 to this meeting of the Amherst Cultural Council. I want to thank everybody who is a council member for their hard work and dedication. My name's Angela Mills. I work for the town of Amherst. This meeting is being recorded and will be uploaded to the town of Amherst YouTube channel very soon. So without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to Julianne and Matt, our capable co-hosts. Have a great meeting everyone. Thank you, Angela. Oh my goodness. And I forgot to pull up the script in advance of this meeting. So let me just pull it up real quick. Hello everybody. Oh, sorry. I just remembered. Okay, got it. We got it. Right. So we're going to call the Cultural Council meeting to order. I'm going to read the infamous script that we read at the beginning of every virtual meeting. Pursuant to chapter 20 of the Act of 2021, this meeting will be conducted via remote means. Members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so in the following manner. The Zoom link that's been publicly posted on the town's website. No one person, a member of the public will be permitted, but every effort is made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. In the event that we are unable to do so for reasons of economic hardship and despite best efforts, we'll post the meeting on the town website, on the YouTube channel and a recording transcript or other comprehensive recording as soon as possible after the meeting. Which, sorry, I butchered that, but that is the essence of the Attorney General's position. So now we'll just go around and we'll do a voice roll call just to make sure everybody's got audio and video. And I'll start with our ACC members. So just kind of going across my screen here, Robin. We need to know you can hear us. Yes. Hello. Julianne? Yep. Rachel? I'm here. Todie? I'm here. Eleanor? Yes. And then we have two illustrious guests tonight, which we're very excited and we will announce them in due course. Sarah? I know you- Hi everyone, I'm Sarah Barr. Hello. And Gabrielle? Hi everybody, Gabrielle. That'd be this. All right, well welcome everybody. Since we have both of our guests here in, I'm going to suggest that we move the minutes vote until the end of the agenda. And actually, Sarah is first on the agenda. So we will start with you, but I'm gonna suggest we move that until after the discussion with Gabrielle as well, just so we can take advantage of her time. And so this is really exciting to me because Amherst College is such a great partner to the town and such a cultural icon, you know, nationally, internationally. And so Rachel, our wonderful member, Rachel has facilitated an introductory conversation with Sarah. And I think actually, Rachel, would you like to say a few words before we kind of pass it over to Sarah and she can speak a little bit about her role and sort of potential collaborations that we might move towards in the future? I think I'm actually fine to just let Sarah kind of take the floor because I think, you know, as a cultural council member, I think I just want to try to facilitate these connections and bring people to, you know, to talk to the group and see what types of collaborations would be desirable and appropriate. So I'm really thrilled to, you know, have this meeting gathering and then hopefully it'll lead to other opportunities. And I think it's great that everyone is here to join in the presentation. And I just met Sarah a couple of months ago, I want to say. But I think in the short conversation that I had, I thought that it's really appropriate that she's here to speak with us just generally about what Amherst College is in the position to do in relation to promoting cultural community and connections with the town. And it's great that Eleanor is here to, you know, add another facet to that. So that's where I stand. Thank you. Great. Well, I think that was an introduction without being an introduction. So that was fabulous. So Sarah, your official title is advisor to the provost on campus initiatives and director of community engagement at Amherst College. Yeah. And I think we'll turn it over to you. So I've been at Amherst College for 15 years now, which is kind of wild. And I originally was hired to run the public service internship program and used to put students in internships in local organizations like the Eric Carl Museum, the Emily Dickinson Museum. And over time I took on increasing responsibility. And most recently I was asked to strengthen the relationship between the college and the community. So I do things like work with faculty members to find opportunities for community based learning courses. We work with the prisons and jails in the area. We do site visits. We do projects with places like the Holy Oak Children's Museum. And I'm always looking for an opportunity to connect the college, the students, the faculty and staff with what's happening in town and beyond. Couple of things to note. The new president, Michael Elliott, is really interested in the town of Amherst. I don't know if you have heard him talk about it or have seen him out in the public, but he cares very deeply about the town of Amherst. And so I think the shift in my work to really build those bridges is tied to his broader hopes for the college and the town. It seems like you know some of the resources that are available. Our colleagues over at the Mead Art Museum are partying right now with the opening of the museum. But they wanted to be here tonight. I assume that you know the folks over at the Emily Dickinson Museum. The Benesque is also a great cultural resource and very popular with kids and community. And so my hope tonight was just to introduce myself to say I am your connector on campus and anything you want, you need, reach out to me and I will help to make those connections. But I'm also super curious about what you see are the ways that the college might support your work too. So that's kind of my background and my interests and just curious what would make sense for you all. Oh, great. Christy has joined us, so we'll say hello to Christy and just check her audio that she can hear us and be heard. I can hear you. Okay, great. Well, thank you so much, Sarah, just for being here and we certainly have seen and discussed a little bit. Michael Elliott's focus on the town and we're really excited for that. And obviously the block party conversation later will certainly have some pretty explicit opportunities there but I think we should just open it up to the group and if folks have questions or comments about, actually, Sarah, before I do that, do you have a good understanding of sort of what function the cultural council officially plays and what we do town-wide? Rachel gave me the backstory when we met. So I was able to learn from her and then also to read some more about your work on the website. And I also understand I have a friend who was actually going to the Pellum Cultural Council meeting tonight. So you were part of a network of cultural councils in Massachusetts. So your role is definitely tied to place and the Commonwealth. So it is functional in a very particular kind of way. Yeah, good. Okay, good, great. I just wanna make sure you, sometimes folks don't really know what we do. So thank you, Rachel, for filling her in. So yeah, so do folks have questions or comments for Sarah? Hi, Sarah. So one of the things, there's so many ways to collaborate, right? And our core charter is to serve public benefit by promoting arts and culture. And here we are, it's February, it's pretty mild February, but if someone has lived in other places in the country along the way, one of the hardest things for the community to do is to gather. And it's wonderful that the Meads open again. It's a place that art and culture, like it's a go-to place, that's always going to happen. But one of the greatest needs in this community is to facilitate having places for people to gather. And I wonder what might be available, if not the Mead, per se, but just Amherst College in general, because it's, I mean, pretty much the town has formed around it, right? Are there opportunities for, whether it's arts presentations or years ago, we wanted to do, I don't know if you've heard of Pechakucha. Oh, I just went to one. There was just a Pechakucha event for architectural growth. I had never seen one before. It was amazing. Yeah, yeah. That was something I had wanted to bring. And we set it up. I was part of the inaugural Pechakucha in Knoxville, Tennessee years ago, the first one. And it was just an experience that stayed with me, how much fun it was and how much just cohesion there was within the community, both socially and for creative collaboration. And we wanted to do that. And we had it all set up. And then right when everyone was sent home for the pandemic from all the universities, our event was like the day after two days later. So we canceled it. But just thinking of that, one of the heaviest lifts there was where are we gonna do this? So nothing you have to answer now, but it would just be helpful to kind of know if there's availability of space and how that would work, if there could be a point person that or certain people that we would go to either ourselves or for grantees to be vetted to have access so that more things can happen in the community. So a couple of things to say about that. So there is certainly space available on campus and I can be a point person for the cultural council. I think there's a difference between doing sort of institutional partnerships sort of like cultural council in the college versus individual artists wanting to do display. There is actually a good example of this tomorrow night. The ancestral British exhibit that was in the Amherst Historical Society is coming to Frost Library. And it's a partnership between ancestral bridges and Frost. And it's pretty exciting because I think it extends the work that Anika and her family were doing in town and is really sort of linking the story of the town and the people who lived in Amherst with the college, the folks that live here. So I think that that is actually gonna be a really good example of collaboration between an organization in town and the college. So I think there's certainly events where people use Buckley for, I think the women's club used to do love letters there. But then there are also these partnership activities where the town and the college come together to do something. So those possibilities are there. So if there are things that you wanna do or ideas that come up, please be in touch because I can either get you connected to the folks that are also doing it on campus. So you can do a partnership thing or if you didn't wanna do it as a partnership thing and wanted to do it yourselves to find that space. I would also, I used to do orientation trips to the town of Amherst and used a lot of space in town. And what I have heard from local faith communities is that they have big event spaces that they would welcome people in as well. So I know parking, accessibility, there's all kinds of things to take into consideration with events. But I think that people are more open to hosting those and being creative about event spaces as well. That's great recommendation. And thank you for offering to be a point person that's really going to help us. And I would in turn ask you as far as our charter here to serve the public benefit through arts and culture, what do you think's missing? What do you think Amherst should have and doesn't have, where could we improve or better engage or just start dialogue with the community? In terms of the town or in terms of like this, of students? I'd say arts and culture as a whole and then certainly since it's your role to relate it to the students, is do the students feel included in arts and culture? I'm pretty sure Eleanor feels. I was going to say, that's what I'm glad she's here. Before her, we were really fortunate to have Cole and it's been just a wonderful opportunity for the community to have their voices here. But just as a general overview, you know, since we have you here, what's working, where are the opportunities? So Eleanor, correct me if I get any of this wrong or if I go off track, but from my perspective, the pandemic severed a lot of relationships in the community. And I think this was felt more for Amherst College because students were in the bubble, staff were not on campus. And so I think a lot of the relationships and a lot of the access to arts that people had before the pandemic have been lost. And so from my perspective, I think there's a lot of work that needs to be done to rebuild those connections, to help people feel welcome and even to know where and how to access art. So I, you know, if this had been a question before the pandemic, I think it would have answered one way. But what I see everywhere is this deep hunger for activities, for connection, for community, for gatherings and missing the memories of how to do that. So I think that the cultural council actually plays an important role, which is why I'm so excited about the art event in the spring because you're creating the conditions for us to remember arts and culture and being together in an important way. But I have heard from so many students lately that they really want to be in town and wanna be in the community and are looking for help and support to do that. Is that fair, Eleanor? Totally fair. I, yeah, I loved your description of that. I just had a friend come to me, she's taking this class called like Soundscapes of the Connecticut River Valley or something. It's a really good class. Really good class. I mean, it involves really going out and engaging with the community, like through music and art. And she was asking me, like, she was like, well, where do I even start? Like she had kind of had no idea or no sense of like what the musical landscape was here. And yeah, I don't know. I just think that class, and there are a lot like them, kind of what you were talking about, like the Center for Community Engagement is really interesting to me. Like it just, it does feel like it's starting to be rebuilt. And obviously I wasn't here before COVID, so I don't have a before and after picture. But I love that Michael Elliot's really interested in that. I love that you're really interested in that. And it's so funny. I was just with my friend Cyrus today who's our student body president and he was talking to me about you actually. And then he was also talking about the Council of Student Town Relations. And yeah, I don't know if that fits into all of this, but that was a really interesting conversation as well. And the soundscape presentations that the students make, that class has actually been going on for a decade and it's documenting the sound landscape of the Connecticut River Valley. And they do public presentations at the end. So it is an amazing cultural resource of our community and something that really is designed to be welcoming. The last time they did it was before the pandemic in fall of 2019. And one of the student groups did a documentary about a local mariachi bands and they came to campus and performed. So it's, and these are all public events. And so I think it's like, how do we make these things more accessible and available? Yeah, totally. Yeah. Chrissy has her hand raised. I just want to say, Sarah, real quick, if you are sharing this stuff on social media, please don't hesitate to add us or tag us or whatever. We just got a new social media person named Kara. And like literally she is like doing this work right now and trying to amplify like whatever work is happening in town. So if you are on the social things, I barely know how to use them. I will make sure that Kara knows about that. That in particular sounds like a great thing that we'd love to share. Chrissy, please. Hi. Hi, Sarah. I'm sorry I came in late. I wonder if, you know, like one possible way that more connections could be made would be, I don't want to say formal, but more institutionally. And what I'm thinking about, and I just wonder and I don't know whether this is your brief or somewhere else. And the easiest way for me to explain it is to talk about a set of partnerships that I know about from the institution that I work at, which is a university not in the Valley, where a lot of, especially in the humanities, students are really eager, I mean, students and parents of students are really eager to make professional links. Like so, you know, what do you do with an English degree? What do you do with an art history degree? And one of the things that my institution has done is to set up a number of community partnerships. So that in some cases, these are formal internships. In some cases, it's a list of institutions who always are in need of students to connect, you know, for interns for, in this case, we usually give students credit rather than, hey, but it's a set of, we call them community partners with the university. And so I wonder whether or not that's something that the Arts Council could in a sense serve not, you know, not to, but to have a list to kind of keep our eyes open for groups or organizations that we could then direct towards Amherst College students or some office. I mean, at my institution, it's called the Office of Experiential Learning. But the other thing, so I just wonder whether or not that's something that as we see institutions that or groups, you know, that we could say, ah, you know, here's five groups, if students are looking for internships would be a good connection. The other, so that would be one possibility. And the other related possibility is that for particular courses, like the soundscapes courses or other or other course where students or faculty are trying to develop experiential learning and to actually get students out into the community. I mean, of course it can be done just sort of ad hoc, but in some ways it's like we have the list of all these groups that are looking for funding. And we kind of know what's going on. And it's sort of that information, I don't wanna say kind of dies with us, but, you know, it sort of stays in the house unless you're really looking to see where the Arts Council money goes. It just seems like there's, we have a lot of information and groups and you have talented students who are looking to develop real world professional connections and things for their CV that is more than file, you know, that's real. So is there some way and maybe, you know, there must be an office at Amherst College that does experiential learning or, you know, some outreach. But how could we do that better? I guess. Sure. So the Center for Community Engagement where my home is is probably the logical place. And so we partner with everyone from the Mead Art Museum to the Sustainability Office, the Career Center and our primary responsibility is local partnerships. And when I think about local partnerships, I often talk about it in terms of like a wheel with a hub and spokes. So what I always try to do with a partnership is have as many different connections with the college as possible. So if a faculty member goes on sabbatical or students go home over the summer, it's not that the relationship hinges on one relationship, it's actually like a network of support and connections for the college. So the example that I often go back to is the Amherst Survival Center. I was the board president at the Survival Center for a number of years. We've had interns. We're doing a new federal work study program with them. The Spanish department does translation work. We just did a day of service and students sorted foods. It's all kinds of networks. The former head of HR was on the board. And when I think about the kind of connections that we could make with other organizations in the community, it's the same kind of hub and spokes thing. So students have different kinds of structural limitations like classes are generally held between 10 and three. And so if you're a nonprofit that's open from nine to five, it's often hard to have a student that would go in and do an internship or volunteering because internships don't carry credit, which is where classes and project-based work can really be very successful. But there's also the kind of technical expertise that exists at the college as well. And so we have the Writing Center. We've got the library. How do we connect resources? And so part of it might be, I realize I'm way over my time and Gabrielle has things to talk about too, but maybe it's sort of being in a better relationship so that we're in conversation about what's happening with arts and culture in the community and the needs that you're hearing and the resources that you're seeing that might be able to connect with the college. So it, I guess that's sort of my sense of partnerships that it should be sustainable. It should be networked. So it's not just one person doing one thing. And then it's driven by, yeah, go ahead. I mean, but so would it be useful? I mean, would it be useful to have a further, in a further conversation to have a list of five groups that we think you should reach out to? That would, I mean, I'm just making up a number, but a list of groups that are big, I mean, big enough, I don't know, I'm thinking of galleries and, like not aside from the need, but like if students are interested in commercial galleries or like links because that stuff we can provide. I mean, we... And I would ask your organizations if that's what they're looking for. So there is a new staff person in the career center who is actively looking for local internship sites, you know, in the town and in the Valley. So I think that that's where you have the relationship and you can talk with your folks and think about, you know, what are the kinds of resources that are needed? I would just say think as creatively as possible. So to go back to a survival center example, when we moved into the new building 10 years ago, it was a very different facility. I don't know how many of you were there, but it required a different mindset and skill set around cleaning and maintenance because it was a town-owned building and then it was the survival center on building. And so there was someone in the facilities department that worked with the survival center to help them think strategically about the care and maintenance of the building. So just, you know, it's as much as I think student energy and student connections are great. The college is an institution that has all kinds of resources, you know, Libby is amazing and she is my go-to person for K through 12 education regardless of its arts or not, just because she's so thoughtful. So there's just lots of ways to make connections. So the more we know each other and the more I understand what you're doing and the more that we talk about the kinds of things that are happening, I think the more those connections can be made. Yeah, I really appreciate that idea, Christine. I'll just simplify or my simplified understanding too is that, you know, we are here as a resource and we do, when we issue our grant award letters, we do try to take advantage of that the past couple of years to gather information, like this year we've gathered information about the block party, last year we gathered information about accessibility. So, you know, there are a couple of times when we really do have direct contact with a lot of artists and folks in the community. And so we can do it in a methodical way at that time, but we also just, you know, just because of what we do, you know, annually, we have kind of a pretty good ear to the ground in terms of the events that are happening, hopefully getting better as we get more in person. So, it'd be an informal, sorry, go ahead. I was just saying, I think the more we can get people out to cultural council events, the more they're gonna have the imagination for what's possible. So I think, so that's why I'm like so focused on relationship building and getting people out and about to see what's happening. Yeah. Yeah. So, oh, go ahead. And Leah, let's just do one more question for Sarah and then I do wanna move over to the block party a little bit. Okay, I just got back from work. So I kind of missed the beginning of this conversation. So let me know if this isn't exactly relevant, but I am a senior in high school. So I've experienced the relationship between the public schools in Amherst College in taking, I had the opportunity to take an architecture course for free. And so having, so I kind of have had the like taking art classes and then in that architecture class, there was a lot of work with the town. So I think Amherst College does this really great job in my experience of this partnership with the high school. And a lot of my friends are interested in these classes. So I think that is something really interesting and I got to do it in the arts. I know other people might do it like in the sciences or things. But that is, I firsthand love that connection. I also have talked to some of the people running the Meade Museum outreach at events. I don't know if this was talked about, but having connections I think between when I'm super interested in getting youth involved in arts, like in terms of like kindergarten to sixth grade, getting kids really excited about art really broadens our perspective, grant pool later and it's also just great. So I think having college students working with the Meade and being the ones to get children excited about art, like that was happening outside, I thought that was great. And then also I've been thinking a lot about brainstorming ways to kind of make a newsletter or some way to condense all the information about when the dates of our grants are and push it either on social media or paper to hopefully have more people come and community involvement. So yeah. Those are great points, Leah. And one thing that we did for the first time this year that I'd like to expand further is when we published our list of grant recipients online, we also included their dates in that single PDF. So it's, and some of them are ranges, some of them are ongoing, but we are, and there's a somewhere down the line, there's a Google calendar coming. We're not quite there yet, but I do think that truly just sort of helping people understand when things are happening is really beneficial. And then, Rachel, can we go quickly so we can move on? I have nothing to add to all of this. I just wanted to thank everybody, but I think the key question I have really for communications purposes is we have Sarah's volunteer to be the point person for Amherst College. As far as the cultural council is concerned, do we all just go to Sarah and say, hey, we have this or we have that? Is there some kind of, we don't have to talk about it right now, but I'm just talking about in terms of, within the cultural council, in terms of communicating with Amherst College, is there some kind of coordinated effort? Do we just always see the co-chairs? And if we're happy to, if Sarah's happy to just kind of talk to us as ideas come up. So that's just something for, we can talk about later. I just wanted to raise that as internally, how do we streamline communications? So that's a question. I think it's a good idea. And I'm sure Sarah wants to be friends with everybody. I do, I'm a very social person. We should get organized there, yeah. Yeah. And it is a good question. I think it'll be a case, it might be a little bit case by case too. I mean, if we have a formal council decision that we've decided to proceed, that's one thing, but if somebody wants to reach out and just brainstorm or whatever, I think that's probably okay too. I'm guessing, I get the sense that that would be okay as well. Absolutely. So, and you're gonna stick around, right Sarah? I'm gonna stick around for a little while, yeah. Yeah, okay, great. And we're gonna try to, we usually try to wrap up within 90 minutes. So that's kind of what I have in mind is a 730 in time, if not a little sooner, but this is gonna be a fairly rich discussion about the block party. And so I'll give just a couple of really quick remarks and then mostly this'll be sort of Gabrielle's show to talk things through over, but just in terms of where we stand right now. So in our allocation, we are allowed to use up to 20%. This wasn't a full 20%, it's, but we use about 10, 12% so that we have $7,500 that the ACC has committed to the spring into arts block party. And Julianne and I have talked to a few people in the side. I think the cleanest way to do this is to, is for ACC funds to go towards production costs and not artists costs, which sounds a little backwards, but we did that, we thought that because rather than sort of, we were afraid that funding artists would sort of undercut our grant review process. And we have a very sort of scripted prescribed process for distributing funds out to artists. And so, there is this idea of maybe having two like headline bands on the main stage that need to be paid. And I think, because the bid is gonna contribute some funds and the cultural district is gonna contribute some funds, we can keep the ACC funds for sort of, is that below the line costs, of which there'll be plenty to cover. And I think that just kind of, that allows us to monetarily support this project without sort of having the, we just wanna avoid any appearance of going outside of our normal process on that. So I guess, that was the biggest thing I wanted to make sure that I sort of shared with folks. And then the rest of the conversation should be probably more interesting and I think just like rich and generative. And so Gabrielle is kind of gonna sketch out like what the event actually looks like. And I did send out a very short document with just a little Google map screenshot because it kind of captures how much landscape we have to work with. But I think the biggest, oh, there is something else I wanna say. So the biggest question is, just asking us as a council to think about all the applicants that we reviewed and to consider, ways that these folks could be most showcased, utilized, drawn upon to make this just a truly awesome block party. And Julianne and I were talking a little bit earlier today. And one thing that I wanna make really clear is that we offered every single grantee the opportunity to get involved with this upfront. So we made that offer and that is an unconditional offer to everybody who got a grant from us. We will find some kind of a space for you if you wanna be showcased at this event. And that was the intention of putting that survey out there. So I think what we do today is maybe like, it might be it's like, oh, we really need the fire juggler at the Amity Street lot. I mean, this is more of kind of, we might do a little bit of additional proactive outreach to certain grantees to really try to see if they're willing to help out. But in terms of being fair and sort of across the board, we did make that in our original letters. And I think it's just important to say out loud in the public meeting because I don't want this to turn into something where we prefer one grantee over another things like that. Julianne, you're muted. I know we invited everyone. I didn't know that we were promising to provide space for fire jugglers but very enthusiastic. So, right. I mean, I think enough said on that front out of me and I probably kind of mangled the whole message but I think folks understand what I'm saying and please clarify if not or ask for clarification or not. But now I'm gonna just turn it over to Gabrielle. She's been with us before and has given us updates on this project. And so now we are moving forward. Thanks Matt. Good evening everybody. Hi, Sarah Barr. So a small group of us, Matt, Eleanor, Matt, Liz and myself to sort of get some preliminary sort of boundaries to this concept. I wanna start by saying I think that the name is going to go more into the spring into our cultural events and we're gonna sort of remove the block party name from it because although we do want to close off the block from the top of Amity and where North and South doesn't meet between the two banks, if you will and go all the way down to North Prospect Street which is where you see the Strong House Museum. Block party, I think for the town of Amherst and our greater community is really about food and the businesses. And we do that in September and that's very important to us. This block area is not as food heavy. It's not as many restaurants. We have 47 restaurants down bound. The majority of them are where we usually host the block party which is between North Pleasant all the way down to Kendrick Park. So we're going to call this more of a cultural party or something like that because what we really wanna do is on May 7th which is a front bank from 12 to 5 p.m. is host a event that is about artisans, crafters, performers and makers and hope that this brings people downtown to support all of our businesses and restaurants and things but we're not going to ask all the restaurants to come over to this block because I can tell you right now, that's what it'll be. It'll all be food and we won't have any space for artists and crafters and makers, et cetera. One of the things that we are asking is the town of Amherst also give us the entire parking lot that is to the right of the Amherst coffee. So the Amherst cinema parking lot which is back behind it will remain open for parking which I think we're going to definitely want and need and that Amherst parking lot will become a really great area for makers, creatives and artisans to set up their tables and they can sell and they can have a market space there. So that's going to be curated by a small group who is going to hopefully some of the people that were awarded cultural council grants and also makers in Western math. So it's going to be a very local makers market but we're really excited about that. We're also looking at the Strong House which is the Amherst History Museum and their front yard. They're talking amongst their board members about something that they can curate inside but we have that beautiful front lawn which may be where the fire juggler goes. Right next door to that we have the Jones Library who we're reaching out to. We're going to communicate with them about what they might want to do inside the library but again we've got that great parking lot outside and I believe they're going to be putting up the tents again this summer so that might be something that can host something inside the tent. Right up from them we have the bank building and the Roberts Block which is now Kaia International. They have a really beautiful out front patio where we can do things with the Meade and the Baneski maybe Eleanor had reached out like a dinosaur dig and then need a hands-on art project for younger artisans and future artists which can be really great. And then of course we have the Drake right next door which is going to wrap the evening with our five o'clock Chamber Music Series is going to happen at five p.m. that day to bring that all in and bring it all home which I think is going to be really nice. We would like to put a large portable stage at the corner of North where sort of the Amity Meads North and South Pleasant and on that stage we can do lots of different things. We can definitely bring in sort of a bigger name fun funk band something that'll really drive people but before and after that band we can work with again artists and creatives that and performers that have been awarded from you if they would like to come and join us. That stage can be used for dance it can be used for spoken word it can be used for music. So we have a lot to play with there and a lot of programs. We would like to engage Amherst Cinema we would like to engage the Dickinson Museum we would like to engage the businesses that are directly right there. So Amherst Coffee, Goldberry and Asheria Vespa and see how they wanna be part of it. And then in the parking lot that is between Bank of America and Amherst Coffee, Asheria Vespa, Goldberry we would like to do a paint by numbers community mural. We have a design that was done by a local artist, Nikki Abelli who is also part of Amherst Rec and it will be a really cool way to have people from two years old to 102 years old be part of creating this big beautiful mural it'll go on the side of the Oriental flavor building facing that parking lot. And we can even do a little plaque that says all the names of everybody who made that possible. So we're very excited about all of that. The bid will be putting in funds. And of course, as Matt mentioned, the cultural district received the grant and a portion of that grant will be going into this as well. So willing to open it up to any questions or comments. Robin. I didn't know who was supposed to take notes. Well, so how many stages are you looking at and are they gonna have skins, covers over them and... This will be a shine only event. Just like every other outdoor event that happens in Amherst we can really only do it if it's nice out. The stage, I don't know Robin if you attended the block party that we did this in September, we rent affordable space in the green field. And it's a great stage, it's very professional. It has some fun protection and it will hire Kwon Dyke found who we've worked with in the past. That's great. So is there gonna be like an emcee or someone introducing acts? And if there is, is it going to be ASL signed? Is anything going to be ASL signed? And for the strong museum outside is good inside is not accessible. Just so you know. Again, it's what we're doing with the strong museum is asking them if they want to engage in this and if they have something that if they have a display or anything that they wanna have open to the public if they can do that. I don't know if they're accessible or not. In terms of ASL, I think that that's a great idea. And we will add that to our list of things to include in this programming. So do you, what is this fire throw? I mean, it's great, but is that someone who's already been hired or is that just an idea or a concept? Or will it be like people on stilts and puppeteers and storytellers? Is that all still being figured out? Is, you know, they're separate stages. Yeah, so Robin, I was making a joke. I was making a joke about the fire, fire breathers. That's what I was wondering. The point is, and I think we can, we just asked Gabrielle to take another second and kind of slow down with it. But what I was hoping for is that we as a council can look at, you know, the spaces that we currently have in mind and just sort of like, like when I said, you got everybody a draft document that included the CAIA front lawn as like a very much identified space. And everybody knows what I'm talking about. It's, I hope it's sort of at Amity and Pleasant. It's the big, used to be a co-working building. Now it says CAIA, CAIA. That front lawn slash porch space is up for grabs. I mean, you know, that's like a true identified space where we can showcase grantees pretty much throughout the five hours. And then in front of the Jones slash potentially inside the Jones is a second space. And I think the strong house front lawn would be a third space. So really that table that I sent out before should have that. So that's three, CAIA, Jones and strong house and then potentially time on the main stage as well. And then also the parking lot that is, you know, I don't know who your granters are. I mean, I do have a list, but I don't know what they do. But if you have a multimedia artist or a potter or a painter or something, they can set up a table and display and sell what they've made, right, Matt? You're talking about the craft vendors' amity lot? Mm-hmm, yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. And that's actually something we really want to message very explicitly to everybody is for folks who are makers and who sell their wares, we wanna give them a chance to set up a tent. Cody, please. All right. I mean, I had a really cool idea for one of our grantees of this, one of our grantees is older now. How about, and I was thinking maybe, we read Shell say, hey, you want to do a like a showcase as a way to promote the event which we'll have in two weeks after the block. I'll be interested to see if we can make that happen. Yeah, absolutely. I think what's exciting about this right now is that you sent out a survey and basically when people say, yes, I wanna be part of it, we're going to find a way to program that. And if they're promoting something that's in the future or that they're doing somewhere else, this is a great opportunity for free promo to give a taste of who they are and what they're doing. I think absolutely. Leah has her hand up, but let me just really quickly. And we usually disable the chat for these webinars. The chat happens to be turned on tonight, which is fine because Julianne is keeping an eye on no strangers have appeared, but I'm gonna use that opportunity to drop in. These are the five grantees who have expressed interest so far, just because some folks probably have their panel book up on the side or a list of grantees on the side. So I just wanna show you these are folks who when they got their award letter, they literally put into the little survey. Yes, I'm definitely interested. You gotta read everything pretty carefully to even catch the survey, I'll be honest. So it's gonna bear a little bit of repetition to actually get people in, but just for the sake of our council, these are the five grantees, and then Leah had her hand up. But Julianne, I don't know if you wanna clarify something first. Sure, Liz Larson joined us. Thanks for coming, Liz. Good to have you. Can you repeat the date and time? Because I didn't quite catch that and I want that in the notes. Sunday, May 7th, and I think Matt, when we met Matt, Liz and Eleanor and I, we said 12 to five sounds really good. So daytime event. Great, thank you. And then do you have a place where what kind of volunteer work would be like as cultural members, like we'll probably have like a table, but like I'm also interested in like walking around and what, when you think about this event, what is like help, where do you need help with volunteer work and how do we do that? Yeah, so having done the block parties that takes over all of North and South pleasant, volunteers for this are going to be critical. That is something that we'll know more about when we know more about who, what, where they're gonna be. But this is gonna be a big sort of all hands-on deck. We'll bring out all of our tents for the makers if they don't have tents for themselves. We're gonna have a lot of people bringing tables. Load in and load out and clean up for these are huge. We have to leave the area just as we found it. So, we'll all get there early. For the fall block party, we close the street down about two and a half hours before the parties then start. We'll be doing the same thing because we need to empty the parking lot and make sure there are no cars in there. So, it's a big intensive fun. It's really fun. Like volunteers have a lot of fun, but we'll know more about where we need volunteers as we get closer and as we know, what does valley, flow and juggle need? Are they teaching? To Robin's question, are we hiring spilt walkers to come in and costume, that type of thing? So, a lot of that will be figured out as we do all the programming and put it all together. And with the kind of just like initial thoughts about things, I was also going to mention we, I worked on a showcase video like about, I want to say like five to six like five minute videos that if there's something happening at Amherst Media, maybe could be played in between films or something. I don't really know, but that is another thing we could offer and it might be interesting to have. Yeah, we definitely need to reach out to the cinema, which we haven't done yet. We wanted to get all this, but we want to reach out to cinema because they might, I mean, it depends how they want to get engaged, but I mean, it could be like, I was at the high school last night and they're performing arts group did a documentary on making last year's musical. And I was like, oh, that should, that would be really cool to have be part of this. I think anything film should be inside because of course we know film in the daylight won't work. So I think that there's great opportunity for a lot of that. Again, a lot of this is focused on who, from your grantees. And I didn't know, Matt, did you want to, was this going to go to grantees during the pandemic as well or? Yeah, so let me, let's talk for a second about sort of, so these five that I put in the chat, you know, they've explicitly said, yes, we're interested. So Eleanor is the one who wrote the festivals and projects grant. By the way, we should be getting an answer on that. This month I did, I did double check with Jay Wang, Jay a few weeks ago. It's weird. The messaging has been a little bit weird because some have come out, but ours is not posted yet. So, you know, I mean, I think you got, some folks who were here a couple of years ago when we did the accessibility, we really did a hard push to improve accessibility. And it took a lot of, you know, case management for lack of a better term, you know, communication, ongoing communication with grantees about, you know, all the various like details that they need to know about. And as we looked at this, we realized this is gonna be a lot of, you know, there will be a lot of this. And so I know that Eleanor and I are already sort of, we're invested in terms of, you know, helping to do that, to do some of that communication. And I think, so I guess I'll start by saying, if anybody else on the council wants to participate in that aspect of things, like, you know, sort of reaching out to grantees and pulling them in, we could definitely use one, maybe two more people to just help with the case management side of things, the communication, you know, we're all volunteers here. So we're doing it, you know, between classes or between jobs or whatever. So it's, you know, one or two more case management type players would really help. And you can think about it or you can email later or whatever. But I think really tonight I would love to, like my hope was that we would get kind of an image of what this was gonna look like and feel like, this spring into arts, you know, block party slash, you know, no food block party. And then genuinely think about our list of grantees. You know, we have 73 grantees. So, you know, besides the five who have already kind of stepped forward and said, you know, yes, we're a game. Are there other grantees in our big list that come to mind as somebody that you think we should really celebrate? And one idea that I had sort of tossed around with Julianne and I don't know if we landed on it, but we could actually, like we could actually all turn our cameras off for five minutes and just skim the panel book and just look at our notes and see if anything comes to mind. And I'll follow the will, if folks don't wanna do that, we don't have to, but it did seem to me like maybe it would just be helpful to take a minute and look through, be to just sort of, you know, do that and then email it to me and Eleanor, you know, after the fact and we can take your comments that way too. But I felt like there's no time like the present and, you know, time between our meetings sometimes gets a little scarce. So, I don't know, how do folks feel about that idea? Eleanor says that's a good idea. Yeah, it's like doing an in-class assignment. I like it. That's right, okay. In addition to that, as this is a public meeting and Liz Larson from the Amherst Historical Society has joined us, I think we should ask, if there's a way for Liz to communicate with us, like I said, we don't usually have the chat to know if Liz wanted to- You could promote Liz, because she's actually working with Gabrielle in the middle. Yeah, so I hope that's okay. And if not, you can hop on here and tell me it's not. But before we get into that, maybe we should hear from Liz. Well, yeah, but she's working with Gabrielle too. So she's- They're like all, you guys are all right there together? Sitting right across the table? No, but Liz is just trying to- So right now the committee, as the starter committee, and we want more people to join this working group are Matt, Eleanor, myself, and Liz, just because our two organizations, we're trying to get the gooey sticky stuff down before we join on. So Liz, I don't think, Liz would be texting me if she wanted to like, shout out anything. Okay, I might have put her on the spot there so you can certainly go ahead and turn off our cameras and take that break then. Hi, Liz, yeah, please stay. Please stay and join us. You don't have to go. Liz says she's good. She's good for information. Thank you. Okay, so why don't we just turn off the cameras for five minutes and tell us 706 or 707 and then we'll reconvene. This version of the panel book though, Matt, hello. Oh, any version? I mean, I would just look at your list of artists, which is on the ACC website. Well, that's what I'm saying, of the approved grants, right? Yes. Yeah, okay, not, okay. So the folks are potentially ready to re-engage. If we could do that, or we can give it a couple more minutes. If, I was actually quite surprised when I just pulled up the list of grantees, I immediately saw two or three that I just thought, yep, yep, yep, you know, and obviously all of our grantees are wonderful. And truly, if somebody's putting on a concert series and they wanna have a booth or a table and pass out pamphlets at this, absolutely, that's a wonderful thing. But certain ones really lend themselves to a block party. So yeah, I'm over here struggling because it's first just kind of sorting it into who would be more like a performance type thing, right? Versus who would have space to have something more like a table or a booth where they're interacting. And two or three, it's like everybody, you know? So, you know, and then, you know, they have to want to do it. Like can they do kind of a presentation of the ferry festival at, you know, a small table size thing? You know, is there enough there that somebody would think that they could connect with the community and do something inspirational? I don't know, you know? So it is, like you said earlier, it's a lot of correspondence with people to pitch the idea, welcome them and help them brainstorm a bit about this is how this could work for you. And Rachel has her hand up and down. I was just gonna say that I feel like strategically if we're going to be following up or kind of trying to encourage certain of the grantees to participate, I will probably start with the ones to whom we gave full funding, right? Or close to it because I know we had to scale back a percentage for everybody, but it seems like that layer of people or applicants to whom we gave full funding or close to it will be the ones. And I know that among them, they have very different projects. So some of them, for example, if it's the powwow, for example, or others ones that will not yet be ready to be shared or shown. But so in that case, do they just wanna put a brochure or some kind of QR code that leads to their website for more information? That type of thing doesn't have to take up a lot of space, right? They can share a table. And then for the others, if they are just as a random example off the top of my head, the walking tour that it won't be ready yet, I presume to be launched at all. But if the people who are doing it, exactly, if they wanna kind of just have some kind of information about it happening, I'm just giving an example of what can be done. And I don't, I'm agnostic about whether or not we do it this way or at all, but that's just my thought on that. I wanna hear Gabriel has to say, but I have a comment as well. I'm just, I'm the one doing the walking tour as well. So it won't be ready. And yes, it would be nice to have maybe some pamphlet or something. Yeah. And I would say that actually as far as prioritizing people that were given full funding, I don't know. I don't know that I would steer it this way. I think I would still take this from a public benefit point of view. And the amount that we funded was based on a lot of criteria that is either not related to the block party or that the, I'm sorry, the arts and culture event. So I would step back and see it as public benefit. And in some ways, there are some that it's really hard that we can't fully fund them, but this may be able to give them the opportunity to connect with the community that builds the public benefit they can provide because there's traction. So I'd be a bit looser with it and really just look for who's a fit and who's inspired and excited and can execute. Yeah, sorry, can I just then respond to that to clarify what I was saying? It's just that I said, we could prioritize, strategize those ones to whom we gave full or close to full funding. But I think definitely that I didn't follow up and say that everybody should get still a reminder and an encouragement to participate. And I just don't know what kind of time and resources people all have to spend on the communications. And just to be fair, we gave a blanket invitation in the letter that we sent out to every grantee. I also don't necessarily feel that, I mean, this isn't limited exclusively to grantees if we're bringing in other acts and stuff. So, I would anticipate interest bubbling up from the community. Yeah, that's such a key point, but Robin, go ahead. But I just, I want to say, we'll have some funded folks that we will need to outreach to people who are non-grantees as well. But our charge as a council is the grantees themselves. I'm sorry, Robin, you've been waiting very patiently. Well, that's okay. Is it going to be more than one stage? And like you mentioned, maybe using the library, that could be maybe the children's area where there's more participation than storytelling and magic and painting or whatever it is they do. So I'm wondering if it's, and is it going to be like an area where we could have dancers or, and are we gonna like bring in paid more headliners to this and is there the money and the system? Oh, and the powwow. I think that if they wanted to do not the powwow, but something related to that, I think that would be great. And I was just like the salsa dance, which also has food, but they might be able to just do salsa dance and people could dance and get instruction. And I'd like to, I don't think the sink last one can tour because it really isn't ready, but other things might be able to be adjusted. Yeah. Oh, can I speak to the stage question? I think, because you mentioned that before, and I want to, I mean, I think, Oh, that's a man of my self. No, it's the most important question it is. So we're working at one, like one main stage, which is going to be a true stage. And then I think we have two parking lots, one of which will be craft vendors. The other one though, could be kind of stage-ified a little. And then we have two or three. Mass, the paint by numbers goes on in the other one. So that's going to be pretty. Okay. So neither one of those is really for performance. So really, we, but we may have like one or two spots on the main stage between the paid acts. That's, we talked to, I mean, kind of, the timing is going to be a little bit, you know, fluid, I think, but there will be time between the paid acts on the main stage. And then those grassy lawns that, like, if you had to dance, you know, I mean, if it was a, you couldn't do ballet on the grassy lawn, but you could do some kinds of performance. And sometimes the dancers can bring. I just want to be careful with dance, because they're going to, like, depending on what kind of dance flooring and stability is very important. So I think dance has to happen on the stage. It won't have a Marley floor. And, and, you know, so just, but we can, that, that's something what's really awesome about this is that we are in the very, very, very baby stages. We literally have a date, a fun, wide open concept. And as things come to us, we can be like, oh, do we need to make a platform stage? Because we could build a platform stage down at the North Prospect, South Prospect, and have a dance stage there. You know, that's doable. Klondike Sound has one of those. So I don't want to get too caught up in, like, you know, I think we've got like an incredible spread of different places to put things, including the entire middle of the street. So if you had some kind of like really cool performer, they could be centered in the middle of the street and we draw, you know, a caution line circle around them and their, their, their stage. And Julianne, yes, they can, but each six foot by 12 foot section of a Marley floor is like a hundred pounds. I've seen it done before. Wow. We did it for the block party this year and I went and got the whole Marley stage and put it up on the, where Miss Saigon is. And it's taping and it's, it's, it's, it's big. It's, it's a bigger production than I remember when I was young and like dancing. So, and yes, we will be getting weather insurance, Eleanor, absolutely $20,000 worth of it. But you have to pick the, how much rain, right? You haven't, you don't just get it. It's like, well, anyway, you can go over that later. We get it for the fall party every year. So we're, we're pretty bulbous. Yeah, but so were you telling them about our 7,500 going to cover costs of like stage and sound and things like that? When you said that kind of the, okay, so that's good. Yeah. Yep. And, and I don't think there won't be any one item that'll be 7,500, but there'll be a number of small ones. And, you know, we talk about different ways to structure. And I, and I think the easiest thing for us to do is just, is just to, you know, pay it straight out of the, the ACC account. And that, and it's the most, you know, sort of upfront and transparent. So, and then all those contracts will be with the ACC. Yeah. No. So, oh, I was going to say, so you mentioned salsa, Robin. That was one of the two or three that really jumped to mine for me. Yeah. I'm wondering if folks had others that really jumped out to them? Maybe African drumming. Yep. Yep. And a couple of them already are in the five that said they were interested. So something with the pow-wow, you know, maybe the West African dance workshop. If we're doing kids, you know, magic, which are, there's a couple of them. We have a lot of, oh, sorry. Yeah. I mean, there's, I mean, they're just ideas is kind of how we want to do it. And if we have these other places, the grassy knolls and the library, it can expand and have more, but it's kind of like paint this broader palette. And then you figure out, you know, which colors you can use and which ones you don't. And then putting on my downtown Amherst Foundation hat, which we received a grant from you to make all of our high school programming that we're doing, Gratis, you know, it would be fun to see if we have gaps, we could go to the high school performing arts department, you know, so we've had two cabaret nights. We're going to, by the end of the year, have four different jazz nights. We're hosting in a fundraising event for the orchestra ensemble to get better instruments tomorrow night at the Drake. So those are all things that we could bring as well that could be great throughout the event. So that would folk like that would bring the Drake and the downtown Amherst Foundation grant from you to life. Yeah, I would also add on as a high school student, we do, we put on this like, this playing festival at the high school. I don't know if you're familiar with like briefs or student-written, which are five to 10 minute plays. Briefs is in the fall and they're picked, but student-written is in the spring, probably very close in line with this event and it's student-written like five to 10 minute plays with like minimal sets, costumes could be bring, which would be, I think a really cool way to bring in performing arts department. We also have dance ensembles. We have a drumming ensemble, which I think would be really cool to involve. And then I was also going to say, adding on to what Robin was talking about, we have a lot of arts education kinds of things like I or interactive, there was some fabric arts, dine scarves, like the Monarch butterfly project. And a lot of, I could see these being vendor tables where people get involved in creating and it wouldn't be the full scale of the project, but I think it would be interesting to have some of those education based events at the spring thing. Yeah, I think it's a great idea. And obviously we have a liaison to the schools because we did give the grant through the bid to the schools, but I think certainly we can go above and beyond that. Is the Drake going to be a stage for the whole festival or are you thinking that's just for the closers? No, the Drake has programming that evening at 5 p.m. the Chamber Concert Series, they'll be doing load in and sound checks earlier that day. So the Drake is off the calendar, like it's not part of the block party as it were. Oh, God. The stage that we bring in will be part of that. And so the Council awarded the Downtown Amherst Foundation through the Drake Fund. So like we could invite the funds that that made possible the high school performers to come to the main stage at the party, but not on the Drake stage. For sure. And are the concerts kind of, is that, are you expecting like people at the spring event are going funneled to those concerts or is that completely different? It's completely different, but what a nice way to wrap things up with a Chamber Music Concert, it is a ticketed event. So I don't wanna make it part of this because I think it's very important that everything at this event be free, but it'll be happening. Got it. Thank you so much. I know we covered this earlier and I didn't write it down and numbers flying around my head, but the date I have it in our letters is May 19th and that's a Friday. Yes, and that again, that was like spit-fold at some point, but it really needs to be on a Sunday or we can't get parking. We can't get the parking lot. So we don't really have a date right this minute. Yeah, May 7th. Thank you. That's what I said. I didn't write it down. So actually what the segue with that, Matt, is that because we sent out every single letter wrong. It's tentative. It's tentative. That's fine. No, no, no, it's actually great. It's an opportunity because now we have to correct ourselves. So we can craft some sort of a message and take that to the community and maybe be suggestive of, hey, a little bit more of a call to action that if you're a performer that does this kind of stuff or would you be able to present your art or fiber and fabric making and weaving at a table type thing? So I think we could, this is great to like really kind of streamline some of this outreach, prompt them again with the new date and kind of pitch different concepts and then see if any of them are going, oh, that's me, I could do that. But I think it would really lighten the load as far as having to email everyone that we're thinking of. And we get to invite them. Great point. It's an excuse. Juliana also like that weaver or textile, they could do like a hands-on, like people could weave with them or like learn, they could do a demonstration or they could literally just sell. You know what I mean? Like they could just be like, yeah, I just want to have, like I want to have all my stuff and I want to sell all this stuff. The makers market that we did at the Drake in December, all 13 makers said it was the highest grossing night they've had this year. So there's clearly an appetite to support artists and makers and creative. So I think that that's really exciting. And if somebody were to come to us who's not a grantee and who is a maker in the community and they say, I want to be there, I want a table, what are we doing for them? Do they, does anybody have to pay for that or how does that work? Yeah, Liz has a small group of people that she'll be working with. She'll be the one working on the maker side of this. So anybody who has a cultural council grant who wants to be part of it is in and then anybody who wants to do, we're trying to look at a sliding scale and figure that out. We don't have the answer right now, but we'll put out a call to Artisans Crafters and makers for that. It's great, it's great. Yeah, okay, thank you for that. I think this is a huge help that we need to reach people again. So, and there are lots of people to participate and we can sketch those out. So I think, I think, oh, go ahead, Robin. Are we looking at only 20, 23 grantees? What if someone from 22 or 21 who we granted but didn't apply in 23 wants to participate? Maybe what we should do is also at some point do a social media post just in general and we'll have to think carefully how to craft that as far as to go back to prior grant years. I'd have to get that list in a different way. Well, I don't mean necessarily reaching out to them, but if they see this and say, oh, In the interest of everybody who has shut down for COVID, we want people to participate, whether they're grantees or not this year, prior years, if it brings community benefit, we want this. And a good time, right? And, I mean, I think the way we have to do it is be open to any 20, 23 grantee. I think they're the priority. And then beyond that, we can, it might be a little bit of a, I hate to say a time sensitive thing. Like, as people come to us, we can find spots for them and we do have a lot of creativity and flexibility, but I think at some point, we'll run out of space. Hopefully this thing is rich and teeming with great artists and not, I think that would be a problem we'd like to have if we have too many. Yeah, I think. To Matt, to that point, I'm gonna tell you right now from experience and just a little bit of this that we've done, the reason why we're going to have a pay scale is because it's so exciting and incredible how many artists, performers, et cetera, are in the Valley. I mean, it's huge. So it's gonna be Amherst centered first, and then we'll kind of trickle out from there, but it's not gonna be hard to fill this and to pack it full of really incredible talent. Yeah, it's great, it's exciting. Yeah. So looking at the clock, if folks think about this and have other thoughts, just shoot them over to me and Eleanor and we will bring them to Gabrielle and Liz. And then we are gonna, we're looking for one or two other people to help with case management. Leigh, I know you're interested and that's awesome. And you also helped us with the accessibility. So I, you know, you kind of know what goes into the back and forth. It takes a lot, but it's worth it, but it does take a lot to sort of, you know, help answer all the questions that folks have. And oh, I should, one last thing I didn't mention earlier that I just wanna make sure everybody knew is that the mead has really explicitly said, you know, yes, we're in and we wanna have a place there as has Beneski. And Beneski, it sounds, Eleanor, correct me, like archeological dig, is that the direction they're thinking? Yes, yeah, I had thrown that in there and it was, they really liked that, I think. So that's, I think what we're thinking of kind of like a sandbox, kind of not archeological dig. But I think their availability does depend a little bit on student of like their students who work there and like their availability around then. The only, I think I haven't, still haven't heard back from the Dickinson. So if anyone has another contact or something, I can like look at who I sent an email to, but or if anyone knows someone there who would be good to talk to. Let me know. We're gonna move out to the Eric Harle and the Yiddish Book Center and Hampshire College and UMass as well. I'm not sure when, who, where, but, you know. And Eleanor, I can actually help you with all of that. Thank you, Sarah. So I just, I do wanna throw out that cultural district is important as well because the cultural district's putting a lot of money in a good sizeable amount. So we'd like to wait for Carl, Yiddish, Hampshire to see what we have from the cultural district and the cultural council before we expand. Yeah, that's a good point. The geographic boundaries, if folks don't know of the district, only includes, now in spirit, I think we, you know, it's bigger than that, but the reality is that there is a map and I've seen the map and it doesn't go all the way into itself. So- And while it sounds like we have a ton of space, it's incredible how quickly and especially if there's, you know, I mean, the fall block party, 7,200 people came to that. Wow. So, you know, this is the first year, this is our first annual, but I think we have to be, you know, we wanna, you know, we've got to have a lot of pedestrian space and we have to have space for people to breathe and move and feel safe. It's also our first, this is the first annual, you know, so I think our focus just needs to be on, yeah, on having something that people enjoy and that they look forward to next year and, you know, that kind of always leaving, always leave them wanting more concept, you know, somehow that might apply to our planning here as well. That's a great point about it being asked. Yeah. Speaking of always leave them wanting more. Since we're at 7.30, the minutes, and Gabrielle and Sarah, I don't know if there's any other urgent items that you all wanted to come to. I did wanna get our, it's just important that we get our minutes posted for the deliberation meetings, because it's such a big part of our process, you know. So, but Gabrielle, please. Can I go? Oh yeah, you may be excused, yes. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Gabrielle. Take care. Thank you. Bye. So does, I did send them out, there's a kind of late this afternoon, but I did send out draft minutes of the deliberation meetings. Does anybody have comments on those or wanna make a motion to post them? Question. My comment is I'm good. Still fine. Is that a motion? I'll make a motion to post or approve. Seconded. Okay. I'll do a roll call. Robin. Yes, whatever. Julianne. Yes. Cody. So, Cody, you're muted. Yes. Rachel. I made the motion. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought it was. And Christie. Yes. Wait, so then I think I missed somebody on the vote then. Leah. Leah. I wrote them to do, do I still vote to approve? Yes. Yeah. Okay, then yes. All right. Well, thank you very much for doing that. I'm gonna make sure that was taken care of. The other, I did, I did add to the agenda late a grants update because Julianne, we, so, so folks may remember that MCC just knew this year. I think because there were so many COVID amendment requests that were date changes, I mean, there's just so many tweaks. MCC for this year's grants allows us to approve date changes and amendment changes with just two members as opposed to a quorum. But we do need to update what changes we approved. And then those need to go into the minutes for public posting. And Leah, we can email you those so you get the, whatever details, correct? But Julianne, I don't have them in front of me. And I think there's only one or two. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. There's only one or two. And they're both just date changes, I believe. Yeah, okay. So I think I do have them. And I'm sorry that I have some background noise here, but let me, let me see if I can run through them. So one, one that we had was a date change for believe Ghost Ensemble, which is was the grant title was re, we're talking 2023, Matt, right? Before I'm off to the races here. Yeah, this was, it's the Rewild Experimental Ensemble music. This was scheduled for December 16th and it was canceled because of inclement weather and it is now rescheduled for April 16th. Let me see if I can find the other one. Wait, do I have to write down the original date and the rescheduling? We can email it. If you like it again, it was December 16th, 2022 originally. And now it is April 16th, 2020. December 16th? Yeah. Okay. And then let me just pop over into the email and I might be able to find the other one. So modification requests. I only have this one. Let me make sure. No, no, I'm incorrect. There's another one where Paperback Magazine to ask to change theirs. And they are now having their event at the Augusta Savage Gallery and that will be on February 15th. No, really? Let's do it. As far as the original date? Just a second. The original, oh, okay. The original date was March 25th and now it's February 15th, so sooner. And is the venue a change too? Yeah, it did. It did. But I believe it's still at UMass. It was just a different UMass location, okay? So pretty minor changes here. And otherwise with the grant updates, the other information is just that we have about, 50% of the contracts are in. We sent them out January 15th. So pretty much within this week, the other half are due back in and the town received the money. Half of the signed 2023 contracts and all the paperwork are submitted to the town. And we're in good shape processing 2023. We were pretty firm in our letter this time that people needed to take care of this within four weeks. So we'll know better by this time next week if they took that seriously. And a quick 2022 update to the best of my knowledge, we have final grant reports for all, but 10 that we should have them for. And we've contacted everyone. So that was a big question with the direct granting was will people have their events? Will they do the reporting? Will they provide the proper documentation? If we give them the money ahead of time? And at this point, I'd say that, I don't know where that puts us at, over 80% are all to the good so far. So that to me is great news on the direct granting model. One very last thing, and then I think we should adjourn, but I wanted to, I am not sure that we discussed as a council that Toby resigned, but Toby had a personal matter, death in the family, his father passed away early, and he resigned before our deliberation cycle. And I know I've talked to some folks individually about it, but I did want to make everybody aware that he didn't just sort of ghost, he did officially resign, just due to personal circumstances. So Julianne and I, we talked to Angela about trying to get somebody on and onboarded in time for the deliberation cycle. And it just didn't, it just didn't make sense to try to get somebody up to speed on everything when we were already going. So we are gonna go back to her shortly to start working on another candidate for, and I should have, of course, I should have shared this when Sarah was here, because obviously we've had great luck with Amherst College students so far, and we'd love to have more. But so if folks have anybody in mind that you think would be potentially a good candidate or if you wanna put something out on your social media or otherwise, there is a community, a CAF, Community Activity Form on the town website. If you just Google amherst.com, Amherst Mass CAF, it'll come right up and it's a very short form and that puts the individual's name into the hopper so that the town staff are aware of it. Obviously they can just email us or Angela or literally anybody on this commit council can help with that. This is my last few months. So you will be needing a bad opening or loss though. And Robin is going into the sixth year of amazing service and so there'll be two slots, you know, at least two slots to fill. So we're not gonna run in any rush to do this. It's really most imperative when we're getting closer to the deliberation meetings. But, you know, it all takes time just to get the interview scheduled and all that. So just want to play that speaker. If anyone's thinking they'd like to be treasurer going forward since we're losing Robin, she's really whipped it into shape. It's simplified. It's really become, you know, a much lighter task and Robin's really, you know, gone to the mat for us as far as switching from the reimbursement model to the direct grants with all of the modifications that happened with COVID and it made this very complicated but it's really getting to be a well-oiled machine now that's very streamlined. And thank you, Robin. And without the reimbursements also coming in, it should be a lot easier. Yeah, we're just vetting everything up front which and putting it out, you know, within basically a one month period or less and then it's just much better. So just something to keep in mind if anyone is looking to serve even a little bit more. Get to really know what the grants are and what's, you know, going on and follow that much more than I did before. So, and, you know, so that part of it is good. Okay, Cody, I see you said I can help on the chat. Did you mean with case managing grantees that side of things? That is when Cody, yeah, right? That was, I saw it. Yeah. Yeah. All right, I'll let you name down. Okay, everybody. What's that? Oh, Rachel, please go ahead. Yeah, I have two logistics questions. One is, do we have a date for the next meeting? The other one is with regard to recruiting new council members, what is kind of the timeframe? So for example, if we have, we wanna like recommend people to apply. Do you and Julian force each like maybe trying to fill Toby's vacancy in the coming two to three months or is it just whenever someone, because if people can be sending applications at what point are you hoping to review a whole bunch? I guess that's, if you have an idea about that at this point. Just the sooner the better, I think for them to put it in, but in reality, we'll probably try to, we'll work with, really this is the town manager's responsibility and we don't vet things that we, they're the ones who kind of bring us the interviews. And so I would anticipate we'll try to fill both Toby and Robin's slot at the same time rather than, because it's, I mean, she schedules everything sort of at once. So I wouldn't anticipate bringing new folks on until honestly August or September, late summer. So folks have time to think about it and stuff, but it's a quick form to fill out. So I would say, I wouldn't tell for, I would just say as soon as, if they think they met, even if they're not sure if they're interested filling that out, then you learn a lot more through the process. And we had a few people, we've had people who we've interviewed who then said, this sounds great, but we're not interested due to the time commitment or some other reason. I would add that as soon as possible is key and that actually getting through the interview process and as we get into the summer and everybody's out on vacation, it can be kind of hit or miss with the town. So while I don't think someone would actually come in and start their service until around then, we do want to get the process rolling. We do want to, we're already in touch with Angela as far as we need to do this. And if we told people around June, send in your application, there's no way that we'd be likely to bring them in by August or even quite like, in time for deliberation, it'd be really tough. We're actually very lucky to get Eleanor and Keeper. So thank you for being here. Thank you very much. Yes. What was your other? We've been doing, we've been trying to do second Tuesdays, but we'll resolve it through email, we'll get the date. Second Wednesdays. It's Wednesday. I know we're trying to do second Tuesdays and then today was a normal. Oh. Am I crazy? There's always an exception. So we're talking about next month, right? Yes. Okay, because I had down, oh no, that's a different thing. Okay. No, I did. I have down like Valentine's Day, which seems very strange. So. We could potentially do the eighth, but again, I think we can work that out by email. What was the public comment that was on the, the, agenda. Yeah. So that's something that we've been advised we need to keep on there in case there is a member of the public who wishes to make it. Oh, got it. But it wasn't an existing comment that we needed to talk about. No. No. Liz who was in the audience was actually a member of the meeting. I mean, she's just part of Gabrielle's team. I think she's doing some work for the downtown foundation. And I can also add on that I can maybe talk to teachers and spread the word trying to get hopefully three new student members going again. I would get, that's fabulous. Yes. 100%. I mean, I think we, we lost something when we didn't have all three. You know, that was a really fun part of the process. But we did gain. Thank you for leaving us, Brett. What's that, Robin? We are, you're definitely leaving us. I don't, well, I don't know where I'm going to college. So I think it depends. But I don't know if it's, I don't even know if I would be allowed to stay. I would want to, but I wouldn't want to take it from someone who's like living in Amherst and wants to be involved in that. My thinking is that you can use your permanent address at your parents' house. But, you know, I'm definitely going to go outside the lines to make sure that we can keep you as long as you're willing to help. Yes. Need to lose you. I thought, anyway, I thought you told us you declared early acceptance somewhere. No, I was applying, but I got waitlisted. So I'm now, I applied wide. And now I'm just like waiting until spring. But, you know, it's a gambling game. And I feel like it actually, as I was going through the process, there's so many people that are trying to explain. They're like, it's this group of people and they're trying to make it. And I was like, oh, I totally know like what that is. So I think having the experience of reviewing things has made the process of applying for things easier. Oh, that's so, that's such an interesting comment. Yeah. These are committees are wonderful, but they're not always the most efficient way to do. Yeah, kind of like how we're like, oh, like we have too many music grants and it's not personal, but we can't fund as many music grants all the time. And that's basically what college admissions is. And it's not personal, but it's just, you know. Yeah, you have to. That's hilarious. Category. Yes. All right, everybody. I think we're going to adjourn. We can do adjourn all that or just. Are we off? Yeah, we're good. Camera. Okay. Thanks all. Bye. Bye, everyone. Leah, did you get?