owl um but take a photo of that artwork and send it to us you can also set up Fox and Owl in an interesting environment like Fox might like to meet leave that behind me um and take a photo of that might be in your backyard maybe you've got some beautiful flowers blooming or a cat that you might want to introduce them to and send us some photos that make sort of like a little slideshow or go full steam ahead and make a video which should just be a minute long and or less even and you can tell a story or you can just have a moment um an artist uh made a fantastic video where it's just a picture of Fox dancing with a peony while Owl rings a bell so um we're actually going to see an example though made by ACMI community producers of a really cool story where Owl gets stuck in a jelly sea so let's take a moment and just look at that real quickly Owl spreads his wings and hits a branch he topples over into the sea of blackberry jelly below the owl tries in vain to grab his wings help i'm stuck a fox scampers over to the edge of the sea of jelly and peers in ooh berries i love berries they make a delicious dessert after my tasty meal of crickets and mice mmm tasty the fox backs up and takes a running leap into the sea of jelly and briefly goes under then emerging he paddles over to the owl gulping down some of the berries on the way hey since you're here can you please help me be happy to he wraps his front paws around the owl and pulls him free with a loud sucking sound and they move toward shore behind them a dolphin leaps up from the sea and waves her fin hey how's it going why don't you stay a while and visit i have treats try this delicious shrimp no thanks i'm not a sea creature okay weirdo the dolphin waves again leaps up and plunges back into the sea the owl and the fox collapse on the shore thanks buddy hi oh you want glad to help they both shake themselves off box i think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship has all the uh hallmarks of the one of our studio nights acmi studio nights originals so uh that that was wonderful to see thanks for yeah for uh giving us an opportunity there sassan well i i love that video um because of its playfulness and humor and you can see that the people who made first of all it took a little crew so if you're taking this on at home i'm now going to say a few words the viewers at home you know and list your whole family to to to make uh the video you can give people different roles there's a lot of information on artsarlington.org find the section about fox and owl and there's lots of tips and other inspiring examples to give you ideas but you know maybe one person operates a camera and others operate the puppets and you can always use iMovie or a program like that to add sound later or edit your video um if it doesn't go right the first time or just make it over if it doesn't go right the first time if you're shooting it with your phone and you'll learn from doing it don't be afraid to do it just jump in and also you may see the acmi folks invented that dolphin character they just added a character of their own and they drew it um and you'll also find on our website a little video by kerry purseville who drew our puppets telling you giving you ideas about how you can draw your own animal neighbors different animals well that's great describing of all the different things that people can do to participate in the fox and owl festival so to speak this year traditionally though it always ended in a parade as you said so are you going to be pulling all these pieces together in some way that's a virtual representation of that parade tell us about that yeah exactly we're calling this the fox and owl tiny film and photo festival so we're going to have a festival screening most likely in september so you have plenty of time to produce your um your work your artwork your films or artwork and we will put it all together into a giant celebration of creativity and urban wildlife and our our neighborhood and fox library and uh you bring the popcorn we will look for that for sure that reminds me uh cecily of uh the hearty school's participation last year and because the dolphin is their mascot so it's nice to have that callback i just want to say so i really want to give a shout out to both stewart and terry holt who got our website which is complicated and extensive and has been a lot of work to build um they've they've provided this incredible support we have a whole area with these tutorials of michelle lu g and this extensive area about the fox festival with interviews about animals and inspirational videos and tips so really thanks so much to the two of them for making that happen great and the last word goes to you stewart uh i'd just like to say i think uh this is another great example of how we're we find this silver lining in these challenging times uh this wonderful project has now gone townwide we've extended the reach of the fox festival so that everyone can participate and we're inviting anyone out there who's passionate about the arts to participate with us further through our new uh facebook uh group at arts arlington and also we have two commissioner openings and several committee openings for anyone who would like to become part of creating some of these wonderful programs that improve our town why not why wouldn't people want to get involved with such a kind of robust and fulfilling uh kind of work that you guys are engaged in so on behalf of arlington and as a long time resident here i just want to thank you guys because you've changed both the face of arlington literally how it is to go up and down mass have but also a lot of work that is invisible as you guys have alluded to that really does improve the quality of life for all of us here so i've been speaking with sesley miller and stewart you cana from arts arlington really appreciate you guys being here good luck with the project you've described and with your work going forward this is talk of the town i'm james miller thanks for joining us