I'm calling this meeting to order as the co-chair of the community safety working group governor bakers extension of the March 12 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting allows us to hold this virtual meeting of the working group. Given that we have a quorum present I'm calling the September 9 2021 meeting of the community safety working group to order at 603pm. I'm calling each member of the working group by name. At that time you should unmute your mic and say present. This will indicate that you can hear me and we can hear you. Please remember to mute your mic after saying present. Miss Walker. Here. Mr. Vernon Jones. Here. Miss Freira. Here. Miss Pat. Present. I want to take a couple of minutes to review the agenda because we're only meeting from six to seven tonight as a group and then we have our forum from seven to nine. Just really quickly are on our agenda tonight. We will talk about the Crest program and have an implementation team follow up. We'll briefly talk about the presentation put together by the implementation team. We will have a check in about our consultants. We will as co chairs Alicia and I will share the proposed meeting timelines that we have put together to move our group forward. We'll have a subgroup check in. And lastly, we will check in about the resident oversight board and the successor group. Our first order of business is the public second the public comment. Our first order of business is public comment. If any member of the public would like to make a statement right now, please raise your hand. I will recognize you and ask Miss moisten to turn on your microphone. I ask that comments be limited to no more than three minutes. The working group will not be responding to your comments, but we'll be listening carefully. Dr. Prune has his hand raised. Hi, my name is Doc Brian. I'm a stringer for the reminder. So I will be covering this meeting. Thank you. Thank you, Doc. Do we have any other hands. Next, we'll, well, I guess we can just get right into the members report. This is time for members to update us on any work or events that they have attended. Does anybody have an item that they would like to share. Miss Walker. Yes, so I just wanted to update the group in regards to a meeting. I was able to have a brief telephone conversation with Barbara love in regards to her facilitating the community healing and visioning process. I had the feeling to offer her expertise in helping guide the town forward on this process and we talked about what it would look like generally, but agreed that we would need to have a more formal meeting in order to come up with the exact details and what that process would look like for Amherst, but I left that conversation agreeing to communicate her interest back to the town manager in hopes that he will be able to pursue contracting her and working out the further details for this process. Thank you, Alicia for following up with with Barbara love, Dr Barbara love. I think it would be better if we would be able to get some of the details because I would rather like us included in our report and as part of our recommendation, especially since I know a community policing.  I'm not on board with with making any kind of recommendation specific to that but what I'd like to do would be to set up kind of this community healing as a process towards creating something with the community and possibly the police department so that they have something that's cohesive and in partnership with each other. So anyway, a long story short. Yeah, if we could do that before we have some time to do that, and then obviously hand off whatever we can complete to the Standing Committee. Thank you, Mr. Miss Pat. Along the line with what Alicia had said I also reach out to Dr Barbara love prior to Alicia dish out to her I asked her if she would be willing to consider being a consultant in facilitating the healing process and she said that she wasn't opposed to it. I just wanted to share that as well, but I didn't do anything with it I was planning to share with everybody here tonight. Thank you, Miss Pat. Did anybody else have anything they'd like to share during the members report portion. Mr Vernon Jones. Just in light of those two comments I certainly agree with what ever said and miss Pat and Alicia thank you for following up with with Dr love. I think it's important that our report have some description of what it is we're talking about when we talk about a healing envisioning process and I'm hoping we can get some help from Dr love and getting that written before our report is due. Is it possible for you to identify for us the portion of the meeting that Dr love came to, and where we would go to, if we wanted to listen to that piece. I can go through and look but not at this like, I won't have that I can send it for tomorrow. Now, if I just think it might help us in drafting our report if we could go back and take some notes on what Dr love said when she, she met with us. I missed Indy also had a nice article about that particular meeting, which I forwarded to all of you. I'll be happy to send a people's thank you for God, but they had a very nice article about that particular meeting. Thank you miss Pat. Did anybody else have anything they'd like to report during this time. Okay, so I guess we can move into the next part of our agenda which is a crest implementation update for the group on the last two meetings that we've had. So I want to use this time to report back to the group in regards the implementation meeting that happened on September 2. The implementation team was able to have an initial meeting with leap to do introductions. Scott Livingstone, Tim Nelson, Gabriel Tang, Mike Curtin, Mr Vernon Jones, Jen and Alicia were all able to attend alongside the leap team. Mary Beth departure from her position as director of senior services and also facilitating the crest implementation team we have been moving slowly, but surely. Mr Backelman is looking to hire someone in Mary Beth's absence. Mr Vernon Jones has volunteered to join the implementation team and we're excited to have him on board. I can speak to as to the last meeting I don't know if Mr Vernon Jones or Miss Walker wanted to chime in as to anything that I may have missed. Okay, and to miss for era. So I guess like at the last meeting, just for me to be clear, I guess it was more so in terms of like adding Mr Vernon Jones because Mary Beth had left and, and that was basically more so what it was about it wasn't around like, you know, any updates on job operations, where we're at with the actual implementation of press. At this point, there wasn't any discussion. So to answer your question to answer your question before we go to Mr Vernon Jones. I wasn't able to make last week's meeting but from the summary that I got from Miss Walker and Mr Vernon Jones. It was an introduction meeting for the leap team to get to not to get to know but to meet the chief of police and all of the different people on the implementation team. Mr Vernon Jones. Yeah, it was mostly sort of building relationships with leap they brought a three member team. The head of the team was an African American woman. And it was Amos or one who had done the written, he was co author of that study that compared all the programs across the country, and then they had a white man who had been a police chief for many years and then worked in social service after that, with some of these community responder programs. It's a really interesting array of expertise that they brought. They did raise they said that it looked possible that the primary need for calls for community responders would be either mental health or mediation de escalation conflict resolution kinds of things. And they just sort of asked us, you know, if we had any feelings about whether or not, you know, that would work out or was that, but, but we basically we agreed that many of the things we had questions about couldn't really be answered until we have the data. They're working on the data, both with regard to types of calls and when the calls come in. And I did write to them after that meeting and they sent me back a draft of job descriptions for sort of program director positions from two different cities. And we'll be looking at those over against the draft that the implementation team had already drafted for Amherst, and seeing if we can't, you know, merge the best features of all of them. But human resources is working on, you know, the sort of categorizing analysis they need to do on the job description. So that's the next step is the job description for the project manager try to get that out as soon as possible. And then hopefully soon after that we'll have data which will start to answer a bunch of other questions. Thank you Mr Vernon Jones for that thorough summary that definitely filled in the gaps from the summary I provided. In regards to the meeting that was supposed to happen today. It was canceled because not all members could make it but Jen myself and Russ still met so that we could review the PowerPoint that we put together for today's forum, which I think moves us right into our next topic. I do want to thank members last week for being critical about the forum details and pushing us to put together that PowerPoint, and the information. Miss Freira, thank you and other group members for really getting on us because Alicia myself Jen was we're able to put together something that we believe is really thorough for the community to see later this evening. So the agenda item is consultant follow up. Alicia and I were Miss Freira. So, so just again, like, so for us, though, I know this is like more an implementation team kind of thing so for us, other members that are going to be on it. We did just to kind of listen to take notes, what it was our directive that you always want was just the support that you would want from us, I guess. So we're envisioning that all the CSWG members should be present for this forum just because we have engaged the community and put together the Cres Program people feel comfortable sharing experience with us. We want to have this forum to listen carefully. And for myself, Mr Vernon Jones and Jen, we will be taking very detailed notes so that we can bring those voices that are at that at the implementation team to the team with their concerns and questions. Thank you. So with that said, we can move right into the consultant follow up. Alicia and I were able to meet with Jen and Sean and Gano last Tuesday. And last Friday to move our consultant needs forward. After our Friday meeting we are under the impression that the request for services would be sent out, but the town manager didn't get to review and make edits until yesterday. As far as I know, everything has been sent out yesterday. It's hard to correct me if I'm wrong, Jen and Alicia, but from what I understand Sean will solicit quotes from seven Jen and the ADMHA for the racial justice component. If both quotes are over 10k we would need to solicit one additional quote for the second piece of work that we're looking for we would solicit quotes from leap into other firms. Sean helped us find two consultant firms 21 CP solutions and OIR as the other two firms who are experienced in community community safety research and reform. Given given that the deadline for the consultant work is October 5, we're cutting it really close. I'm very disappointed that the consultant work has getting consultants and doing this whole process has taken so long given that we've known from last month that we did this and we're specific, but also on that same token I want to move the group forward. So Alicia and I have put together their two different schedules to move us forward with consultants and without consultants. Ms. Rara.  You know and I was thinking about it today. It wasn't just last month we've been bringing up the whole thing about the consultant from the beginning of us right after we finished doing the part a started doing Part B, and we had brought that up from day one that we need a consultant so for me it really feels purposeful from the town's end that we at this point like we have five more weeks left before presenting to the town council on Part B. We still don't have a consultant. I mean this is ridiculous this is basically sabotaging us and and and making it because for me and my thought is just that they don't want us right because we're we've been a very powerful group. We've been pushing the envelope on these issues. So really it's been purposeful so that we don't get to a lot of these. A lot of these issues, so that then when it does move on to the standing committee was likely what they're going to do is dilute that standing committee so that's not powerful, so that then this work does not get done. And so I'm just going to voice what I feel right now and in terms of what is happening here, because this is, it's, it's, it's just ridiculous, you know, that we don't have it of course we're going to keep on doing the work. Of course we're going to do as much as we can, but in our report we're going to have to be very clear about what happened here, which was purposeful. Thank you Ms. for Miss Pat. I don't want to repeat what Deborah just said, but this is what white supremacy looks like. When issues that involve BIPOC community, they keep stalling it, keep delaying it. This is insulting to our BIPOC community. The town council, the town manager. I'm fed up. This is not okay. Why should it be up to October 5th? We've been asking, requesting for consultant for part B for a long, long time. And yet the town have no problem bringing up money and the town council to do other projects. When it comes to our issues, it's nothing. They just want to check off the box. I said, oh, we put together CSWG. Oh, we did this and nothing happens. This is very insulting and ridiculous. It's not okay. Thank you, Ms. Pat and Ms. Freira. I just want to quickly add that I 1000% stand by and agree with what both of you said. Moving us, the best way to move us forward is to get on paper the recommendations we have now and to continue to follow up to push forward for our successor group and the resident oversight board before we disband. So I'm going to quickly share my screen. Given that we have, can everybody see my screen? Okay. Given that we have such short time, what I'm thinking to move us forward is that tonight we create, we create a subcommittee or a small group of people who are willing to work on the recommendations that we have all agreed on. So far we have the successor group, the resident oversight board, and our agreement on traffic control and traffic alternatives. I'm thinking that we take next week off because our consultants are up in the air right now, as to whether anybody will take the work on such short notice, and we will meet September 23. My proposal is that on the September 23 meeting, in addition to the Crest implementation follow up and the successor group and Rob follow up, we divvy out how we want to make sure the topics that we can address do get addressed, whether that's delegating them to the successor group or the resident oversight group, and we find a way to develop language to put that in our report. And it's critical that if we don't have consultants that we reiterate in the report that we, we requested consultants we are specific about what we needed from consultants. And that we'd like to see the work through with this work schedule, what I'm thinking is we have three meetings, and at these three meetings we're going to have to do a lot of work. So the subcommittee will work on drafting the final report, we will meet Thursday, September 23 and at this meeting we will hopefully look over a rough draft that the subcommittee can put together. And I'll have comments and feedback for our October 7 meeting, we will make our final revisions to our report and hopefully move forward with graphics that we'd like to see in the report. And again, finalize how we'd like to see our work be continued. And then on our last meeting, we would reflect and have a last follow up on where our standing committee in the implementation team is. I know that this look doesn't this draft is only three meetings and I know that we could maybe meet more, but just reading it and thinking out loud what I'm thinking is maybe we meet. On Thursday, September 23 and follow this meeting schedule and go from there to develop to map out the rest of our work, because we don't know right now whether we will be or will not be working with consultants. Mr. Vernon Jones and then Ms. Freira. Thanks for doing this I love to have it all laid out like this. I wonder if we could ask our drafting team to get a first draft of the report to everybody in time to read it before the September 23 meeting. So that some of that meeting could be feedback and additional ideas and then some time to work on it before the next meeting. Okay, I think I agree with that. How much time you think would be needed a week or. We gave people five days to read it with that before September 23. I think that's reasonable I think if do we have members of the group right now who would be interested in participating interested in being in a subcommittee to put together the final report let's start there. Let's not call it a subcommittee because that gives us open meeting law problems. Okay, let's just ask to do the job. I'd be glad to be part of it. I don't really want to do it alone though. Wow I can see everything I don't want to be the main person but I'll help, because I just know my time right now is crazy crazy busy, but I can help. Well, you and Brianna did well on the first draft first report right. That's true. Can we use the same process this time. I, I, yeah, I think that's a good idea. So myself Mr Vernon Jones and Ms Ferrara will get a rough draft of our final report on the recommendations that we do have. Do we want to say by Thursday to 16th or do we want to say by Saturday the 18th. So if we get it to the group by the 18th that will give them five days to review it before the meeting on the 23rd. Let's say 18. Okay. Ms Pat. Suggest, first of all, but for three of you that volunteer. Thank you very much. I have a suggestion I was wondering if we need to meet like next week. And then maybe then I will give like two weeks. So that we have an idea what the draft, you know, what the draft looks like if we can like start the conversation, and then it will give us two weeks, instead of sending it to people if we can meet to review the draft. Next week, and then we can meet two weeks after. So I don't know if we'll have enough time to put the draft together because we'll probably have to start something up and then talk. I guess, right. Yeah, I think the 18, like meeting the 23rd would give us more time to work on the draft and then we could use the meeting on the 23rd to review the draft like live time and kind of go over it and like, like at the meeting, September 23rd, we could go review the draft for that work and take next week off. Yeah, I think that would work better and then we can meet on the 23rd and if need be we could then meet on the 30th if we needed it, you know, as opposed to skipping a week at that point but I think we need that that time to kind of put this together and give you all time to read it and then we could review it on the 23rd. Mr. Vernon Jones. Is there a decision process once we open the quotes for the consultants and can we delegate that to our chairs or how do we want to handle that, because we can't afford a delay after the quotes are open. Another reason why I left the week of the 16th off was so that when we hear back from the consultants Alicia and I can sort of figure that out and by the by our meeting on the 23rd will have a better idea of where we stand with consultants. That was my thinking there. Well, can we delegate to our coach chairs that the decision about, you know, whether we go with. And again, you have to take the low quote. If you if you're going to take one, but if it's not satisfactory or it doesn't have has too many strings attached or anything. You're going to we can need to make a decision right away about it I think I'd be happy to delegate that to our chairs but we can't wait until the next meeting to to make a decision about it there won't be any time for them to do the work. Miss Pat. So for several meetings, we talked about having we identified potential consultants to give us what would have how much something will cost. It looks like it's going the opposite way with Sean mangano, suggesting to additional form. I don't understand that you see the one like making decision for CSWG, I don't get that. I just feel that the whole process for consultants will take much longer without even know if they will even do it for us. Why can we why can't like seven gen tell us like next week if yes or no they can do it, instead of comparing prices with the folks in sprinkler than seven gen I don't I don't get that. Why do we have to go like, you know, lowest price and stuff like that. That's not what we talked about when we get with the media for several weeks now. Thank you miss Pat miss moiston. Just for clarity we're not using the bid system that we did this is a quote system so we're asking them for the quota to the amount of work that it'll be to do what we've asked on under the scope of work. So it's not that we have to take the lowest it's not a bid like we did before with the first consultant and the way that we contracted with seventh gen. This is us asking. Seventh gen and ADM ADM HA for the work with D I like we discussed at the last meeting to tell us how much it would cost for them to do that work and to identify what work they could get done in the time frame. So do we choose then we choose one of them is that what it is or with the two funds. It's going to depend on how it comes out so if ADM H says well we can do part one and part two, and then seventh gen says they can do three and four. I'm just, I'm just pulling out numbers there's nothing to that, then we could move that way as long as everything was under the $10,000. So quote comes back under $10,000 that's when we have to go out for bid. So we're hoping that we can get everyone to come in. And so we, I believe we discussed in the last meeting that we were going to break up the, the quote so that the leap, we could ask leap for the information but leap has a current contract so it just seems like for best practices for the accounting department to find another firm to offer and see how they, what they said, but how much of the work they said that they could do as well.  And my understanding also is that the folks in Springfield, you know, could do some of the work for us and serving Gen. I'm not having, you know, the two groups have to compete or like when we're picking one, one group because they're the lowest day. That's not what we were discussing this meeting so I don't agree with that. We don't have to do that. I mean, we're not asking them to compete. We're just asking them if they can, if they can complete the work that's on the quote. Does that make sense? As long as we're giving the two groups, if we invited them to give us quote, I would like for us to have the two groups do the work for us and not, you know, pick and choose is what I'm saying. We'll see. We'll see what. So if we can divide it up. So if they both say we can get this work done by October 5th, and they both say they can get the entire scope of work done, we just split that scope in half so that both of them are doing some of the work. Is that what you're suggesting? What I'm saying is that what we're discussing this meeting is that we'll reach out to 7 Gen as to what they cannot or cannot do. We'll reach out to those in Springfield as to what they cannot or cannot do and the LEAP program is where we left it at. And now I'm hearing that some of the, you know, we're going, the two BIPOC-led organizations are going to be competing for the scope of work. But that's not, this is not a big process that we're doing. Yeah, it's not a big process and we're not asking them to compete. I think you're very right. Again, if one identifies that they can do AB and the other one identifies they can do C and D, then we can have them both do it. If they both say that we can do all of it, then we would have to find a way that we can support them all doing the work. Right. And as far as it goes with the second part of the charge, you know, he sent it out to LEAP. And I don't have the information on the other two groups. I have more information on the other two groups because Sean did ask Alicia and I to look into them before we move that forward. One of them looks like they are not BIPOC-led, but it is very hard to find a group, a consulting group that does community safety working group who is not local but willing to do this work on such short notice. So he sent us those two groups and additionally, in addition to that, we also reached out to LEAP because Alicia and I did get a chance to meet LEAP. We asked Amos Irwin if he had any partners or any people that he could recommend to us and he said that he didn't have anybody he thought he could recommend to do the work on such a tight time frame. So I did look into the two groups. They do look okay. The first one, 21 CP, they claim to be diverse. And they talked a lot about the 21st century policing model that we explored in the first part of our charge. Mr. Vernon Jones. As I read what Jennifer put in the packet, the work has been divided into two groups. One is sort of a anti-racism, how do we create an anti-racist department. And the other one is a list of other questions about specific policies, use of force, et cetera, and some contract things. If LEAP and the group in Springfield tell us that they can do either piece for under $10,000, we can hire whoever we want. If they come in over $10,000, then we have to have asked for three quotes in order to be able to award it to anybody. I assume that's what Sean was thinking about. I've had no conversation with Sean about anybody, about any of it, but that's how I understand it. Thank you, Mr. Vernon Jones. Miss Pat, did I answer your questions? Let's move on for the sake of time. I'm very honest. I don't think that we will have any consultant work done for us prior to the end of our charge, which is November 1st. So this is just all delayed practice. It's not going to happen. I'll be surprised to have to see any consultant that will pull this off in six weeks. That's impossible. They'll only have three weeks. Exactly. By the time the contract signed, they'll have enough to do it. Exactly. I'll be really surprised that anybody will take to take it on. It's white supremacy. They're playing us. They're playing this committee. I've lived here for more than 35 years. So it's all check the box, the big and the powerful people. We need to change town council November 2nd. Thank you, Miss Pat. Miss Ferrara. Yeah, I mean, obviously I'm in agreement with that, you know, it's going to be a true miracle if we get anyone and anyone that's going to be able to do work, which was, like I said, by design, which was purposeful for us to waste our time, because obviously you all, the co chairs, everyone, all of us have been perusing and going over this from day one after we started working on part B, right after we finished with part A, you know, and so just us spinning our wheels and that's what they wanted us to do. And then at the end of the day, we're not going to be able to complete what what it is that we want to complete. And really, as as Miss Pat said, it basically short changes of the BIPOC community, the communities that are the ones that that needed the most. And, you know, make sure that we do not get to the work so that has to be a huge part of our report and not of the recommendation is talking about the white supremacy talking about the fact that this was purposeful so that we wouldn't get it because Mr. Bachman was very clear right from the beginning. All he was interested in was in the oversight board. That was it.  The other thing though, too, I know with the dates that we talked about. So we're going to meet with them on October 18. I'm assuming we're still going to meet two more times. So before we end up where we meet one more time before, before November 1. Because I would like to obviously depending on how the meeting goes, you know, process and maybe have some, you know, kind of final remarks and stuff like that, in terms of this whole process because I don't want to just, you know, not have a meeting after we meet with the town council. You know, is that that's going to be the case right. Yeah, so I did in in this in the schedule if we don't get consultants will still be meeting at least two more times after wants to review the draft and wants to reflect I saved a whole meeting so that we can reflect on our time and work. Thanks. And whatever the outcome is, I'm still pushing that we need to give a gift to our town. We need to write our experiences in a booklet. And, you know, donate them to our local libraries, our, you know, future generation should know the work of CSWG how we have been supported, you know, the experiences that we went through just to, you know, make some changes and reform in this town. We have to live a history, and we have to call out including the town council, how they try to undermine our work. It needs to be put in print. They cannot silence us. Thank you, Miss Pat. Miss Walker. So I just wanted to say because I'm not sure if we reported it earlier that we were in touch with Mr. Backelman in regards to our interest in having a presentation for the town council on the 18th. However, it did come back down to us that that is not going to be a possibility. And so that was one of the things that we also I honestly just because of the time. I don't know if we have a decision we want to come up with right now but they wanted to know if it would be possible to consider a date in November or what we would want to do but that the agenda for the 18th is currently full and with things that cannot be moved to other dates. So we will not be able to present the town council on the 18th. And now it's insulting. And now it's insulting. My suggestion is, you know, the two coaches go back to the town manager and have the town council have a special meeting for majority BIPOC committee CSWG. Let them come out time in October to meet with us to do the presentation by our coaches. By BIPOC folks, we do matter in this town. If the agenda items are full, October 14, let the town council meet another day so meet with CSWG so we can do our presentation in October period. Thank you, Ms. Pat, Ms. Ferreira. Yeah, I'm in agreement too. I mean, this is again, you know, slap in the face, you know, showcasing again how the issues that deal with the BIPOC community in Amherst is not important at all. Because how is it that, you know, Mr. Bachman and others in town government and town council and so on and so forth said that we needed to be done by November 1 that we need to be disbanded by November 1. They're saying that they don't have room for us in the meeting. You know, either, either they need to make room for us in the meeting and put some other things to another day, or as Ms. Pat said, they need to create another meeting for us to meet with them.  This is like, again, slap in the face and very insulting for them to now say that, you know, they don't have any time for us to meet. I thought this was important to them. That's what they said during part A, right? But obviously that's not what they're showing. You know, it's they talk the talk, but when it comes time to walk the walk, it doesn't happen. Thank you, Ms. Rara. Before I call on Mr. Vernon Jones in this moment, and I just want to be clear that in August when Alicia and I met with Mr. Bachman, we were flexible as to the dates of possibly presenting in November, but you all indicated in our August 26th meeting that you wanted to finish. So we went back to him. Wait, Brianna, I think we have a miscommunication here. It's not that we indicated we wanted to finish. He said that we were done on November 1st. I don't know why it's coming down to us saying that we wanted to finish. No, are we a group still after November 1st, or are we not? I'm not going to do things as a what, as a disbanded group after November? No, he's the one that messed up. He's the one that said I was very clear when I talked to him. You all were there when we were there in person that day, when I was just like, can we work beyond November 1st? Can we work into December, into January, into February? We wanted to work many more months. And he said no. So then, yeah, I missed the meeting or whatever. And then I come back and it's like, Oh, well, yeah, you're disbanded, but you can present after November. No, that's not how it works. That's insulting. That's again, a slap in the face. Are we a group? Are we not a group? Are we going to let them just push us around and do whatever? That's why I said, if you are disbanding us on November 1st, then we're disbanded on November 1st. I'm not doing any other work on the CSWG after November 1st. No. You know what I'm saying? I'm not going to be pushed around. Period. Thank you, Ms. Ferrara. Mr. Vernon Jones. I believe the president of the town council is in the audience. We want to see whether she would consider having a discussion with us right now about a possible presentation date. I'm open to that, Ms. Walker. Oh, sorry, Ms. Bowman. I'm sorry. Ms. Bowman had her hand up for a while. And I see Lynn is now in the audience with her hand up. So, okay. First of all, I wholeheartedly agree with everything that Ms. Fiera has said, and everything that Ms. Anabaku said. I don't want to give any more of my time at all after November 1st, to this group. I know that I've been a little MIA over the course of summer. I had a lot going on, but I'm tapped out.  I'm very early on. I've been complaining about it. I've been calling Mr. Bachman out on it and telling him that he's full of it and he tells us one thing and tells the next person the next thing. I'm tired of it. It's exhausting. And as far as the, as far as the town committee is concerned, I feel like they knew that our last day was, was November 1st. So they could have made time in this schedule. Regardless, regardless, regardless of whether or not they heard back from us, they could have a lot of time in their schedule to have us present, or have us present. And I'm just not feeling it. I'm so tired of the, the, the, the level of undermined, underhanded racism that comes from the white people in this town. I'm tired of it. And they, you know, and these are the same people that will turn around and be like, I don't know. I'm an ally. No, you're not. You're not an ally. First of all, you don't get to say you're an ally. You get appointed an ally. First of all, let's just start there.  It's about putting your time where your mouth is.   And this is real life. These are people's lives and they give zero about people's life. Oh, but let us talk about the library. Yes, I know the library is important, but that's not somebody's life. And that's how it is in this town.  It should not be part of this, because all it's going to do is cause me stress and high blood pressure and frustration and literally like just not liking people because I'm just so exhausted from it.  They're not going to come they're not going to interact with us so this doesn't affect them because they don't have to sit and look and be in the presence of BIPOC community. These are people that are in the presence of BIPOC community.  And so I said it before, Mr. Bachman doesn't even live in this community. Like, he has nothing invested in here. There's no reason for him to care about what's happening over here.  And, and if we don't present we need to put out a very clear statement as to why we did not present the community with our recommendations and what and, and directly hold Amherst Town Council and Mr. Bachman responsible, hold them responsible and hit every major on the front page of major newspapers, because I'm tired of Amherst looking like this. Oh, we do such good for our community we do this down there you do nothing, nothing, when there's, there's room to make change you do nothing. So, we need to really put it out there because we could have been on the forefront of change, and we're decided they like, it's been decided that we're not going to be on the forefront of change so we need to make that know we need to make that really, we need to make that know we need to make a big fuss, and make it really know that look we put all this work in, and there's just there's, you know, there's just they they made no time there's nothing to show for it. Everything we did we got criticized about it, everything like every, every time one of the BIPOC community tried to say something about it, they got criticized about it Oh that's, you know you misinterpreted this that me other. Sorry, I'm hot at my oven on cooking. Um, but yes, so please. I'm that's that's kind of that's where I am. I'm so mad right now. I'm just really, really, really mad right now. And I'm really trying to hold it together, and not just be like, why finish it out, but I'm not that type of person like I'm, I, I want to finish this out, there's not much time left, and I want to be part of it, but like, really, I feel like I've, I wasted my time. This community wasted my time. And I'm just, I'm really frustrated with it. I'm really frustrated with it there's so many other things that I could have been doing. And I'm not doing it because of you know because I, I was trying to be invested in this community and support. You know, I support support my community and the thing is, and the thing that frustrates me is that it's not by pop by pop people only who are going to who are going to benefit from this. You know what I'm saying and so that frustrates me even more because it's like, you know, it becomes a whole. It becomes a whole economic thing.  And it's, it's been married made very clear in what happened, what's been happening right now, in that there's no housing for anybody, anybody, anybody, anybody. So that's a whole, that's a whole nother thing but that just adds on to like how little they care about the community that is here in Amherst like, why, why did why, why, why did I even like waste my time like why, you know, I have to. Thank you for sticking with us to nation. Thank you miss Bowman. Miss Walker did you want to add anything. I guess we can move forward and invite the town council president in right now, if that's okay with the group, and see what she has to say in regards to a separate meeting date, and then we can go over the last agenda item which is the successor group and the resident oversight board group. I just want to chime in and say that we have seven minutes before our forum starts so I think we run the notion that if there was not a large turnout then we could continue the meeting and in the forum. Before or after folks spoke. Thank you miss moist and. First of all good evening, and I hear you loud and clear on Monday night, I will be presenting to the town council the possibility that we add a meeting on October 25. It would be for two purposes. This would be one of them. The other one would be for additional feedback and a vote regarding redistricting, which is also a very important issue and something we have to finish by the end of October based on state law. So I think the best thing for me to do would be to get back to the co chairs, after Monday night to see whether or not that is a possibility with the 25th be acceptable to the committee that works. Yeah. So with that said I'm going to hand it off to Alicia now to update us quick. Well, actually, should we just adjourn the meeting and continue our last agenda item after the forum is the group okay with that.  And we're on a different link for the forum. Yes, you should have received a separate link for the form. So that's what it was. Okay. Oh, you received to yeah. Yeah, okay. Okay, great. See you guys soon. Thank you all a little bit.


Hi, thanks so thanks to all of you very much for joining us tonight. My name is Steven Cedars and I'm here to greet you on behalf of the Edwin Booth Award Committee, the CUNY Graduate Center Department of Theatre and Performance and the Doctoral Theatre Students Association. We're very excited to have you here so that we can talk to you a little bit about some of the ways that we've made an effort to pay tribute to Mimi Lien who, as you've probably guessed, is this year's recipient of the Edwin Booth Award. Hi, I'm Jess Applebaum and we're very excited and grateful to HowlRound for the opportunity to be live with you. At the very top, we want to thank Thea Rogers from HowlRound and Frank Henscher from the Siegel Center for their support. At the core of CUNY Graduate Center is a value, knowledge for the public good. And so presenting the Booth Award here on a free and open platform is really meaningful to us. Tonight we get to share a glimpse of the work that we've done to celebrate the career and impact of Mimi Lien and in the world of theater and beyond. We're looking forward to telling you all about the website which the URL of which we'll share many times through our conversation and to give you a little bit more insight into why we think that Mimi is so singular not only as a designer but as a theater maker more generally. But first of all we know you're not really here to see as you want to see Mimi get the award. So what we're going to do now is we're going to air a video that we shot a couple of days ago in which we gave her the award over as you can probably imagine Zoom. So please enjoy this short clip. Hello and welcome to the 2020 Edwin Booth Award. I have had the great honor of chairing this committee, which includes Jess Applebaum, Stephen Cedars, Sarah Lucy, Gracious Shin, Christine Renee Snyder and Allison Walls. And I am Nick Banasarov. This year we were thrilled to honor set an environment designer Mimi Lien who joins us here today. Hi Mimi. Hi. Now over two months into the COVID-19 pandemic. And this year's live ceremony has been replaced by a website that celebrates four of Mimi's landmark projects, complete with a brief video tributes from her collaborators and adoring scholars, as well as documentation of her creative process. This video is the capstone of the website where we present the award to Mimi in the form of an unboxing video. Today we are all situated in front of aluminum foil walls created in honor of Mimi's design for the Brooklyn performance-based Jack, which she co-founded, and which featured foil walls like this in its first iteration. We have also commissioned a special design for this year's trophy, which has been mailed to Mimi but which has not yet been seen. Is that right? That is correct. Okay, here we go. Nice. So, for the first time in 37 years, the Doctoral Theater Students Association, DTSA at CUNY Graduate Center, confers the prestigious Edwin Booth Award to a designer. Our choice honors the exceptional contributions Mimi Lien has made in the worlds of theater, dance, opera, and beyond. Her work as set designer pushes the boundaries of the proscenium stage and invites artists and collaborators to engage with space in new dynamic ways. As collaborator or lead artist on projects, she presents opportunities for new narratives to arise. She inspires scholars such as us to write about the dramaturgy of space, of objects, methodologies of collaboration, analysis of theatrical architecture, and generative devised processes. Mimi moves deftly between and beyond genres. Her work, which is seen in theater, dance, and new opera demonstrates a keen and curious mind that honors the visual and textual worlds of performance. Her designs continue to push the boundaries of independent theaters and shatter the architectural rules of Broadway. Never taking the audience for granted, her designs extend beyond the stage. Welcoming, challenging, incorporating audiences into the spatial experience of performance. This award is an opportunity for us to articulate the multi-dimensional work of scenic designers and contribute scholarships to this vastly other theorized field. In the spirit of the Virginia divide between artists and academics, we have invited people from both disciplines who contribute to this knowledge-making and equal footing. The four projects we have chosen to highlight include Cypiter and Ian, Mimi's groundbreaking work at visual theater in collaboration with Pogion, the Brooklyn performance venue, Jack, the remarkable melodrama on Octurune, and the transformative Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812. Together, these projects show a remarkable range, and in each one, Mimi's work is inseparable from the success of the project itself. At a time when some people question whether there is such a thing as an avant-garde anymore, Mimi's unique voice is a forceful argument that the theater world is evolving the conversation and was previously unseen. From the beginning of the process, Mimi has worked tirelessly with us to define the dramaturgy of this award, asking questions about our intended audience, about their expectations for the site, and of course about how the site should feel and look for its visitors. Overall, her eye was always on crapping a singular experience, one that be not only powerful, but also a novel intervention into the genre of award ceremonies overall. We worked closely as well with our web designer, Justin Johnson, who has done an incredible job in translating Mimi's concept of a memory palace into an interactive and inviting experience. So, Mimi, we now invite you to unbox the award. This award is specially designed by Jason Ardizon West, who, for those who don't know, was Mimi's associate scenic designer for the Great Comet, and a recent Emmy Award winner for production design of Jesus Christ Superstar Live on NBC. Jason was an enthusiastic partner in creating this special sculpture to honor someone who he describes as a mentor. We spoke about the ways that Mimi is able to reorient the audience to the stage and their surroundings and invite people to experience the space differently. So this is Jason's spectacular sculptural embodiment of that. The geometric design was inspired partially by the letters EBA for Edwin Booth Award. So when you look at it from various angles, the award resembles EB or A. So Mimi, will you display the trophy so the people at home can see? Wow, it's totally amazing. The light may not really reveal, well, actually, or it may do more to reveal who knows. It's, wow, this is so stunning. I'm so shocked and moved and grateful. Wow. It's beautiful. It's really beautiful. Here. Oh, there's like an engraved front part. Yeah. There we go. Oh, perfect. This is now when I get to say something, right? This is like the part of the thing. Okay. First of all, a huge heartfelt thank you to this, the CUNY Doctoral Theatre Association, for bestowing this very special award on me and for doing so to a theater designer for the very first time. This means so much to me as a, not only as a person, but also to me as a part of a community of designers, theater artists who are often less visible and therefore less frequently recognized. So thank you again to the committee for this award. When I first received the email from Nick telling me that the group had chosen me to be the recipient of the Booth Award this year, and when I took a look at the list of previous winners, I nearly like fell over backwards at the number of other recipients who have been total inspirations to me and heroes of mine. But I'm reeling in shock and gratitude to be sharing the company of folks like Ellen Stewart, Richard Forman, Karen Finley, Irene Forna as Reverend Billy and Young Jean Lee.  And what a crazy and strange set of circumstances we are under right now. I'm so grateful that this group was gained to put together an alternate format to the award ceremony, which is what you're experiencing right now. As a designer, I sort of like bumping up against things that seem like limitations and coming up with other formats of doing things. So I saw this as an opportunity, actually, a way to mark this particular moment in time and a way to take a first stab at figuring out what you might need to do things in the upcoming months and years. I, for one, was interested in liberating the audience to experience time and space on this site in a non-dictated way. And hopefully some of the materials and images shared will provide a little insight on design processes and the way designers work and collaborate on these performance pieces. So thank you in advance for trowing our hallways and peeking in on some of the little kernels that we've embedded there. Thank you Mimi. It has been a true honor to work so closely with you in reimagining the dramaturgy aesthetics and meaning of how we as theater makers and as academics honor the work of designers. Thank you to all of the people who have made this work possible, including all of the students from the theater and performance program at the CUNY Graduate Center, the faculty chairs who gave financial support to the Booth Award, Gene Graham-Jones, Marvin Carlson, and David Savrin, Frank Henchker and everyone at the Martin E. Siegel Center, the Doctoral Theater Students Association, the Doctoral and Graduate Students Councils, as well as professors Peter Eckersall and Erica Lynn, and our academic program coordinator and assistant program officer, Patricia Goodson. We are profoundly indebted to everyone in your artistic community, Mimi, who have offered an overwhelming amount of support during this process. Thank you all. This committee has founded both meaningful and delightful to join academic scholarship together with artistic knowledge in service to Mimi's astonishing and ongoing career. We hope this site will serve as an enduring resource to academics and artists alike for years to come. Thank you all. We hope you, we hope and trust that you found that as lovely and adorable to watch as we had, as we thought it was to make. And best of all, if you'd like to see it with fewer of the streaming issues, you can find it at the website. For the first time, the URL of that website is MimiLien.EdwinBoothAward.com. Again, that's MimiLien.EdwinBoothAward.com. You'll hear it again. Speaking of which, we'd love now to talk a little bit with the Booth committee about the website. Some of what you heard in that video is that we are trying, we've been trying to sort of expand the idea of how we could give this award in the midst of some unprecedented circumstances. And we'd love to share with you some of our thoughts on how we tried to honor Mimi in a very unique way. And just first briefly, we wanted to give a little context to the Booth award. So Christine and Allison, if you want to jump in and share with us some of that. And maybe even before we do that, if everybody just wants to say hi and introduce themselves too, we are all people, part of the theater and department of CUNY grad center and many of us are academics and practitioners as well and it would be great for you to all just say hi for a second. Hi, I'm Christine Snyder. It's a pleasure to chat with you. I am Nick Banasaroff. I'm Sarah Lucy. I'm Grisha Shen. And I'm, I'm Allison Wolves. So if we're going to talk a little bit about the history of this award, the first Booth award was given out in 1983 by the theater department students of the CUNY Graduate Center. And it was given to the Royal Shakespeare Company, which I think is really fascinating as the purpose of this award is specifically to honor either individuals or organizations that have a specific impact on New York theater. Recent recipients have included Taylor Mack, Young Jean Lee. Last year we gave it to Ishmael Houston Jones, and this year to Mimi Leigh Ann. I think one of the things that is remarkable and really important about the Booth award is that it is entirely determined by the students of the theater and performance studies department. I feel rather proud actually when you look at those past recipients that they are such exciting practitioners and often that award has really kind of anticipated other people catching on to just how amazing they are. And I think it really speaks to as well how deeply the theater students at the Graduate Center love theater and how engaged we are with the New York theater scene. And it's a really nice way to maintain this connection to break down any perceived walls between the artists and practitioners and the scholars who are, as Jess said, also often practitioners at the Graduate Center. It's really nice because that is the purpose right to bring the academic and the professional communities together and to sort of keep that conversation happening between them right. And another thing I wanted to note is just every year the Booth award is a little different. It often reflects the eclectic nature of whoever the honoree is. So I know Allison for example worked on the Booth committee when Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping won the award, which was very different than the next year when Taylor Mack won. And as you can imagine, sometimes these are panel discussions, sometimes they're very performance heavy, but this is a first for us. This is something new. And we're really glad that you all can be here on this journey with us as we explore both our collaboration with HowlRound and also our website. That's great. I mean, I think something really profound that that makes me think about, in which Mimi shared in the unboxing video is about how this was a challenge, like to be able to share this was a challenge. And in some ways to what you're saying, Christine, I like the idea that, well, I don't like anything about the circumstances going on in the world, but given that those exist, I kind of like the idea that our unprecedented giving this award to a designer has interacted in that and we had the sort of imagination that that as Mimi said, saw this as a challenge to be overcome. With that in mind, Nick, I would love for you. So Nick is a both a designer and a scholar and, and I would love for you to talk a little bit maybe about just just about what's, what's new about this and why is this a big deal that we're giving this to a designer how is this significant both to academia and in artistic practice. Yeah. You know, it's, it's interesting to me in the context of theater history where the roles that people have taken within theater making have been defined and changed over the years and they've kind of split apart like a web. You know, we had these, at certain point we know we had these director writers right. And, you know, by the time we get to Shakespeare we have no directors, but we lead actor is in charge of directing kind of, and as we move forward, you know, the directors had to be in charge and he sets the lighting the sound any sort of special effects was often on their shoulders until they had the good wisdom to split those roles off because there's a tremendous amount that can be accomplished when there is a more rigor and attention played to these. So, you know, really wasn't until recently that designers have been considered as equal sort of there this secondary split off thing but you know over time we've also seen the rise of the actor as generator as creator. And I think we're in a moment of seeing the rise of the design world trying to take an equal place there. And I think Mark's work is remarkable in that sense I mean she obviously does a tremendous amount of traditional process work but the piece superterranean that she created last year with pig iron. And she was a lead artist. I think Mark's a really important moment in at least the device theater community in this country, because, you know, it is, it's available online right now for from now until Sunday so not right now for people watching in the future but you can see it. It's remarkable and like it has a grandeur of like Romeo Castellucci and some of the hot European directors but it does so in a totally different history a different lineage device theater lineage, where in this case the designer is is really located in the room in deep collaboration with someone is not creating a script beforehand but playing and learning and Mimi's, I think, one of her great skills is the ability to generate moods and and and affects. And I think that Sarah Benson's video the director of an octa ruin one of the future projects speaks about that really well. I think, hopefully this is going to break open some more doors for young people who did not realize that as a designer you can be the center of a piece. You can create the world and and that the theater process is flexible enough to work around that and to create remarkable things. What you are saying makes especially thinking about breaking the form in the space open to process so that you can actually in be invited into knowing about the work and that Mimi does makes me think about Sarah and the work that she does as a scholar. And Sarah recently just defended and her and is now full page PhD and her dissertation. I don't want to get the title wrong so I'm going to read this for a second is acting objects staging new materialism post humanism and the echo critical crisis in contemporary performance. And so I'm excited for you to share what interests you about Mimi's work. And also, the translation that we started to do from, we were having a live event where we wanted to have part of that be the process that have Mimi's work shown in a three dimensional form and we started to then have to shift to a two dimensional form of a website. That as well. Yes, I love to. And thank you so much for the little shout out for my dissertation it's a long title so you got it perfectly right. But yeah, I think that Mimi's work is really really exciting to me and it actually coincides perfectly with some of the theories and artists that I was talking about my dissertation. What I find notable is that you can really see Mimi's background in architecture, and how that's revealed in her design work. And specifically I think because she has such an attention to the ways in which space can move and affect the audience. And by move I mean like literally physically move the bodies of the audience like their materiality. And by affect I mean like that, that affect theory style of affect where it's like this kind of injection of sensory material that gives you an kind of immediate, not quite emotional response like not emotional because you can't name it yet but it's something that's really strong. And so that's, it's interesting to me because Mimi's work it shows that there's this really kind of precise and detailed attenuation to the materials that she's working with I think that she often is really starting with the material. And so there's the shape and the texture and the mass of these different structures that she's engaging with. But also, she's always thinking about how those are relating to the audience like how they're interacting with human bodies and how they're producing sensations. And so I think that of course like great designers are trained to think that way I think that we can see that elsewhere, but there's a few things that bring Mimi's work to me to like the next level. And that she is able to play with the relationships that she's creating between the audience and the atmosphere around them. So sometimes I mean I, and it's hard to say that this is what her work does because Mimi's work is so the body of work is quite large and different. And that's kind of part of why it's so exciting. But I can say that there are a few commonalities that I've noticed in studying her a bit. And that is that that ability to play with the relationship between the human and space. And so I think that for, for example, sake, you can really see that when she she can accomplish that through surprise. Like in an octaroon, for instance, like you actually watch the actors prepare the stage to transform, and you have no idea that that's what they're doing and then suddenly there's a big bang and it's like, there's a really different space and you didn't know that that was going to happen. But the element of surprise is strong there and then, of course. Oh, and I should note that the doctrine and an octaroon it's a great example of how her work, kind of dramaturgically lens to the meaning of the performance because this this big surprise that I'm talking about in an octaroon. There's a surgical purpose for it and like in the way that it creates this modern melodramatic sensation scenes so it's really theoretically grounded, I think. And then another way that you can see that kind of shifting relationship is when she upends expectations like, I mean, she completely transforms a Broadway theater so that the performers and the audience can become come into different theater. And of course there I'm talking about the great comment. And then I think this is actually maybe the most exciting to me is that I see her playing with the relationship by making familiar things into something that's strange. And that's really super clear and super terrain in which I'll plug again is streaming through Sunday so please go watch it. It's amazing. The idea of making the familiar strange is something that I find to be really important actually for one in a kind of new materialist sense of the of thought. It renews attention towards the agency of non human things in the world and the ways that the objects that were really intimately surrounded with how those affect us as humans. And then it also it this making the familiar strange it it helps us to envision and rehearse some different relationalities that the human can have with objects. And also importantly where the human and object they're kind of, they come together and understood more as collaborators rather than stuck in a stuck in a more fixed hierarchy. And I also find that there's relevance towards eco conscious thought, because some of the way the worlds that are presented and some of me needs work there. They're not necessarily for the human like it's not pleasant to listen to the sounds going on or like the light is uncomfortable or you know the, it's kind of creepy the way something moves across the stage. And I think that that's really valuable to take time at like to spend time in those kinds of spaces. And it's the way that we can as an audience we can witness or experience being kind of one small element embedded within an environment that exists for itself rather than for us. So the fact that Mimi creates work that is engaging with and contributing to philosophical thought is pretty exciting for me. And, and also, she is changing the audience relationship to the space in the theater, so that the relationship to space outside the theater might also then suddenly appear strange and be affected. And of course the fact that she does this through sometimes beautiful, sometimes not beautiful but definitely spectacular and captivating creations. It makes their impact even more impressive and effective in my eyes. So, yeah, she's her work is really exciting and I really encourage everyone who doesn't know her to just go start at our website but then go elsewhere and do more research. There's a lot to find. Let me say a little bit about how we thought about these some of these ideas when we were approaching both the award ceremony and the website. That idea of, of keeping the sense of the actual audiences body and the way that that body relates to space as a central kind of a first step really was that was how we were approaching it. And so when we were thinking about the live event that was really an important way of understanding how we might transform the space that we were going to be presenting in. And of course, since that wasn't available to us thinking about how the we generally will approach a website and how we understand information and how we're like a tuned or habituated into finding information there we wanted to change that just just a little in order so that you could see it anew. And I also think that there was a sense of of how the the reason that we're doing that. It was just for fun. It's actually, although it is fun. But it's also because that there's value in having your view refreshed really that that it's useful to get outside of your habituated perspective and try something else. So, go visit me million that Edwin booth award calm. That's, yeah, thank you Sarah that's really lovely and I should say Sarah is one of several scholars who provided a footnote to one of the shows. As Nick said at the beginning of this, we made a real effort in the website to both include artistic and academic tributes again to sort of to connect those so if of the many things that I would love to talk about in their profound observations, there's tons of time for you to find those on your own. I think it's on a little bit that I think is great it's just this idea of making the familiar strange. Not only because you know it's relevant to Mimi's work but because I feel like it could be a thesis statement for what we tried to do I mean throughout this whole process of figuring out how to do this digitally and in a new world. We've been wanting to still have some sense of like of liveness and immediacy hence we're here right now. That's you know that's that's been a big deal to us but but I do want to talk a little bit maybe if only from nostalgia about what it was we wanted this live event to be so great show would you mind talking to us a little bit about what our initial plans were and maybe how they translated. Since Mimi is our first memorable set designer recipient. We wanted to honor her by creating me is on scene for the awarding ceremony that can remind the audience of scenographic worlds Mimi created.  We wished we could create experiences that expand our conversation and theoretical engagement with me these words, which is actually nearly realized via a digital platform. And I mean that brings me to the part that we want to share about process. I myself am a dramaturg and a scholar and so most of all of what we're sharing tonight is a is a celebration and a rupture of the work that we often hide behind. We want to actually show you the scenes a bit of the website and we want to show you what it took to make the website and Nick and Steven, you guys are heavily involved with that so I want to send that over to you for a second. I would say that when we were thinking in the beginning of what this award was going to start when it was going to be, we always had at the core that we wanted to be able to share content with ourselves, and particularly also with future and setting set designers and practitioners who are interested in the collaborations between the set designers and a scholar or set designers and a dancer who wants to start to create work. So it's always been the idea that we would have open access and an intimate view. We would look at process and for somebody to then weave their own thoughts into relationships of process together so. So with that, Nick and Steven, I want to open up what it was like to identify the productions that we wanted to share. And what it was then like to conceive of a design and to start to bring the website to life. Yeah, Steven jumped in any time. It was, it was exciting I mean from the very beginning, I think, as soon as maybe maybe the day after Mimi heard about the award, she came to me and it was like, Okay, so who are these people, us, and who is going to be coming to this live event. And, and immediately wanted to know about the circumstances the people, the scenario the expectations which I think is an incredible testament to pretty much the way she approaches everything, which is, which is with deep consideration and. And so when the medium changed, she was, you know, quick to sort of lead us in, in a new format, where, you know, we thought we were going to feature two or three or four projects in, in person. And, and we were talking about what if we started translating that to a different way and she created this idea of a memory palace. Or like a home ground plan the ground plan of a home, but very low tech is very important that it's very aesthetically both dated and also, I guess timeless in that sense. It's sort of ASCII charm which is this old way of making computer graphics and things like that. And so, you know, we ended up then trying to figure out a version that invited the audience to explore on their own and find things that would be interesting to them so we kept the videos, all below five minutes that you can engage with on the website. So one minute, some are five. And each person can sort of get a different fingerprint of Mimi's work either tracing through her drafting and model making process or the production photos or the sometimes production videos and clips like that, as well as articles, and the videos that scholars have contributed to try to make sense of what the work of a designer is, which is something that is often invisible and not just set designers, but most designers all the time. And yet, one thing that Mimi's done is is is forcefully articulate the power that is possible in those media. I'll take a second. I know you've got the power to screen share. Do you want to. I got the power a little bit of that you have the power. Yes, here we go. So, this is what the booth award looks like it's a ground plan with some little decorations in each of these rooms. That's it. But you click on different rooms, and, and you're able to see the information about it so if I click on super terrain in. It pops me into this other universe where I see more about the creative team. And then, and this left hand column here there all these artistic tributes from creators of seagull of super terrain in, and as well as Sarah's academic tribute there. There are performers designers on this page and Dan the director is in the hallway because he's worked on her and with her in a lot of contexts. On the other side we have all these clips from the pig irons amazingly let us use and other sort of behind the scenes stuff production images, a 3D animation that was never really able to be put into effect of the audience moving at the end of the play sort of idea, and then models, early models and visual research so we hope this is a teaching tool for for teachers in BFA MFA and and sort of other academic context. This is a tool people can learn I mean I know when I teach design, I basically want people to find things like this. But it's always so disparate so maybe it's an opportunity to offer other ways of displaying an understanding the work of designers this our web designer Justin created an image of the wall falling in the nocturne cotton balls and people's faces I'm not sure how well it reads anything else I should go to I think that's all I got right now. I think that's great. See for yourself. I might add on top of that I mean I think all of that Nick is is profound and lovely. I just want to maybe add a personal observation about working with me on this in particular just one of the things that found really inspiring that next comments make me think about. When the world was still in a place where people saw each other in person. Early on when Mimi got the award she one of her first questions is can I come see the space where this is held and it me and I walked through the possible spaces we could hold it and I remember just being amazed that it was never about. What is this going to say about me or what are you guys doing for me it was always how is this going to feel for the audience how can we make this evocative or appropriate or just kind of fun and kind of cool and. And you know I think for theater makers right now theater makers and scholars like we're all theorizing on our feet like crazy to figure out like what is the essential quality of our art form, given that liveness is a hard thing to come around right now. I was just really inspired with how quickly Mimi was ready to make that shift into doing this as a website and just maintain that same question okay well we can't have people in person, how are we still going to make this cool for an audience. In other words like I just didn't see her theorizing about it I just saw her being like well let's get to work okay good we can't make it cool for them the way we thought we could how can we make it interesting now and. If nothing else, you know in all the great joys I've had working on this committee I've certainly taken that away as a really profound profound thing like the end we make it fun we make we worry about our audience and make it interesting. You know fun, is there anything that we haven't mentioned is there anything else we want to talk about I mean there's plenty but there's also plenty on the website which again is nearly and that Edward Booth award.com. I just also, yeah, want to plug jack, the performance base that Mimi co founded. There's a room there for jack and then there's also room for great comet which has documentation throughout the various iterations and awesome videos. The, the nice part about jack is that it's a different kind of space making that Mimi's engaged in. You know she's on the board of directors there and that's so her rep and, and she's really feeding and considering deeply the community's relationship to equity and justice and how theater can be of genuine service rather than lip service. And so, you know jack has been transformed into a place to distribute food in these times and so if you want to give a couple extra bucks somewhere go there. And it's a really important place that I think Mimi helped really set the spirit of and it lives very strongly and hopefully in person soon. Anything else that anyone else would like to talk about. I know we've all got lots of things to say but is there anything that feels feels good to mention right now. I would say what feels good. One more thing that I think feels good to mention is the diverse voices that are part of the tributes to Mimi, and you're going to get to see how practitioners directors, dancers and actors. Think of Mimi and then think of space and and scholarship isn't just something that we write but it's also something that we perform and everybody is part of that process and everybody's always perform working in dramaturgical ways. Mimi gives that space and shares that space with her collaborators who then also get to interpret and use that the the qualities of their environments and it gives us a sense of where and how we want to place ourselves in the world. So it's not just in the artistic practice but it sorry the artistic practice moves beyond the stage and into communities and into new processes and so it's kind of like a network of how we can think and shape how performances are made. So that's really exciting. Great. So we'd love to encourage you guys all to go and test our claim and see how exciting it all is. For the final time tonight the way you can do that is you can go to MimiLien.EdwinBoothAward.com. I'd also like to remind you that Pig Iron Theatre Company has been very generous to allow the Segal Center to stream two of their shows. Through this Sunday, May 31st you can see the show Superterranean on the Segal Center website and again you can see it and then go and see some of the scholarship and the artistic tributes on the website. And then starting the next day on June 1st through June 3rd we'll be streaming another Pig Iron show in which Mimi was involved called Love Unpunished. To close out I'd just like to say thank you all again for joining us. We really hope you've enjoyed and getting to hear us share some of what excites us about MimiLien and doubly we hope that you'll go and get excited yourself through the website.