 Hi, welcome everyone. This is a webinar recording of the meeting of the Amherst cultural council And my name is Angela Mills and I'm off camera because I am busy baking cookies, but This will be uploaded to the town of Amherst YouTube channel And it will be shared out on the cultural council webpage at AmherstMA.gov And at this time I'd like to recognize the co-chairs Julia and Applegate and Matt Holloway And I will make one of you hosts and one of you co-hosts and I take it away Thank you. Thank you, Angela Okay, I will read the script Pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 this meeting will be conducted in person and via remote means in accordance with applicable law this means that members of the public body as well as members of the public may access this meeting in person Or via virtual means, you know what sorry folks, I'm reading the wrong one Just got a new script in my glasses today, and I'm really struggling to see so let me start over Pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 this meeting will be conducted via remote means members of the public who wish to Julie I have it. Oh, please do. Please go right ahead Rachel's having trouble getting in sure In short in short, this is just the announcement from the Attorney General's office that says that You know public open public meetings may be held remotely over zoom and that was recently extended No in-person attendance of members of the public is permitted Every effort is made to ensure the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via zoom In the event that we're unable to do so. We will post the recording this recording will be on the Amherst media YouTube channel a couple days after the After the session is over and you can always reach out to Julianne or myself Through the town manager's office. If you have any questions or concerns and Rachel is trying to join. I just sent her another link Okay Should we do our audio checks when we wait? Yeah, that's a good idea Okay, so you just let us know that you can hear and be heard and we can hear you Christy Hi, everyone Eleanor. Yes. Hi Kimberly Sylvie And Cody can we hear Cody? Cody can you just let us know if you're there? Yes All right, great to see everybody. Does anyone know where in zoom I can click to Share the credentials with Rachel. I Found it so I apologize usually I try to send out the agenda to the group it is posted publicly, but we didn't send it out to our group of attendees But I think the main things that we wanted to talk about Well, you know, we will always have time for public comment if there's any members of the public, but I think we wanted to Talk about the community survey probably most importantly because for our new members Just bear in mind that we can set aside up to 20% of our annual MCC allocation We've never set aside that much, but we could set aside 20% to run local programs And I think that the work that has gone on with this survey It's going to give us some really good information about what kinds of things the community is looking for and that conversation It's good to have that conversation early We don't have to make a final decision on this matter today But it's it's good to get a ballpark idea of how much we're going to set aside because that of course drives How much we can then distribute to grantees to applicants? So I think that's that's probably the most important part of this meeting is for us to discuss the community survey We do have a deliberation schedule based on this on the doodle. Thank you Julianne for making that happen Which we can we'll email out and then we can also talk about a little bit And then I think the most important thing for Particularly for Kimberly and Sylvie are new who haven't been through the process yet Is we'll just talk about sort of what the what the grant review process looks like and feels like for you And I think it's it's in good shape. I feel like we've really iterated this. That's a good Jargoni word. We've really tried this several times over the past few years and gotten something that moves pretty smoothly through a large number of grants So with that said Rachel, can you hear us? I think She signed on using your link julia. Yeah, she's texting saying that yes she can Thank you. I don't know why it's not working on my computer the link. I've tried several approaches several times, but i'm here Well, that's what matters. We're glad you are and it sounds like you can hear us too um So in terms of presenting the community survey material um Do you I I can certainly screen share the google form and just like look at the raw info there unless you have any kind of More aesthetically pleasing um Um, no you talking to me right matt. Yeah, okay at the moment. No because the survey is still open So I haven't done anything like in terms of you know, um processing the data and that actually looks pretty good If you just show those pie charts As they are yeah, definitely Um, okay, so let me let me do a screen share. I will say this. I think we're gonna close it in a day or two We probably won't have another I believe we're planning our first meeting is october 29th, and we're gonna start reviewing grants if they're if they're open by then So it would be good to at least start to have some some ballpark impressions of this survey tonight. I think Sure, um, let's see. I'm calling in from my phone because like I said, I couldn't get access to um To the meeting on the on my computer. So if you don't mind going ahead and sharing your screen I I'll just pull up the data myself on my end. I will okay. I will let me um, yeah Just find the right view on this because okay. Yeah, it does have some that's some pie charts. That's always good uh, oh Now I thought I was the co-host Let's see, uh, you're definitely a co-chair at sense. Let's see make co-host Yeah, that'd be great. Thank you. And then I will share this screen with this um And so I'll kind of let rachel rachel I I realized with a phone in one hand. I mean if you're able to talk us through it, please do if not We can kind of do it together Sure, I think right now. Um, what we're seeing is we've gotten suddenly responses so far I don't know if we had a particular number in mind in terms of how many we were hoping to Replies to get but I think as I've looked at that as I've tracked the data over time It's been pretty consistent in terms of the percentages that you see here Can everyone see okay, or should we read things out in terms of um, for example, the first question How do people find out about local activities cultural activities and social media word of mouth? Actually word of mouth seems to be the most um Uh effective I suppose most popular followed by print Media newspapers or flyers so this is great because For those of you who are new to this one of the things that we ask um in the application is what folks marketing Um plan is you know, how are they going to get the word out? So, you know now we can we know how people are hearing about it great So, yeah, then the next question is what are the what people think are the most Important priorities for the type of programs they would like to see Locally and again, I think over time it's been pretty consistent in that people The top um choice is because we asked people to choose five and the top choice has consistently big projects that advance cultural diversity and um festivals and fairs Programs for teens and um young adults And music programs hands on an interactive program So I think you all can see that based on the choices we gave people there, you know There's the type of programming that I like to see and also um certain target audiences And the format for programming that I have to see so the questions were asked from several different directions and hopefully we can Um, you know combined we I mean this this could help us When we're looking at the grant applications in terms of um how to prioritize and maybe have an even distribution of the type of programs and You know the target audience. So hopefully it's informative for the for those reasons Um, that's a second. I ask a question before we move on. I just um First of all when I hover over does that show up in the screen share? Can you see the full? When I have when I hover over a bar Just give me a thumbs up or not because I a lot of these names are yes I mean, well, why don't we tell you what we're seeing though? So hover over one and it says multi disciplinary blah blah blah blah count 23 right, that's what I was asking so so if you hover over that uh The multi disciplinary projects and then I think everyone should be able to see the entire thing that Right. That's yep. Okay. So that's So This is the most important question in my opinion And so I just want to maybe just take a moment with it because this is the first time the most folks are actually seeing it so if we kind of go The most the highest and and also the way that the scoring happens. It's just I had to think about this for a minute myself So each person who filled this out had five five choices Evenly weighted. So in other words, it's not a number one number two number three number four It's just five votes that you can click on so just think about, you know It was just an important thing to think about with with how it came through So the number one that got 40 votes was cultural diversity Number two is community fairs and festivals. I got 33 votes Number three is programs for teens and young adults got 31 votes Number four is music got 30 Number five is project centering history reinterpretation preservation restoration Above promoting the environment has 29. Sorry. Yep environmental awareness Yeah, we we can send out this obviously we can send out a pdf of all this data for folks to actually look at on your own But I just think it's it's worth it to just pause and see if there's any Sort of comments or conversation on this on this one And we still have it open for a little bit longer, but I think with 70 responses and I wouldn't expect huge shifts from here To the end of the when it closes There's another piece of context Well, actually, I yeah, I would just ask, you know, what are folks in noticing? What are you what are you seeing? What are you thinking about with this? It's nice to see community fairs and festivals so high like I I like that And I and I wonder if how many of those are people who were kind of at the town block party And we're thinking about that while they were there But it's just nice to see support for that And yeah, I also am looking at and I'm like Music is very high and I guess that makes sense because to me that's a pretty broad category Um, and I'm glad that we didn't break it down too much, but I just do wonder within music what people are most looking for I kind of had expected it to be A little bit more blended and with without, you know, some of the real highs and lows here like I'm Surprised to see family friendly events, you know ranked so low Although maybe it's because we're it's a cultural council, you know survey and Um, and my kids are older. So I mean, I'm not I don't have a bias over there at that point You know, they pretty much want to do their own things, right? um so Yeah, I just think it's it's uh, particularly interesting how how it's uh kind of divided out for us So the context I was going to put out there that we really should be aware of is we made a last year We had we had made this decision to run a festival called spring into arts um, and we were going to do that with the bid and we actually solicited Our grantees and had a small lineup of grantees who are going to participate in the spring into our arts event Um, and then the bid due to a staffing issue was not able to make it happen So we had set aside Uh, $7,500 $7,500 to make that happen and when the bid pulled out we made kind of a tentative agreement amongst ourselves to um You know consider it for next year that was kind of all the the idea was always well, maybe we could do it next year um, and then we took 2,500 of that 7,500 and applied it to the fall block party um, thanks to kody's great insight And so technically there are there's $5,000 that we set aside last year that was at that time Directed towards spring into arts and I think that this this current council In its new makeup should make its own decision I don't think we we didn't tie ourselves to that, you know permanently But that is something um, you know that that was certainly you know almost happened last year And so it's worth remembering that this year as we as we go through this process Yeah, uh, rachel. Yeah. Hi. So I wanted to respond to uh, elinor's question and observations um, is that first of all the um, the kind of ranking in terms of the the breakdown of for example the the top three or four, um Choices here in this category were like that before the block party. So the pattern has remained consistent Before the block party and afterwards. So I think that that's really interesting. So for example the Projects advancing cultural diversity was always number one and the community fairs was always number two And um, the music was always High up there as well. So I think that's been really interesting to see over time and then another point is when we get to the um age Ranges of the people of the respondents It's actually quite interesting to look at them versus what the replies here are So we can talk about that when we get there. So it's you know, what the people who responded Aren't necessarily advocating for their own interests or like their own target group. So those are the two points I wanted to make Kimberly please um, yeah, just looking at the results. Um, I was kind of thinking about how a lot of these like topics or labels like They're kind of similar or maybe they can be like put together. So as we kind of come into planning Maybe we can think about like holding like events or projects that like combine multiple aspects into one Absolutely Yeah, and again, I mean, we don't necessarily need to make any decisions with this information But it's now this is the perfect time to be looking at it. So thank you again, Rachel And I should have said this so this this can inform our conversation about a local activity But it also Should inform our review process itself and as we as we rank our various grants, you know, we should remind ourselves that You know cultural diversity was was the top priority among, you know, the survey Uh community affairs the second priority, you know, I mean, I think I think this is a good thing for us to anchor some of our deliberation on Um, obviously it's not binding, but it's good guidance for us as a as a council Rachel, do you still have your hand up or is that just because you're on your phone? Oh, sorry. I thought I lowered it Oh, well, it's it's challenging. All right, we're okay. Okay. Yeah, I think we can move move on. Okay, great. Are folks ready to move on? Yeah Um ages So pretty evenly spread I'd say Let's see So 70 20 percent where 76 are over Um, 21 percent where 61 to 75 24 percent were 46 to 60 14 percent were 36 to 45 Um 4.3 percent and then presents get pretty small coming down here Yeah, that's why go ahead go ahead julienne. Yeah, it's it's it's tough when you when you consider how much of the population here in the regional area is college students and grad students that we didn't hear a whole lot from them, but You know, maybe maybe they're just more kind of Involved in the institutions. Um where they're studying and less in the community We're gonna change that though Yeah, that's why we've changed. That's why it's probably like right Yeah, that's why it's interesting that well over Half of the respondents are you know people who are middle age and above but like the the large largest target group That um that was voted on was programs for teens and young adults. That that's what I the point I was making earlier. Yeah um No, is that right? It wasn't Children is 21 percent Teens and young. Oh wow 31. I see yeah So it's the older people advocating to to have more programs for younger people, which is great. So yeah That's probably a lot of parents too Yeah, I think that's right parents to say my kids got nothing to do at night Okay, are you aware that artists schools and community groups can apply for grants from the cultural council? So general awareness Is there How many years have you been a resident? um Kind of interesting spread here. This is number of years in the decades Yeah, it'd be nice to display this data a little bit differently here as far as Yeah, okay It was really hard to understand like this question like this right now the weights Yeah, the the form hasn't presented But I don't know if this question. I mean this the response to this question and also the kind of optional one at the end To what extent that would necessarily impact our decision making or our criteria or evaluation So that's that I'm not sure. So I don't know what you all think Well, personally, I do think that this last question the open response is the most interesting by far I agree with you. It's hard to make any final determinations based on it, but I think This is something that you know, we'll we'll commit to sending this out to folks in the next day or two um What do we say we're gonna close it rachel the 14th? No, I actually um, so we would leave it open through the grant Um application deadline. Oh, okay. Okay. Well, that's not that's the only the 17th. So Right like the weekend that same weekend You know what we could do is we can close this one and we can You know copy it duplicate it and make another one that's just generally open You know, we can always be collecting data, right? Um, but we can we can close and finalize this one and communicate that I'm gonna stop sharing this just because I think that's it's distracting to see that long list of really interesting responses But we'll we'll send that out After this one closes and then folks can sit with it and read it and and again, I mean you can inform our ongoing conversation It's not a one and done piece of information So I do want to just um Yeah, I don't know. Do we we want to have a little bit more discussion on that community survey? Um I want one piece that I shared with julian and rachel is that The business improvement district has indicated they are not likely going to be able to make the spring into arts happen as the lead partner this next this coming spring Um, which is you know important for us to know because they're really the ones with the most experience putting things on um, however The amherst recreation department Has been looking for cultural things to make happen And so they um have indicated that they would love to and the bid the the business improvement district the bid Would still provide support. They just can't be the the lead organizer is basically what they told us um, but the rec department Is willing to take on that role So so we do have partners in the community and I think actually rec is even better because that's a true You know, that's an actual talent agency and probably would hit some of those, you know youth friendly, um Boxes or whatever so Not that we're not valid any of that, but that's just just some information that I think is important for us as we move forward Right Um, I'm about to be just distracted a little bit so I don't julian I mean do we have conversation about local activities now or should we give people time to process? um Local activities. I thought I thought the next thing was the Deliberation schedule. What do you mean by local as far as? Any any sort of how people are feeling relating to The community survey and what that what what that spurs for us, I guess Well, I guess, you know the the I don't know what you're saying the challenging thing is while we can set funds aside and we have um You know, that's something that we'll have all these wonderful grants applications coming through right and To be able to Do something meaningful for the community the way we did with the the showcase stage at the fall block party or Something even bigger We do have to kind of hold some funds for for that which we we are certainly allowed to do and from from my perspective um What happened at the block party was great for the community, right? I mean it was it was transformative so um, Definitely see the value in in in doing that. Um, but we're not really held to Finalizing that until we really kind of get to the end of everything and we vote but it um on the on the final grant allocation numbers for for each grantee Um But I guess that's something that we we should each think about, you know, and the other part of that is The time and commitment and level of effort that folks can put into to make that happen You know, we have we have a responsibility when we set those funds aside to be sure that that public benefit happens for the community And you know that that's going to take some some effort From all of us to to do that right otherwise If we if we can't commit the time then we really should just flow that money to the the grantees individually I think we have a great group and and there was everyone helped out and pitched in for the block party and You know, I know I know the commitments there. So the energy's there. So I appreciate all of you When do we need to make a decision about this? well One, I think we need more information to understand what's possible and who the players are right, but um Definitely before we finalize our vote for The 2024 grants right because we'd have to set this this aside in our budget And know how much we're setting aside and why and and what we intend to happen And you know, I'm I'm just going to be very plain as well That you know, we we had to go back to the mcc Even though it was through no fault of our own with the spring block party And of course they were understanding That the event didn't happen. But you know, they've they've got kind of a scorecard for each of these lcc's like us and you know At a certain point, they're not going to keep You know giving us the amount of money that they give us if we can't execute on on these local projects. So we're we're expected to be effective Stewards of these funds, right? So if if we were to set something up Another year and it fell through, you know at a certain point, you know Our inability to Deliver whether it's our fault or not Could impact the community where there would be less funds coming here. So I mean, I I take this very seriously As far as our our commitment when we set those funds aside because otherwise we just give it to the artist and let them make the art You know, we we don't need to get in the middle unless we really are bringing something unique to the community In in our capacity as a cultural council and being able to collaborate with groups and and being able to You know Bring all of the artists together that performed With us at the fall block party. So I I think it's great But I just want everyone to understand it's it's a pretty serious decision You know to to hold those funds and We have to be more organized before we could vote meaningfully on that right now. We don't have enough information tonight Is there anything more on that? Matt And I just want to take oh, I think it's well said I the only thing I would say is that we have We don't have to make this decision We can start deliberating We have a couple of deliberation meetings before we make this decision too So anybody who's feeling any pressure on that that's not the case I mean, you know the the final the the final few meetings are where we get the the budget really straightened out So we do have time to sort of let this percolate and think about it I do want to take uh, just a quick survey of everybody's schedules right now Just to go around as to when people have to hop off christie. You have to hop off and how how many I need to go to bed Because you are not here you are overseas. Yeah It's after midnight to sell it If it's okay, is that do you need me for anything? I think I think we're we're good. You you know that we're still finalizing the dates for deliberation And I shared those with you And I've got them in I mean Most I'm pretty good with most of them There's like certainly you can't be there the nights that you're lecturing because we had to alternate those out To get a quorum And I sleep tight Bye everybody. Thanks. So good to see you Hi christie, okay, and matt I think you have an event tonight as well No, no event. Okay. All right. I don't know where I got that idea Does anyone else have a hard stop and we do want to to move through this pretty pretty quickly because we do have um A pretty busy schedule coming up in the upcoming weeks Uh, rachel Uh, I need to go between 6 30 and 6 40 Okay, but that should be plenty of time, right? Yeah. Yep. Yep. All right. I Everyone else is good. We're gonna try to move. It's quickly. Yeah, I'm I'm Later than that too. I just need I have to be somewhere at 7 so I've just got to make sure I'm off by like 650 That's cool. And both of you have been through Deliberations before so if you had to to drop a little early, we just need to be sure that we can keep Cody Because uh, we'll need a core. I'm to be able to go through this So I just have a hard stop at 7. Oh, yeah, definitely done We started at 5 30 cool. I just emailed everyone our tentative dates um based on the on the doodle poll and I know it's a long list um And I'll say up front that you know if we can work through things And we don't need all of those sessions, you know, we're basing this on having almost 100 applications like we did last year um Right now there aren't that many in but there are a lot of hours between now and midnight on monday when the um Grant's application system closes out. So um, we do expect there to be a mad dash. I think we've got shy of 70 Between submitted grant applications and um drafts when I when I looked earlier today So But we we expect that there'll be quite a bit more. Did everybody get the email with the with the dates? Great. No, I haven't seen it. Oh, there it is. Okay. I just just sent it. Yeah so You know the time involved Um, and I think I'm mad. I'm just going to blend a little bit about the dates and the schedule and start to move into a Little bit about what our process is because it's hard to discuss the schedule without understanding what we'll be doing When we saw the number of grants coming in last year and having been through some other grant cycles um We've evolved our process from what it would have been when I started with the council um We want to ensure that each grant gets um A fair amount of time for discussion uh, so Previously we just kind of went through and in order of the grant application number and Sometimes if you were running out of time at the end the people who just you know Had higher numbers they we didn't really get to spend the same amount of time um In consideration of what they were bringing the community so We've done two things over the years one Is is that we have kind of an excel what or google sheet kind of scoring system Where before we meet um We've got you know the the grants that are being deliberated in that particular evening that are scheduled And we'll we'll ask each one of you to to go through and give You know your assessment and then we compile all of that and I'll show an example of that in a minute and then for the grants um deliberation sessions What we do is we time box the time for each grant So i'm bringing this up because we have I guess what nine or so sessions there, right? So if you look at the total minutes, you know, if we were to give Each grantee ten minutes and there were a hundred grants. That's a lot of time um But by having everyone review the materials ahead of time give us um Their general assessment and then compiling that to kind of read What the whole council feels like we can we can give everybody a fair amount of time and move through pretty quickly so All right, so now kind of just back to the the general schedule For several of us. There are certain nights where you've already responded in the doodle poll that you can't make it Don't feel badly about that. You know, it's really hard To to make all of these in the the number of weeks that we have to go through anything Does anyone have any questions for me just yet? I Sorry right till you can go ahead No, maybe we'll have the same question. I was just curious like this the start and finish time Put each of these days Okay, okay um What what did we do last year? I think we we tried to keep it to And was it an hour and a half? I'd love to be able to get it down to an hour, but And maybe we could do that if we only have 70 grants coming in or something. Matt. Do you remember exactly what we did? I I Meeting Yeah, there's 90 minutes Okay. Yeah, right now We're still gonna go ahead with the 5 30 to 7 p.m. Right yeah per doodle poll. I just want to confirm that. Thank you And it's and it's you know, we we will have to have a hard stop You know, but but if we're going through The hard thing is if we're going through and it looks like we're not gonna get through everything Then we'd have to look to start adding meetings and getting a quorum and and that gets really hard, especially as you guys get into you know You know finals and and and all that so we we are mindful of that So we really want to be respectful of everyone's time Eleanor I was going to say I um I can make Almost all of these there were a few that I marked down as like if need be like I can possibly do it Just is going to be really tight squeeze that day Is there any way for us to know like If we're going to have a quorum or that kind of thing like ahead of time Because I kind of meant that to be like if it's not going to be able to happen if I don't come I can like move something or do it um Well, and yeah, I I think It is kind of tight this this year, right? So I think we we all need to communicate um Closer to all of these dates that there will be a quorum So if if there's a date that's here, it's because you know, we were able to secure More than a quorum. I don't I don't think in the end that I had any that were down to Um just just five. Okay. Okay. Got it. Thank you Any other questions? So the the other big one that's out there is the the last one was not great for a lot of folks. Um I'd like to move that that uh December 14th because that's when we would finalize our vote and I'd really like to find some time Within a couple days of that where where we all can gather and and participate in that vote because that's there's a lot of work That goes up to it. But that's that's binding. So I don't really want to keep that date and time since We can't have everyone there but we can we can Take that up via via email. I guess, um Rather than take time tonight, but if everybody can kind of look at their schedules and um I don't know maybe maybe I just send out another doodle poll for adjacent days around then And I don't even know if you know what your exam schedules will be and all of that or no because That's uh, that's tough, you know, that's got to come first for you guys Anything else? Um So Julie one thing I thought and I I know this is like you said sort of bleeding into the process itself But I thought I could show the an example of the spreadsheet. Um, I have all that pulled up too. Okay. Okay Yep, that's going to be part of so we did this last year and I think it was pretty pretty helpful. I'm really glad Um, you know, everyone can can be here for this tonight So I shared um a link. I don't know if everybody's been able to get it for A pdf file that's on my creative cloud. So that was um It is the uh applications Kind of panel book from from two years back two fiscal years back And you can kind of scroll through and and see All the information in there. So right now the grants are going through And I guess I could share my screen to be more interesting. Um And when they're when they're finished All of that information gets downloaded and put into um A pdf that has these bookmarks now if you open up the bookmarks tab, I'm still figuring out how to share here. Sorry I don't use I should be getting better at zoom since we always use it for this um Way too many tabs open folks It's like I have you hover over the boxes in zoom right in the middle is where all your menu of like your actions is are No, no, I've got Kind of share and then What would this being a public meeting and being recorded, you know, and who knows what my kids will be texting me? I kind of didn't want to share everything. So I was trying to share specifically But hey, you know, um, this is the modern world that we live in. So I guess I am just going to share my desks up and go for it Um, so not this okay So this is what I I sent you and in acrobat. I'm able to kind of go and open up the bookmarks tab So you'll see that there are five examples here at the top Um, which we're going to go through these as to what we're looking for When we when we evaluate and deliberate, but then you'll see that there's you know number one for instance Um, and then each one of these bookmarks, which we have to take some time and add them to the pdf Right really lets us go from one one grant to the next Why would we want to do that? Well, there's quite a bit of information. That's with any one of these um these grants So for instance, but they're all formatted the same so Well, it's a lot of pages at a certain point. You'll be able to go through them really quickly So there's there's the amount that they're requesting project description How many people are served blah blah blah? And and then there'll be some supporting materials usually so they're kind of attached here Sometimes in some of the books, um, they're where you can kind of see all of them or there's a letter or something like that right so Once everything comes in We'll be able to get something back to you and a pdf that's bookmarked for you to go through it and then basically We do still go through Um Just in order Right, so we'll schedule to do so many in a particular night. So and then we time box it. I think we were at I don't know What we did last year if it was like seven minutes max per per per grant And what we found is, you know, the ones that folks are pretty much in agreement on right Um, they can be done pretty quickly, but then when there are questions Uh, and we're getting up at the end of the time Then we we kind of say, okay We're gonna put this in a group of grants that we come back to and move on right So let me let me show you what The scoring sheet would look like so What we do is we will set up Um, actually, no, this isn't the right one. This we had a more complicated one and then we thankfully simplified it Um So everybody will will get um Access to their own page to fill in and most of it is is going to be pre-populated So you'll have um grant numbers What what kind of group is applying you see nonprofits the name of the group um or the person applying The dates when it should be happening Where it will be happening um And then we're able to see what the total budget is versus what they're asking us And you'll see here that there are just two columns that are highlighted And what we've done is to ask each of you to look at the grant in that pdf panel book and then to score it from zero to three as far as How how inclined would you be to to give them all the money that they're asking for um in the grant application And there's several things that you'll need to take into into account with that, you know Why why do we have the number zero? The number zero is is there because there are Going to be times when The the the project simply doesn't meet our guideline criteria. So You know, it's it's it's kind of a no it's it's it's a none it's either There's no date no location um It's not it's not accessible. It's not open to the public There are a lot of reasons that we would look at something and just say no it doesn't meet our criteria so it would be a zero and then as far as Just to give you a little bit of the background and the thinking as to Why we only went up to three was we're really trying to When people score from zero to ten Then you get a lot of slop in in how Each person waits things. So we've kept it to a pretty narrow um selection of numbers to kind of force people to be a little bit more definitive Um, which which I think worked pretty well last year So What we'll do is everyone will send Their charts in just before The the meeting with everything updated this project description came from the smart simple site But you also have the ability To to add some some remarks here, which I would encourage you to do Um, especially if there are questions and all of this uh The the years we've been doing this has only come into you know, the the one person who's compiling everything so Your comments aren't shared shared broadly and the specific numbers that you entered aren't visible To the entire group and they're not shared in a way that everyone can see Because we're really just trying to get a feel for where everybody is with this if anybody You know has some some key concerns So that we can Have an effective conversation any questions so far okay so um I think I shared the the I can't remember what I shared back out before the meetings last year. I'll have to go and look um, but but basically yeah, so This all gets sent in and then we'll have an average kind of number And we could start seeing you know for something that's like less than one um Clearly there are some concerns from from the whole group as to you know, whether this has public benefit versus others that you know, um, it's it's a unanimous, you know Three or or you know above a 2.5 folks are are looking at those as being very strong And even though, you know, we're asking you as far as how likely are you to fund the entire Amount the reality is a lot of times we we can't fund the entire amount. We have to do partial grants, right? so let's um Any questions from anyone? I'm gonna try otherwise. I'll just try to keep moving so uh Let's let's look at a few of these for the for the examples. I'm going to example one here and um Julia yes Do I I'm just going to give a really quick quick injection. I think just to sort of because this is I feel like this is a lot of There's always a lot a lot of action going on here But just for for our new members. I will I will say this we've Over the years we've kind of tried out really really specific ways to measure and quantify what we thought about grants and What we arrived at last year that worked really well Was we have this this book this panel group book with like 90 100 100 grants And what worked really well was just to get the conversation flowing And so I mean what I would do between meetings is I would scam 15 or 20 grants and they would each be three or four pages long The descriptions are only a paragraph or two and then I would write out Basically zero one two or three in terms of how I felt just my general feeling about that grant And then I would pop that general feeling into a spreadsheet Send it to julian she is the master aggregator and collator of of spreadsheets And then we it really gave us a nice it was a general enough Like it wasn't hyper specific because we had like subcategories last time. I mean a year before. Yeah that All right a previous it's just a nice general It's a quantitative number that lets us anchor our conversation around a general feeling But it's open enough that we can have a robust Like just verbal discussion about the pros and cons of each grant And then Julie the other thing that julian gave is the the time box idea that you know, we're going to deliberate We're going to give it a fair seven or however many minutes You know, we're going to give each one a fair number of minutes to talk about You know probably half or more we don't come to a final decision on But we at least get a general feel for it julian and I take careful notes and then we do a second pass through where we make more final decisions But this is something that it just it gives us both a quantitative number to anchor the conversation on And enough space for us to just sort of qualitatively give our our thoughts Great Kimberly um When we get those applications that you mentioned that maybe don't fit the criteria or kind of almost like an immediate no Do we still give them the full 10 minutes? Uh, we we don't necessarily yeah, we don't necessarily have to give The the full if we're all in agreement, you know that that it's outside of the the criteria or if we're all in agreement that yes It's great. We're happy. We love it. You know, it's you know We'll keep moving because uh, it's it's a lot to cover the the other thing that we haven't discussed yet is kind of how we We open up the discussion. So basically Matt or I will kind of give a general overview of of you know, quickly like kind of what the summary was And then we will ask if if there is anyone you know, who feels strongly about fully funding and fully supporting a grant Or is there or you know, are there people that feel strongly about not funding it at all? Right, and that's a little bit where you can see in the in the the numbers that we're getting back and and, um aggregating that We'll have some some picture of that Um, but sometimes it's just one council member who is doing the due diligence to say, all right Yeah, it all sounds good. But look at this. Look at this. This is a thing that doesn't meet our guidelines and the guideline piece is really something that you know All of us have been able to learn with the rest of the council as we go through You know, the deliberations is not anything that that folks just come to the table knowing, you know, so And and there's there's no reason to to not speak up about something, you know, definitely feel comfortable We you're here because we want to hear from you and you know, we'll we'll have fantastic discussions about this um, but yeah, it's It is really a nice process you'll see as to how we come to collectively understand this because we're collectively understanding it for the community, you know um, and it's it's a Pretty unique process. Does it answer your question? Yes, it does. Thank you. Cool Matt, did you anything else you wanted to add? No, that's great. You're you're nailing it Yep So let's let's kind of start looking through one of one of these examples So you'll see that there's a primary contact. Um, the primary contact can only be for one grant whether that's um A group or an organization This person can only be primary for for one one grant and each organization really can only Apply for one one one grant per year So they're requesting 1200 it's it's theater. It's an emerging playwright festival When august slash september And then it's in barn theater studios in belcher town. So um The applicants from belcher town and it's happening in belcher town Uh, however, if it provides public benefit because people from amherst go to belcher town to attend events like this Then it's perfectly valid as a regional event for us to to uh support and fund it so estimated uh number of people served so, um Number of people that will will participate and I think this is one that sometimes the applicants don't even fully understand So it's not just the audience size But the people who are putting the event on also benefit So it would be a combination of of those who are making culture and those who are enjoying culture Um, and then we get into the uh Project their summary of it. Uh, who's the target audience? um So they're going to describe who who they think will participate and um Then we get into this is really the one Once you've got the summary Then the public benefit we want them to explain how this is going to be useful to And and enjoyable for people from amherst So And then they'll go into who's making this we want to be sure that there is public benefit based on There that being a a quality level Of event that can be delivered and So now we get into like there are three co-producers. So while we can only have one person leading on a grant Sean here who is working on this grant He could go and be supportive as a you know in another grant that he's not a lead on right because we love to see people collaborate So it's not that people can only be involved in one thing. They can just only make you know, kind of be the lead applicant for one um This is the marketing piece that we talked about a little bit earlier Where I was saying with the survey that people are getting it from social media and word of mouth so For there to be public benefit people have to know that it's happening. We want to know that there is some sort of a plan to get the word out there and then we get into the budget I'm sorry. I think I've got everything I want to spot here. So The budget Can and often is and should be generally, you know, larger than than the amount that they're asking From the ACC unless they're asking us to fully fund it So when you get into The budget, you know, we we do want to get an understanding as far as stipends How many people are getting paid about how much? Versus supplies there are certain things that we we cannot Fund so we cannot fund Food refreshments transportation Lodging it doesn't mean that they can't be in the budget but you know, let's say In in this case, they had two thousand dollars for of expenses for something like that then the amount that they're requesting from us would have to Not include those two thousand dollars worth of expenses Right, or if they did include it in the budget We would have to adjust down and be sure that we were Funding them less because we can't fund that and be clear with them We do as we're going down The line here because we do so much partial grant granting we do want to know if they have the ability to have a plan be or To be able to pull this off without us And in this case They've applied to all of these different cultural councils which might look a little greedy But actually I like to see it because it's happening in Belcher town and people from Amherst will go and Pellum and like all all these You know, they really do have an audience that they're drawing from here and there's every reason that all of those cultural councils Should be given the opportunity to support and fund it just like us And then they'll have their their materials which you would be able to go and open those and and and read those so um One of the the flags for me having not looked at this one in a couple of years is um I think you know one of the things we really want to see Is if we've got a location we we would like to see an actual date um So maybe I didn't read them just in the description as far as Is it happening over a weekend? Is it happening really over the course of weeks? you know because For it to have public benefit it has to happen and you know having a a date in a location and Having someone from that location say oh, yeah, they're coming. We've got a plan You know and we support them coming here and doing this with us goes a long way So that was a lot of information does anyone have any questions? Well, I just want to say I want to just double reiterate that point I mean we we will just we oftentimes disqualify grants that don't have dates So that's that's a really Important thing for us to know is that the venue is secured You know occasionally if somebody's got a date range and a good reason why they can't pin one down that's okay But like julianne said we we want to know this is going to happen Yeah Um, also I skipped over this one about cost for participation Um, you know all events have to be open to the public They don't have to be free it costs money to to to make art and culture um, however, we we we do really like to see um that if if there Is some cost to it um that that you know in extenuating circumstances people can be admitted who want to be there um That it's not a hard and fast rule okay, uh And then as far as kind of the the the budget You know if you do have ticket costs the ticket costs would go into the budget It's one of the ways that you're offsetting the total expense of everything And you'll see when we get into deliberating, you know, there is a little bit of a Kind of a concept of you know, what appropriate what are appropriate amounts of stipends or You know if it's here, we've got three thousand two hundred and stipends um, if they Haven't said how many people that's going to you know when when we have I don't know like 50 000 dollars worth of of grants to give You know, we we would certainly have to be careful And know that we were giving one person five thousand dollars For one hour I think we would never do that, but you know like we we do a little bit of kind of balancing Um, you know, what's reasonable? Hey kimberley Um, yeah, so kind of branching off what we were just talking about If someone has like a project that everyone is really in favor of I don't know if this ever happens But maybe we need more information From them before we decide to grant something or maybe like there's something that needs to be We talked about it. How would we go about that? um, that's a great question and You know We try to be Super fair and really rely on the information that is in the in the grant, right? Um, but yes at times we we do reach out for for clarification You know when there's support and when we can However, at us at a certain level if it's pretty complex and it's inconclusive um There are times when we've said no, we really have to yet sounds great, but we're just missing too many pieces it's not well thought out and unfortunately You know, there there are times when we've tried to really Handhold some some groups kind of through the process and um You know There are times when it just hasn't happened like no matter how much you could help them So we really do want to to see well well thought out well planned well kind of staffed, you know Things that are that are coming through because they're the most likely and the burden's even higher because we do direct granting now in in the past people had to complete the event and then document it to us to get reimbursed and Even then sometimes it wouldn't come through but now that they get the money up front We we don't necessarily have the you know, they owe the money back if they don't do the grant as planned um And without amending it but you know the money's out there. So we really have that that extra level of um Responsibility to make sure we've got something that's solid That makes sense. Thank you great all right I know we need to wrap this up. I don't think we're going to go through all Five so i'm going to try to move a little bit more quickly here um Oh wait, I know why i'm lost because i'm supposed to be using um The bookmarks so this next one here um Was one that came in and it was um A music performance Again, no solid date And then it was going to be on You know, it's the idea is to have it on the local cable access tv serving thousand people um and Just to kind of sum up when we got into this one uh I'm going to hop all the way to the end here Which is I think who else they might have applied to And as I recall, I think they apply to like almost every local cultural council That was out there, right? so This was kind of a blanket type thing where hey if you give me money then Okay, then i'll get with your local tv group and and actually put this thing together but It wasn't really kind of a formalized finished Thing that had had a date had any kind of local commitment um, so as as I recall In this case We decided that it just didn't have enough public benefit Um to to move to move forward with it and that it was wasn't something that that our community was asking for um And uh and and that ended up being a pass Matt or rachel do you have anything more to add on this one? And one of the reasons this is an example that we're going through Is that we usually get a couple handful of these each each year that um Are just kind of general things that could come to your community or not Kimber you still have your hand up or a new question. Oh, sorry. No, I forgot to put it. Okay All right I need to run but I just wanted to say that I thought the um the way that the process has been streamlined over the years Works seems to work quite well now, especially with the you know timing each discussion or each grant application Um, I thought that were really well and I think in most cases we were able to agree quickly when an application didn't Fit the criteria that that seemed to you know, so I think um Don't recall any specific instances where that you know, there was any major disagreement over something like that So hopefully, you know go smoothly In that respect this time as well, but it was nice to see all of you and I will I guess we'll see you at the next meeting, right? Yeah And yeah, if anybody um is available to maybe look at a copy of the data once I don't know how much we're gonna actually Alter it in terms of I don't mean alter the data. I mean alter the presentation of the data, but I think um If anyone has any suggestions or that's you know, but like like we said earlier, it's it's really um, just to inform Us as background information, you know, whatever's been collected. So thanks again everyone and I will see you next time Yeah, thanks so much for doing that. It's really informative Take care Bye. Bye Bye Are you starting to feel like you have a Pretty good idea and you're not going to have all the answers. None of us even those of us who've been here a couple years Really have all the answers. We really are kind of You know piecing things together as as we go through to understand and you know, as far as being ADA accessible You know, none of us have gone to all of the venues, you know And certainly if you're newer to the area, you know, it's it's hard to to know all of that so You know, we'll we'll go through as as a group and um make sure That we've got some great events for the community Would it help to go through one or two more? We did So the last three I have were kind of I think more examples of things that were kind of Strange and misses or not enough public benefit or not open to the public or things like that Everybody's good stop sharing so you can understand what I'm doing All right You still there matt I'm here. Yeah, I think it's I think it's really good and I think it's you know We really can't get into too much of this nuance of you know, what made one great or another I just I think what's helpful is for our new members to really see that You know, um, this is manageable We're all you know, busy working people and we are aware that time is limited And so we've worked really hard to make this like a manageable ask You know in november or december because it can feel Way overwhelming if you're like, oh my god, I have to read all 100 grants in the next 24 Like that's that's not how we manage it and really we only we only read You know 10 or 20 between each meeting and it doesn't take that long Yeah, but I would add that while rachel said that usually we we can agree and and um I don't know maybe maybe matt and I have ended up as co-chairs because Certainly in some grant cycles and certain grants We've we've come at it from two totally different points of view and have disagreed, you know And and I've really valued getting, you know, the the the different perspective and the nuance And and I know matt certainly changed my mind on some A few times where it was like, oh It's like no, no, okay now. I see it, you know, so it's it's fine to Have a different point of view and quite frankly we we need that, you know And we we should all be able to, you know, certainly be respectful, but it's it's You know That's how you're serving the community is to bring your fresh eyes and your fresh perspective to it And if it's not adding up and it's not making sense to you we need to know that You know, don't don't ever feel like you just have to go. Well, everyone else Thank you so much julienne that was good for me even to have a refresher on it. I feel like Yeah, yeah New cycle new grants. We'll see what we get and um, yeah, I'll I'll send out Something pretty soon as far as trying to get some better dates uh in in december Um, where everybody can be there for that last meeting excellent Thank you all really appreciate all of you. I'm looking forward to jumping into this when we're ready We get everything soon Thank you so much. See you guys soon. Take care. Bye. Have a great night Good night, everybody. Good night. Thank you. Bye Spikeooning