I am picking back up this blog after a 4 year hiatus. It was not for a lack of thoughts, ideas or even a desire to share but simply a focus on the book I am writing. Also, the last 4 years have been full of adventure, building and continuing to create a space for artists of all ages and abilities to call home. I am so ecstatic to be launching JV creative soon-more to come!
The word “innovate” means to make changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas, or products. This word and the action behind it is nothing new to our culture and our society. However, in every sector of business it has taken on a new meaning in the last few months. Creating opportunities in the middle of a pandemic seems perilous no matter what you do but the arts are a special part of this conversation due to the nature of how performing arts transpire.
Central Florida Community Arts, the organization that I get to lead made a decision on March 16, 2020 to keep going. Just the week before we had been named by the City of Orlando as the “Community Builder of the Year” so we felt like we had a responsibility to keep people creative and connected during such a dark and critical time. If we believe arts are imperative to connection and well being then what more of time would we be valuable and needed during this Covid moment?
We just reached our 10th anniversary and started to feel like we knew how to do our thing. With Covid being such a highly transmittable virus we needed to reimagine and adapt all of our programs. We adopted 4 guiding principles; safety, flexibility, inclusivity and creativity and all of our decisions ran through this filter. Working with the medical community and an ongoing task force of team members and community leaders, we invented an organization wide safety plan with masks, distancing, sanitizing, temperature checks and so much more. We had shorter rehearsals, shows with no intermissions, 8-10 ft between performers and non-conventional spaces. We embraced and leveraged technology to bring the arts into peoples homes and a way for artists who were not yet comfortable to still be involved.
In every sense of the word, we had to take our established ways of bringing arts accessibility to the Central Florida Region and turn it upside down and on its head. As our team likes to say there were many “silver linings” but there were also many challenges-it felt like everything we did was about 10 times harder.
I am firm believer in innovate or perish. We could have stopped in our tracks or tried to do business as usual. We chose innovation, we chose a different approach, we chose to adopt words and principles that guided our every move, we chose a path forward.
I am happy to tell you we produced shows, we brought back a hybrid of rehearsals, we gave thousands of community members the opportunity to experience the arts when our souls needed it all with a 100% safety rating from our people.
Innovation is crucial to the recovery, rebuilding and reestablishing our products, our mission and our purpose in this next chapter.