Annie DiMartino - Arts Without Barriers Initiative

Annie: 0:00

This is Annie DiMartino and you're listening to One Hour to Doors.

Jon: 0:10

This is One Hour to Doors, a podcast about the business and soul of the festivals and events industry. I am your host, Jon Stone. My guest today is Annie DiMartino. Annie is the deputy director of Performing Arts Center East Side, commonly known by the acronym PACE, in Bellevue, Washington. In 2021, annie created an ad hoc community program named Arts Without Barriers, which, while intending to be a one-off event, caught unexpected traction in the community and not only extended its initial run, but was demanded by the communities. It served to renew and is now in its third season. Annie, I am excited to catch up with you today. Welcome to the show, thank you. How long have you been with PACE and what was your background before that?

Annie: 1:01

Sure, I started with PACE in July of 2019 and I was originally hired on as their education director. So I was brought in to do some research, find out what our community needed, so that we could fill a gap in the arts education sector, and that's what I did up until December of 2019, when we all know what happened in March of 2020 and everything kind of changed dramatically.

Jon: 1:29

It always makes me smile when I hear stories of people who started a new job or started the new business right around like January of 2020. I just I keep running into a lot of folks that had that situation, you know.

Annie: 1:43

Yeah, it's like oops.

Annie: 1:45

Yeah.

Annie: 1:45

But you know, I find it to be fortuitous for me in that moment because it allowed me to dive in and do what I love doing most, which is arts education and figuring out what our community wants and responding to their needs and creating programming based on, well, just true needs of the community, as opposed to any assumptions that I've made.

Annie: 2:08

But when COVID hit, it afforded me the opportunity to also expand and showcase or highlight, I would say, that strategic thinking side of my brain which not a lot of people had come to recognize up until that point. Because when you're in the education realm you tend to work with surveys and participatory action, research methods and bringing kids voices to life and giving them the confidence that they need, and everybody sees that and values that and understands it. But I don't think they also understand the strategy that goes into the creating of or the making of. So it was kind of fun to take that and bring it into where pace was at that moment and how could we utilize that thinking to help pace move in a direction for real time strategic planning and gantt charting and rapid planning processes. So it was an interesting moment in time.

Jon: 3:04

Strategy tells the story about where we are going, not how we're going to get there. And in order to do that, you have to envision and make these big, bold bets about what the future looks like, and that's really hard to do. The pandemic was like the ultimate manifestation of the future, coming out of nowhere and catching all of us off guard Absolutely. So I absolutely hear what you're saying about the silver lining of the pandemic awakening the strategic thinking portion of the brain by cruel brute force, but it's an awakening nevertheless. Have you always worked in the nonprofit sector?

Annie: 3:45

I have. Actually, I started out my very first gig. I was 12, believe it or not and I was with a choir, the Island Sound All Girls Choir, and we were chosen to sing a jingle for a Hawaiian Airlines.

Annie: 4:01

So I was brought into a recording studio at 12. Five other people, yeah, and we all sang this jingle. And then we also I don't know, I'm going to completely date myself we were also doing the opening baseball ceremonies for the Mariners when the Kingdom was still around, so we recorded the music that I think at that time there was 50 or 60 different choirs that were performing with the opening ceremonies, so me and the five girls who did the jingle also stuck around and recorded the song and then did the choreography and was at the Kingdome for, I think, probably their last kickoff celebration.

Jon: 4:40

Do you still remember that jingle?

Annie: 4:42

I don't remember the jingle, but I do remember the dance that we had to do in the Kingdome, which is the way my body works, I guess.

Jon: 4:52

Describe for the listeners the Arts Without Barriers program.

Annie: 4:56

Yeah, so this was something that came about, as we had just alluded to. During COVID, we had raised money for a program which we had been calling Arts Without Barriers, but it looked very differently. We had collaborated with another group to bring in a two-hander called the Naika Project and it was supposed to be something that was performed in three different venues and we were going to collaborate with other organizations to do symposiums and talk and have all of these free programming for a period of three weeks in downtown Bellevue. But clearly, when COVID hit and we had to stop everything, we had raised the money for this program, which everyone was considered of the fact that we had to put it on pause, obviously. But what we had discovered was that this wasn't going to be a one month, a two month, a three month postponement. This was becoming a year postponement.

Annie: 5:52

So what do we do? How do we bring back life and sound and noise to a definitely quiet city? And that's where this version of Arts Without Barriers came into effect. We were having a team meeting and our board president came in talking about music that he had just heard being played on the sidewalk by local artist John Solzano and how fascinating it was and how he enjoyed that sound and we were joking that, oh, that was illegal right now, but it's not going to be illegal in a little bit, because you actually were having conversations with the governor talking about how to lift the restrictions on buskers, and so we said, okay, this is the opportunity. If we act now, we can get ahead of the curve. We can be one of the organizations to bring live music and live entertainment and give our out of work musicians opportunities to go out there and make some money and play their joy.

Annie: 6:49

And this did a couple of things for us. It was music in the air, two hour performances at high foot traffic areas and multiple locations throughout the East Side, raising brand awareness for pace and raising brand awareness for our artists who had been out of work for 18 months. So being able to contract them, have their name and social media handles out there, reminding everyone that they're back, that they had spent 18 months maybe working on brand new music that they were going to showcase at some of these locations. Just the fact that they got to play in front of an audience and sometimes in front of no one for the first five minutes, but they felt so good being in front of a PA system again was exciting. So we did so.

Annie: 7:34

We kind of said, okay, who do we know that works with musicians? How many musicians can we get? What are the different locations and areas? We are performing arts center East Side. So do we want to keep it in Bellevue? Do we want to branch out and be in multiple cities? These were all the things that were literally talked about in a staff meeting and then everybody looked at me and went you can do it right. Tongue in cheek, and I said, okay, but when I get determined, I get very determined and I make sure that, no matter what, it will come to fruition. So, with a staff of three and with one board chair, I took the helm on making this project come to fruition, learning a ton of things as we go. Right Is hiring the buskers and finding the locations and doing it at times where we think our audience or community wanted to go. Being in high foot traffic areas, how do we get signage out there? What do we do about sound permits?

Annie: 8:36

permitting that I had never even thought about, because that had not been part of my regular workflow as an education director, right Like you work with a team of 40 when you're with a performing arts center or a nonprofit theater, which is the world that I had been in for 20 years up until that point. So to all of a sudden be like all right, roll up our sleeves and make this happen ourselves. That's what we did. So in I think five weeks we were able to book 62-hour performances that we scheduled May, june and July, all throughout downtown Bellevue and Redmond and Kirkland Renton.

Jon: 9:14

Woodinville, I think, Woodinville, I think there could be a few out there.

Annie: 9:17

Yeah, we did. And what was funny is you have these conversations and people are in their COVID worlds and all of a sudden I'm talking to them about bringing in free programming and there's that element of skepticism like what is this? What are you doing? I don't really understand, but sure, okay. So there was a real leap of faith and trust on both sides that we were going to be able to deliver and make something happen. Not really knowing what this experiment is, the best word that I could come up with would turn into.

Annie: 9:50

So for those first three months it was a real tiptoe. Is this going to work? Are people going to listen? Are they going to stay? Are we going to get the audiences? Are they going to recognize performing arts center east side? How are our musicians? What are we going to do with audience interaction and keeping everyone six feet away? Hence, we had our arts without barriers, artists, but then also the gig manager there to make sure that we were following protocols. There were just layers upon layers upon layers of things that I hadn't thought about, but every day presented a new challenge, which was fun to overcome in some regards. And then when the three months, like you had said, we're done. We were getting phone calls from various location sites that said no, we want this to continue through the summer or through the fall, and then all the way through to December. So this little three months snippet in time all of a sudden turned into a six month and a nine month snippet in time.

Jon: 10:46

In full disclosure to the listening audience. At the same time that you and your staff were kicking around this idea that would grow into arts without barriers, I was finishing up work with a commission of sorts that the governor had put together of volunteers charged with writing the pandemic reopening processes and procedures for the performing arts sector had been working on that for months, super anxious to just get a plan that could be green lighted so that the sector could go back to work. And of course, at that time I was working with an organization that was programming buskers in commercial municipal spaces. I still do that work and that's when the phone call came. So that's how you and I met was when you guys were thinking it's like, okay, we have this vision to how in the heck are we going to accomplish that? And through mutual friends you reached out and I said that sounds like a fine idea.

Annie: 11:47

Absolutely. People don't recognize truly how small but how vast, and I know that that sounds antithetical, but our industry is. It really comes down to who you know and everybody knows everybody. So coming out of COVID and having people who knew you, who knew, who had a lifeline and a pipeline into the musicians, into the buskers, into everything, it was one of the reasons why we were able to make it happen in five weeks. Otherwise I think it would have taken five months.

Jon: 12:17

I remember at the time so this is April 2021, it felt like we had been on pandemic lockdown for 50 years. The entire industry was chomping at the bit to get back out there and work, to do what they do, to be who they are, and so it was exciting and we were going to come right out of the gate swinging with all these performances and put music in the air for the public to enjoy. I'm super excited, the artists are super excited, and I remember the very first gig. Do you remember where the first performance was?

Annie: 12:49

Yeah, the Mayuri, it was the shopping center that they opened.

Jon: 12:53

Oh, you're right, See, your memory is better than me. That wasn't the one I was thinking of. So the first event that we did was that shopping center grand opening and that was very well received. But everybody was there for the shopping center opening. The music was kind of a background-ish thing, but I remember that was all right, we were just happy to be working, just happy to be making music. Do you remember the second performance? No, the second performance was in the Pavilion, the Pavilions, maybe it's Pavilion Park, I can't remember what the name of it is. Yeah, beautiful facility. And so this is going to be the first true public play and we had Country Dave Harmanson out there. There's no better way to kick this thing off. Super excited, get out there, get set up. Country Dave shows up, starts playing beautiful music and there's nobody there. The streets are just empty, the businesses are still closed. It was just us and Dave.

Annie: 13:53

And the 150 people who lived in the apartment complexes around there. And that's the moment of magic.

Jon: 14:03

That's what I was just going to say. So for like the first 10 or 20 minutes I'm like, oh man, maybe this is a little premature. But then I looked up and I saw the park is surrounded by high-rise apartments and condos, with retail on the ground level. And I looked up into the apartments and I saw the first person that opened up the window and the look of surprise but pleasant surprise on their face when they looked out and they realized, like what's that sound? That sounds like live music. I haven't heard that in ages. And then, soon, like, a second window opened up, and then more, and then more, and then it was almost like the Muppet Show or something like that Just all these people hanging out the window, hanging out of their windows, listening to music. And it put smiles on their face and it was springtime. Cherry trees were starting to blossom, the weather was overcast, but it wasn't cold or windy or anything like that, and it just felt good.

Annie: 15:00

It did Well. And what was awesome is we weren't just hitting these locations for a one-time performance and then we never went back. It was a consistent every Wednesday night from five to seven. We were at that spot for the three months straight. So yes, that in that first time it did feel like the Muppets, as you saw the windows open and everyone start coming out. But then as week three, four, five progressed, I remember being out there and having our A-frame sign and sticking it out and making sure the sound levels and I'm standing in the background and trying to take pictures and making sure the artists were okay. But there was that one apartment and I don't know the number of it. It was the third floor, but I can still remember to this day the couple who would come out and it looked like it was common practice. She had the charcuterie board, he had the two glasses of wine and they sat and it was like this is what we do every Wednesday for five to seven. This is our tradition now.

Jon: 15:59

They're no dummies, no.

Annie: 16:02

It was awesome.

Jon: 16:04

The crowd's coming back on the street. That was a slow process, even in some of the more commercial areas. We were playing malls, library, all these great locations. But throughout 2021, I remember it was relatively light pedestrian traffic everywhere you went, and so the program ran for its 90 days or what have you, and then we're kind of wrapping it up. But what happened when you tried to kind of sign off and check out with some of these properties?

Annie: 16:36

Some of the venues, yes, so we had a system in place because, again, one of our strategies was to raise brand awareness and I was communicating with them and saying these are your artists for our last month. Here are their headshots. This is how we're going to be cross promoting on social media. Make sure to get the word out there. And I immediately got a couple emails back saying well, can we continue? We want to go all the way through the summer, because we were originally scheduled for April, may and June, that's it.

Annie: 17:08

And we know that LV bites and beats were starting up and that was their summer gig and we didn't want to step on any toes or do multiple programming with the same outcome in mind, right, so we were happy to do our three months and then silently kind of disappear into the wind a little bit and then come back with our original idea of what we thought our to that barriers was going to be. But each of these location sites, I would say we were at nine or 10 in the very first year and we had three wanting to continue through the summer, all the way through August 31st, and then one who said can we extend that through October? Can we extend that through November. We want to bring you back for our December rush.

Jon: 17:48

And, to be clear, your funding for this had been expended. So when people wanted to extend it, they were asking if they could extend it on their dime.

Annie: 17:55

On their dime. Yeah, that's how much they valued the music in their location and I think that is another indication of what they saw in terms of economic stimulus and their own locations, as they're starting to see people feeling a little safe because they're safe in music.

Jon: 18:12

They're certainly saying something because that phenomenon, that just doesn't happen in nature all that often. People saying can we please extend your program and I'm happy to pay for it? Yeah, that just doesn't happen all that often.

Annie: 18:27

No, I had never seen it happen.

Jon: 18:31

When some of those initial April, even May performances were so sparsely attended, did that demoralize you at all?

Annie: 18:39

A little bit. A little bit, because you always want to show immediate success and justification for all of the hard work and hours that you poured into bringing something to life. Sure, so it was a slow birth, if I can use that metaphor. It was a long time coming. But when June came around and all of a sudden, we really did see an explosion in audience members in June, and then when, to your point, the location sites came back and said can we extend? We knew we had something special.

Annie: 19:15

And, going back to the assessment side of things, it was when we got that first request to continue to have the program visit their locations or have the musicians come back. Or my favorite was is this person available for this date? We really like them or our audience is really like this musician? I got excited about where this program could potentially go and said OK, 2021 is the first year, but to see what kind of an impact we are actually making out in the community, let's not change anything for 2022. Because we need to. We have our meter for where we need to gauge. So now let's see what 2022 brings and then we can start making plans to alter the programming based on our community's needs in 2023. I know, I just skipped around talking a little bit about that, but that's kind of where we ended up with the extension.

Jon: 20:07

It's super smart. If you ask anybody who has produced events over time, they will tell you that if you are starting up something truly new from scratch, it takes three years Like. You can't even second guess for yourself. You're not allowed to for three years. You need three years of data to be able to even attempt to be objective about evaluating the concept.

Annie: 20:32

Yeah Well, and we had been working with the musicians and with the gig managers and one of the things that we really wanted to make sure that we were capturing were audience attendance and audience responses.

Annie: 20:46

So that was a huge burden being put on the gig manager to do. Counting every 15 to 20 minutes, because a lot of what we did were called walk bias, so our audience members didn't stick around for the full two hour shows. They would stick around for 15 to 20 minutes and then they would go on their merry way and get their cup of coffee and go shopping or go home or do whatever. So capturing the number of audience members that we had and then any sound bites that we could capture from our audiences was critical for us in that first year. So when I was able to go back to our board or when we were able to start advertising, 60,000 people reached in the very first year of Arts Without Barriers I got a lot of how to reach 60,000 people in that first time. There's no way that's not possible, but it really is when you're in 12 different locations each week for 90 days and you have walk bias and they're only there for 20 minutes and then they leave. It's that's how.

Jon: 21:44

We were very deliberate about getting counts at every show. The methodology we used and continue to use for this day is very simple. We would just make random counts. A five minute count. Super easy to do for five minutes. Just count how many people are walking through and we'd do at least three of those for every two hour performance and then we just average those out and I'll take those numbers to the bank. They're very, very accurate numbers.

Annie: 22:17

Absolutely Well, as evident in some of our locations, which were pretty consistent in the early days of, we had 12 people, 12 people in some of those first counts.

Jon: 22:28

Those were really easy to count.

Annie: 22:29

They were really easy. But then, as we were performing in what we were talking about high foot traffic areas, when we were at Redmond Town Center, when we were at two, three different slots surrounding the Bellevue collection, when we were at the pavilion, when we were at those high foot traffic areas, we could reach 250, 300, or more, just because it was sunny and everyone was out and enjoying the music and the shopping and, I think, breathing a little bit easier.

Jon: 22:56

I'm bouncing around in time a little bit, but in the first season, the 2021 season, like you just said, sometimes you can count the number of passers-by on both hands, but towards the end of that season those numbers had gone up significantly. You go to the 2022 season and all of those numbers, I think overall doubled or something like that. Oh yeah, or maybe a little more, but it's really been this year 2023, where the numbers have exploded. The program's still the same. Nothing's changed there. It's a reflection of people actually coming back out into the community post-COVID.

Annie: 23:39

Yes, and just to add to that, I would say that this year we did shift because we heard what our community was saying and April was a horrible time to start. So they said what we would really benefit from is full summer program. So May, june, july, august If you can give us those four months, then that is how we can dive in and reach the majority of our audiences. So that was the one shift that we made through this entire program over the last three years was we just altered? But we still have a number of location sites who want us all the way through December still, oh yeah. So that hasn't stopped.

Jon: 24:22

I think that 2021 versus 2023, some of the sites, the attendance has increased probably tenfold.

Annie: 24:30

Oh easily.

Jon: 24:30

There's no exaggeration. I'm just doing a quick math here.

Annie: 24:33

but You're absolutely right and I can tell you because I looked at the numbers yesterday. So 60,000, just a little over 60,000 in that first year. I was then charged with the challenge of reaching 75,000 or more in the second year, which we hit.

Jon: 24:48

How many did we do in the second year?

Annie: 24:48

I want to say it was 78 and change.

Jon: 24:51

Okay.

Annie: 24:52

So I did the second year and then I just did quick statistics on just May and June of this year 90,000 in just those two months. Again, though, multiple locations. This is the thing that people I want to drive in multiple locations. Two hour sets. We're talking 12 shows sometimes. I mean five in a week, sometimes as much as 12 in a week, depending on if we're doing wine walks and we're in multiple locations. So that's how all of that comes to fruition.

Jon: 25:24

One of the little threads of humor that I found in that first year. As you said, a lot of artists have been spending a great deal of time during the pandemic writing new material and so all of a sudden here's this first out-of-the-door opportunity to get back out and play right. So everybody's like, oh yeah, I've got new materials. So they come out with all this material they wrote in the pandemic and so much of it was really depressing. That's true. I think that was love. You know, it was really depressing rightfully so.

Jon: 25:55

So, that was a little odd, but what are you going to do? It was real, it was real. It was very real, got a love of that Jumping back to 2021, so this new project that launches, it catches unexpected traction, time gets extended, numbers exceeded expectations. It was a success by any measure and you were probably wrapping that project up and putting it on the shelf for the year when the Washington Festival and Events Association called. And let me hear that story from your perspective.

Annie: 26:37

So it was very exciting. A colleague a mutual colleague of ours, let me know about the possibility of submitting our program for awards, and I said, why not? So we pulled all of our materials together and I submitted, for I think it was three different awards that I thought we could be in competition with. So it was poster design and brochure design, because we have a fantastic graphic designer. I'm going to give her a major shout out right now, claire Zob, whom, again, we talk about small communities. She and I worked together at Longworth Theater for 10 years. She's East Coast.

Annie: 27:22

I knew we needed the graphic, I knew we needed a logo, I knew we needed something, and so I went to the person whom I knew would be brilliant at it and called up Claire, and she and I are still collaborating to this day and she pulled together a design that just sang. It had life and vibrancy and the colors were perfect. And even as we got the extension for the fall, I went back to her and said can you judge our springtime into a summer poster and then our summer poster into a fall poster and then our fall into a winter? And she did, and they all look so cohesive and beautiful together. So I said, well, these definitely need to be at least promoted through this potential award for our brochures and poster design.

Annie: 28:10

And when we also talk about postcard design, I will throw out that in that first year we had a wonderful collaboration with Zeke's Pizza, who was also just starting to open their doors, and so we had the postcard pizza promo, where anybody who went to Arts Without Barriers and they had their postcard could come in for a percentage off of a pizza. Right Again, we go back to economic stimulus and growth and how do we get people back into these businesses? So we tried to catalyze that opportunity and work with our community to make it happen. So again, we were able to put that postcard out there for a potential award. And community programming, which was really the crux in the heart of why we started Arts Without Barriers, was for our community, and we were fortunate enough to then be invited to attend the award ceremony.

Jon: 29:00

Well, you know, whenever WFEA reaches out and says, hey, you might want to be sure to attend this year's annual awards gala, you should probably go.

Annie: 29:12

Yeah, so we had a whole table and it was exciting. It was really, really cool to see our program celebrated that night.

Jon: 29:22

And so, in the way that those statewide industry awards work, everything's divided into budget classes. So you were entering in the $150,000 or less budget that was the program budget and you won the gold award for promotional materials, the poster, the postcard, those types of things. You won the gold award in the budget class for best community programming, best community engagement, yeah. But then the big surprise came when you won the grand summit award, which is the overall best event in the state in your budget category, and you won that in your very first year, right out of the gate. I don't know that. I've ever seen anything like that before.

Annie: 30:15

Oh, it was pretty awesome. I mean I'm I am so proud of this program and where it came and what we were able to do for our community and that was a huge surprise, and of just a glorious one that I think I wrote that excitement wave for a little while. I'm not going to lie.

Jon: 30:33

Well, I hope so.

Annie: 30:34

Yes, I did.

Jon: 30:38

What was going through your mind as your name kept getting called for her to go up and get all these awards?

Annie: 30:43

It was pretty awesome. It was a well.

Annie: 30:46

That night in particular was also incredibly special because I remember Robin was being celebrated and Robin Kelly yes she was being celebrated and I had just joined the East Side Culture Coalition, so I was just starting to get used to some of the major players on the nonprofits on the East Side and to watch our fellow ECC person also be celebrated that night was huge for me, and just hearing about her career and where she went and what she has done was inspiring. So I think the whole night yes, winning those awards were fantastic, but also communicating with other arts festivals and hearing how they came out of the pandemic in that year and we all were able to breathe a little bit that night and celebrate our successes was what I remember most.

Jon: 31:36

What other events or festivals have you seen lately? That's inspired you.

Annie: 31:43

Well, I've been very fortunate this year to be able to explore a number of different festivals, partly for research for a festival that I'm producing right now and also for fun. So I was able to check out Picathon in Oregon, which was pretty cool, oh cool, yeah, it was a cool.

Annie: 32:01

One of my takeaways from going to Picathon actually was seeing how they have curated each of their stages very specifically, so their artists are truly put in an area where they think they would have the best audience attraction and would fit for the time and would fit for the day, and that is a takeaway that I have brought with me for for Bellwether in particular, which is the Art and Tech Festival that we are producing right now. Again, bringing the festival out to the people, not having the people come to a set location, is also exciting, invigorating, and another takeaway, post pandemic, that I'm watching other organizations nationwide starting to do. Actually, they no longer have their brick and mortar. Instead, they're taking their art out to the community in different locations. So Art Without Barriers was doing that in 2021 in our own way.

Jon: 32:58

So currently you're working on another festival, the Bellwether Festival. Describe that, if you would.

Annie: 33:05

So Bellwether is an Art and Tech Festival that the city of Bellevue and Bellevue Arts Commission had been producing for a number of years and coming out of COVID again, I think, they realized that they just didn't have the infrastructure to carry it off probably in the same vision and vein that they wanted to previously. So they put out a call for proposals and we were very excited about the opportunity to take Bellwether and mesh it with some of the principles of Art Without Barriers again taking it to the people, to high foot traffic areas, curating based on the location site and so we put in our proposal and we were awarded the contract officially in February and we are now producing this festival, which is going on throughout the month of September. So another trend that I'm noticing is a very short amount of lead time to get some of these things up and running. And having that energy and that structure in place, understanding where Art Without Barriers were and being able to plop it into you how to make Bellwether work within a six month timeframe was incredibly helpful.

Jon: 34:17

You know I hadn't thought about this till this conversation just now. The idea of taking your event out to the people rather than trying to coax people to come see your event it makes me think about how it's not getting any easier to get people to make that commitment to go to anything, to physically show up to attend anything Everywhere I look that's just becoming harder and harder and harder. And just when you do events or even have meetings, for people RSVP right, if you were to go back in time, if you RSVP'd yes, for something that was a commitment, like that was something that you honored and as the person throwing the party, the event, the meeting, whatever you can count on it, you didn't need to think any further. You knew exactly how many people were coming. But as a social trend, I have watched that guarantee. If you will slowly start to erode over the last 10 or 20 years, it might even be like a generational thing. I don't know what it is exactly.

Jon: 35:24

I can remember exactly when I first started to notice this. It would have been in the late 2000s, like 2007, 2008, 2009. All of a sudden I noticed people would RSVP and then not show. It's like what the heck is that as a trend that is continued to deteriorate. I just went out on a speaking circuit of seminars for a couple of weeks across the state and this is in the context of professional development and the no show rate for people who registered, paid money, people that registered and paid money the no show rate was about 50% 5-0. It didn't matter if it were where it was, just anywhere we went, it was about the same, about 50% no shows. That's really interesting.

Annie: 36:17

Do you think I'm going to throw this question out? You've seen this trend starting to build up since 2007, 2008. I've noticed a increase in that trend since COVID because everyone's expecting a digital version that they can go to, that they don't actually have to be there in person, because they can just watch it later on. I'm wondering if there's a coalition there.

Jon: 36:40

That's a good question. I don't know.

Annie: 36:43

It's fascinating because with Bellwether, right now we have four in person events, but there's definitely a digital aspect to it and we're starting to watch another surge in COVID, which is also making producing in person events another challenge, because, as much as you think we have contingency plans in place, there's always something that's going to pop up.

Jon: 37:03

See from my perspective, I'm feeling a trend of digital burnout. Yeah Right, if you're talking about something. If there is a live and in person option and a digital option, hell, no, I don't want the digital option. I'm digitaled out. Yeah, I've had my fill of digital.

Annie: 37:24

Now is that because you are so heavy on the producing side of it?

Jon: 37:29

Certainly there's bias in there somewhere. I don't know exactly what it is. It's fascinating, isn't it? Well, it's like these podcasts. That's why, whenever I can, I go to the person live. They could do this all on Zoom now, right, but that's not what it feels different to me. Yeah, it's not real. Yeah, that's interesting.

Annie: 37:53

A topic for another podcast.

Jon: 37:55

Well sure, and just think about this. What does it mean for live events? Certainly the concert industry. When concerts finally came out en masse from under the cover of the pandemic, they couldn't print enough tickets, so to speak. I mean, it was. Everything you did was that you were experiencing a capacity crowd that's died out. Now it's actually raising eyebrows in how it's moving in the opposite direction.

Jon: 38:23

There's a lot of seats being unfilled right now and the one school of thought is that that big rush back post pandemic was kind of a reflex action People trying to make up. It's like if you haven't had a drink of water in two days, when you next come across water you're going to drink a lot of it really fast, but then you get your fill and you slow it back down. So I think in a lot of aspects of the entertainment industry we're in a little bit of a lull right now from people having come back hard and fast into the marketplace. So the question is what's tomorrow going to look like? It's a good question. I hope there's not a shift back to digital.

Annie: 39:10

Yeah, I do too. I also hope, whenever we ask the question, well, that's a question for tomorrow. All of a sudden, even when I hear that now there's such a level of uncertainty, because I never would have imagined a pandemic in 2020. So just knowing that's a question for tomorrow, I'm like, okay, great, but what other apocalyptic thing is going to happen that's going to prevent us from being able to produce our work again? Right, and see you next year. But we're keeping this positive, john.

Jon: 39:37

We're keeping this positive in line. Well, the positive angle, I think, getting back on the arts without barriers bandwagon, it's just the idea of taking it to the people. We're seeing that that works.

Annie: 39:49

It does work Well. And when people ask me so what do you mean for arts without barriers? What is the idea behind that title? And it's very simple for me it's eliminating access barriers. It's eliminating monetary barriers, transportation barriers, also babysitting barriers. I'm a single mom. I remember many times where I couldn't just leave my kid to go watch a concert, even though my favorite person was playing. But these are being played in outside public locations. I can bring my kid, I can enjoy a cup of coffee while he plays in the fountain All of these things that were barriers to being able to experience live entertainment, and high quality live entertainment right.

Jon: 40:34

Yeah, well, that's key.

Annie: 40:35

These are key. Exactly these musicians are phenomenal, so to be able to go and experience that was all wrapped up in the reasoning behind it.

Jon: 40:47

Another societal benefit of the program is just the fact that positive activity in public spaces tends to displace negative activity in public places.

Annie: 40:58

Agreed, and there's nothing more joyful than music, in my opinion.

Jon: 41:03

Did you have any mentors throughout your career?

Annie: 41:06

I have. I've had a number of them. Jim Vols was a mentor that I had early on in college who really helped me understand more of the business side of things Because, again, I have my BA and my MFA in theater performance. I'm an actor, that's where my degrees come from and he really opened my eyes to the business side of things, which I think unlocked that strategic thinking. And when I was at Long Wharf, josh Bornstein was, and continues to be, a huge mentor of mine. He was the first general manager and then the managing director for Long Wharf and he asked some really great questions and then again built upon understanding the business side of things. So those would be two of my main mentors.

Jon: 41:55

Who do you think you are?

Annie: 41:58

Who do I think I am? You want to build out on that question? Who do I think I am? I am a mom, I am an artist, I am an actor, I am an arts administrator, I am an arts advocate and I am a trauma survivor.

Jon: 42:24

Who is your favorite ancestor?

Annie: 42:30

My mom was the strongest woman that I ever met, and if there was a role model that said that it was the epitome of resilience, it would be her, and I think that's where I get my fight and my resiliency from.

Jon: 42:48

Describe your favorite chair that you ever sat in.

Annie: 42:53

OK, this is going to sound very strange. My family has a tradition of going to ocean shores every Thanksgiving and this has been a tradition that we have had since I was two or three. So we're coming up on 40 years of getting the same three rooms from the same three Polynesian hotels, the same time frame, every single year. And there is one chair in. Mike has an Allison's room. That has become the favorite chair and it's big and round almost as big as this table actually, and it swivels around that you could almost fall asleep in it, but it's the most comfortable chair I ever slept in, sat in, so that's my favorite chair.

Jon: 43:42

Sounds like my kind of a chair. What is your favorite sound? Rain? That is a very common answer.

Annie: 43:57

I used to babysit for someone who had a tin roof and so when the rain would fall, that was pretty magical. My favorite smell is the smell at 10 o'clock at night, right when it's starting to shift from summer to fall, and you can smell the fall in the air. It's a very specific smell, but that's. I was fortunate enough to have to run an errand late last night and I didn't get home until late and as I was getting out and walking to my apartment, I kind of went it's time. It's here. Now is my favorite time because I could smell it in the air.

Jon: 44:37

Well, I think one of my favorite smells is a summertime smell and it's that mixture in the air of fresh cut grass and charcoal briquettes burning. Yes, it's a very nostalgic thing for me, definitely Childhood. It's like the best of times mid-summer.

Annie: 45:01

Yeah.

Jon: 45:02

And then the charcoal the promise of the the impending barbecue. To this day those combinations of smells can command my attention. It can snap me out of the deepest focus, Absolutely.

Annie: 45:21

OK, so what is a song that will always make you dance?

Jon: 45:26

That will always make me dance?

Annie: 45:27

It will always make you want to get up and dance.

Jon: 45:29

I don't know, not being one who's prone to getting up and dancing. That's a tricky one. I know what you're getting at, so I'm thinking I want to give you my best answer on that. What's popping into my head? I don't know if this is exactly dance. Well, it was dance music, but this is obscure but a band called Shriekback. Shriekback was like a cult kind of band, right. Not many people know who that is, but if you do, you tend to be really into everything they've done. And they were around since the 80s still around and it was like former members of some more popular bands like Gang of Four and that kind of thing, XTC. But they had a song called All Lined Up with an infectious baseline. So that's a song that pops into my head. Annie congratulations on the third season now of an amazing program and it's been wonderful catching up with you and hope to talk again soon.

Annie: 46:39

Thank you. Me too, I've enjoyed this. This is an all call, one hour to doors.