 Hello, everyone. Welcome. I'm James Milan, and this talk of the town episode is an update with one of our favorite local arts organizations, the Arlington Center for the Arts, with its executive director, Tom Formicola. Tom, great to see you again. Happy New Year, James. And happy New Year to you too. We talked a little bit before we came on camera about the fact that we're both feeling a little bit hopeful, and that's a great way for us to be anticipating coming months, which is what we're here to talk about. I'm enjoying the fact that we have now started a rhythm that we will hopefully stay in, where we're checking in with you guys once a season, once a quarter, however you want to look at it, but regularly throughout the year just to make sure that we and our audience are kept apprised of all the things going on at the ACA. I will never send my regrets to your invitations. That is just one more bonus from having this relationship with you guys, but really we do are interested, of course, in knowing what do we have to look forward to with ACA activities, which I know catered to lots of different segments of the local population. Well, in whatever order you'd like, just let us know. You know, we kicked off our winter term on January 11th, so we're already, we're already rolling along and it feels great. Lots of great classes in our winter term. Much of it is visual. I'm sorry, much of it is virtual, I meant to say. Virtual and virtual. There's a lot of visual too. Many of the classes that we're offering are being offered virtually, but there are some in-person classes that we're running as well. Our ceramic studio is open. We're running, folks are working at a social distance, everyone has their masks on, all of the cleaning rules are in place, so we're being very mindful of all the regulations coming to us from the town and the state, and we're so pleased to be able to offer those classes. We are wildly popular. Capacity is limited, but folks are super interested in getting out and doing some things with their hands in a room with other people, so we're being super responsible about that, and we're so happy to welcome some folks into our space, and that's some adults and kids as well. Yeah, if you don't mind my interjecting, I'll just have to say that I was mentioning to you earlier that my own wife and daughter have taken advantage of that and have done so for the last couple of months and are really, really pleased with the experience that they've had, and as you say, just a handful of people, very few able to be in the space at one time, but they're having a great old time, and we are all, as with ceramics classes everywhere, we are all getting the benefits in terms of some lovely, lovely additions to our household goods. I'm so glad to hear it, and I can tell from all the smiles I see behind the mask. It's the eyes now that indicate the smile, and you know what? You really can't tell when somebody is smiling. That is true that as we've all gotten used to just the bottom of faces being obscured, I think we have learned to read what's above those in such a way. You can see it around here. You can see it sometimes in other places, but anyway. It's amazing. I should also say it's been really interesting to see when we first started offering virtual classes last spring, not everybody was really all that jazzed about them, but what we have found is that as the year has gone on, I think what people realize is that this period that we're in isn't going to end quickly, and so people have really climbed on more, more and more with virtual classes, and our winter enrollments are robust. I mean, they're not what they were when we were in person for sure, but they're healthy. Right. I mean, you probably would have had a certain set of expectations that needed to be tempered in light of COVID, and it sounds like those expectations have been met or exceeded in terms of your enrollment. We came to this with some teachers who are particularly savvy about how to bridge the divide, and we learned a lot from them. We've also taken opportunities to train our instructors that weren't so well-versed in how to do that. I mean, there are some great things that have come out of this difficult period. We've all learned more. We will all return to the new world a little bit smarter, I think, a little savvier. Yeah. And with a little bit more, I would imagine for you, especially being, again, the nexus for a really creative community, a little bit broader idea of what is possible and how you can present your classes and your other activities in a way that enhance them even further using what you've learned through these constraints. You know, I listen to NPR often, and they often do quirky little segments, and I kept listening for them to talk about the buzzwords of 2020, and I never heard that, but I'm sure they did it, and I'm sure Pivot and Nimble were on that list. Well, let us Nimbley Pivot right now to the next item on your agenda, so you mentioned the classes are underway and going well, but I know that there's other stuff too. I'm super excited to say that we are really pleased to be offering vacation arts camps again this year, and our first one is going to be in February. Again, capacity is more limited than it normally would be. The classes will be smaller, which is great for the kids. Everyone is going to have their mask on, people will be working at a social distance, and there's been a healthy enrollment for our February camp, an even healthier enrollment for our April camp, and boy, people are really thinking ahead to summer when I think we all believe that we're going to be in a better place if not a perfect place yet, so those camps are selling well. Again, I'm so grateful for the support of the community who really seems to keep watching what we're doing and supporting us by participating, so it's super exciting. So folks, if they go to our website, www.acarts.org, they'll find information about the camp programs and the classes that we're running, and I'm encouraging everybody to sign up. I remember from our fall update that you had kind of cast your eyes back on how things had gone since the pandemic hit, and you were understandably pleased by how summer camps for the kids had gone, and so it's great, it's just great to know that kids at least have the option of having an in-person ACA experience, the rest of us will have to wait a little while longer. The nice thing is, we were one of the first groups to charge out of the gate when the gate opened to actually try to produce a summer camp, and what's nice about that is that as we approached the February camp, we learned all sorts of things this summer, and so it's nice to return to that program with specific ideas about what's going to work particularly well. How about, you know, do you have, I know that ACA events of different sorts kind of are scheduled throughout the annual calendar, and I know that there are some probably coming up in the next couple of months, and I guess, like with everything, they will be adjusted to accommodate for the current circumstances. So I should mention that we announced at our annual meeting on December 10th that we would be presenting a concert by Boston's Queen of the Blues, Tony Lynn Washington on Valentine's Day as a gift to the community. We're totally committed to making that happen, but it's not going to happen on Valentine's Day. I'm super sorry to say, Tony Lynn Washington and her band were also really disappointed, but there are just restrictions in place that make it super challenging to present a live concert or even produce a recorded concert, and there were some ways we might have done it, but the band was thinking they all wanted to be in a room together. I mean, you know, I mean, we did get to this point where we're talking about, there were two saxophonists, and we thought we could put them in two different rooms, and then we could put Tony Lynn Washington singing in another room, and then we could have the rest of the band in another room, and the thing that I'm amazed about is, well, that's possible, but in talking to everybody, what we found out is that it wasn't ideal, and they wanted to deliver us a great product, and so we decided that we would wait until we could put at least more people in the same room together. Yeah, and obviously, it's a great idea to have it for Valentine's Day as a kind of, you know, Valentine, Valentine to the community. That's lovely and hard to give up, I'm sure. However, you know, what a great idea to, for a celebration as soon as it's possible, yeah, the fact that it is possible. Exactly. You know, so if it's deferred a little bit, but we're going to get a great concert at some point in the future at a time again, where we can all enjoy and celebrate the ability to take that in. I think modesty prevents you, James, from saying that ACMI has a big hand in helping us to produce that concert at Tony Lynn, Washington. Yeah, I mean, I got to say on our own end, you know, I'm sure there's disappointment throughout the rest of our staff as well, because we have been talking about this concert and looking forward to it over the last little while. So anyway, understandable that it does need to be deferred, but that's a disappointment for sure. I also wanted to mention that our created equal exhibit just came down. It was a great big success. It was extended by popular demand, really. And a lot of folks did experience it in person by appointment. And a lot of folks experienced it virtually as well. So that came down actually just this week, and we are prepping for a new exhibit. It's going to be a member's show that will go up in March. And the show will open, I think, on March 11th, and we'll do at the end of the month on March 25th, to be precise, an opening celebration of it. And that will very likely be a virtual celebration. But we've asked artists working in all medias to explore the ways we experience togetherness and to envision a world where we all stand united, which is also a nice theme to begin a new year on. And so folks will talk about. Yeah. Yeah. So folks will talk no doubt about triumphs and struggles around family and love and ecology and friendship. We expect a pretty broad range of themes. That's great. I did want to. I was intending to ask you about created equal because I, you know, that took up a good chunk of our conversation last time. And it was great to hear, like you said, that it was legit extended by popular demand. So good, good for you and good for all the folks were able to take it in. My own was virtual, but, you know, it's nice to know that people were there in the gallery as well. Yeah, we saw, we saw folks every week, which was, which was really nice. And again, these days, people have to go out of their way to see an exhibit. And like, I'm just, you know, I'm so grateful for like folks, you know, going out of their way to make it happen. Yeah. Reinforces the kind of place that Arlington, you know, that the Center for the Arts Accusing has in Arlington, but in, you know, there's been plenty of evidence going back a number of years of that, how, how closely held by the community the ACA is, but never, never, never get that message enough. I'm sure it's true. And we had a, you know, a fall fundraising campaign and we set a goal to raise $60,000 by the end of December. And I'm really pleased to say it was an ambitious goal. And I'm really pleased to say that we met that goal. We exceeded it by a little bit. And, you know, that's completely a testament to like the, the great support that we enjoy from all the town folk. I mean, like people came out of the woodwork to make contributions. And there were a few large contributions in that mix, but there were many, many small contributions. And I have to say, like there's something really touching about getting a small contribution because, you know, people are giving what they can afford, and that's, that's so meaningful. Like it's, it's just so meaningful to know that you have like the support of folks that they want to see you be successful. Absolutely. And it does remind me that, you know, talking to your predecessor, Linda Shoemaker, a couple of few years ago now about the makeup of the donations that came in in the wake of the ACA needing to move from its longtime headquarters in what is now the BIP of the Gibbs School, you know, over to where you are now. That was just such a huge thing. It was it was a cause of much trepidation, I'm sure, within the ACA. And yet the public response was, again, incredibly gratifying. Yeah, I would imagine. And I remember talking to her about the number of small contributions or the proportion of the money that came in through small contributions. I think you're absolutely right. They're so meaningful, not meaning to discount those major donors. No, no, no. I mean, I'm super grateful to the big donors, too. Don't get me wrong. I'm grateful to everybody and the spectrum of giving. And, you know, it's fueling our journey into 2021. And, you know, I mean, I'm I'm talking really positively about all of those classes because I'm thrilled about the way that they're running. But the context for it is they're still running, like, you know, under unusual circumstances and capacity is limited. And we're not we're not able to generate the same kind of earned income during covid that we would be able to otherwise. And so we are really depending on income from fundraising in a way that that we haven't before. Traditionally, like 90 percent of our income has been earned. But that's that's not going to be the case. It wasn't the case last year, and it won't be the case this year, either, you know, because because our capacity is limited. Right. And yeah, one more word about that, because it it it also kind of invokes something that you said earlier about the fact that there are right spots and opportunities in throughout this whole kind of dark period we've been living through one of those that I've noticed. And it applies to the ACA, but also to kind of food insecurity organizations and kind of across the spectrum that have whose whose fundraising goals or expectations have been exceeded because people are reaching deep into their pockets. Now, understanding that, you know, this is a crisis that we're all feeling that were that affects all of us, but that some are so much more vulnerable to. And, you know, I'm sure that more money is needed for all of the social service organizations and arts organizations out there, etc. But it's been notable just how many stories like your own of a goal set and then exceeded there are, you know, and I also think it's notable that like, you know, people have tough choices right now about like how to spend their money and who to give their money to, because everybody is needy and everybody is asking right now. And, you know, I'm amazed at like sort of the grace with which people have been sort of navigating that field. And I think being really thoughtful about like, you know, not what organization am I going to give my money to, but what organizations am I going to give my money to? And what are my priorities? And, you know, what are the what's out there that I really count on and that I really enjoy and that I really want to see on the other side of the river when we get there. And, you know, I think that even extends beyond the, you know, not-for-profit organizations. Like, you know, we're all making sure that we're ordering our pizzas and our Chinese food and even like really nice dinners that we would never have ordered his takeout dinners before. But we want those restaurants to like. Survive and be there for us. Yeah, we want to be there for them. Right. And that's happening everywhere, obviously. But we also know, you know, at ACMI and in our news programs, just profiling the kind of number of local organizations from nonprofits to, you know, small shops and businesses and restaurants, you know, just the extent to which people are trying to support those those entities. This is a great town. Yeah. The people in this town are terrific. Let me ask you about one other thing that I'm just wondering about because I have been attending it each year for the last number of years. And that's the blue jean ball that you have that you guys sponsor is usually coming around this time of year, if I remember. So are you going to be able to do that? How's that going to work? So we are going to do it. We've delayed it a little bit this year. We're doing it on a Saturday, April 10th, market calendar. And we are we we had a lot of discussion about what to do. And we decided that we were going to recreate our blue jean ball as a virtual experience. And we are still very much in the process of creating something. But I can tell you that it will surely include some musical performances and it will again include an auction component. And it will probably include some like fun and interesting remarks from, you know, folks around town that love and support us. Sounds good, sounds good. I mean, obviously, it is it is a super fun event and always packed in my own experience. So I imagine the twenty twenty two event will get back to that. Let us all hope. But, you know, I'm sure like so many other things, you are going to make it as as we wanted to be fun and lively fun in the virtual world as you can. Yes, that sounds good. Anything that we have missed, Tom, that we should let the audience know. You're good, James. I think you I think you hit everything that's on my list. So that sounds it sounds great. And I really I genuinely enjoy while I enjoy all the work that I do of this sort. But I love talking to you because you have come to understand this community quite quickly. You clearly appreciate it. You have great energy. That energy gets transferred in turn to the organization itself. And it just seems like you guys are faring as well as you could be, you know, over the course of this last almost a year now. So well done. It's a pleasure talking to you, James. Well, we look forward to, you know, probably be on the other side of some of the events that we have mentioned today. But we will be talking to you sometime in the spring for sure. We'll be looking forward to new ones. Absolutely, right. And so best of luck with what's with what's coming up. And we'll look forward to the next time we get to chat. Sounds great. All right, I have been speaking to Tom Formicola, who is the executive director of the Arlington Center for the Arts. I love it by you and me, all of us. And thanks again, Tom, for your time. And thank you out there for joining us. We'll see you next time.