Organizers during COVID-19
Organizers are weighing difficult decisions right now and Withfriends wants to offer this space for an open conversation about the challenges our spaces, programs, and communities are facing.
We know for sure there are organizers trying to figure out the same things you are, and you all are resilient and creative people. While Withfriends is always happy to offer advice, we also want to give you all the opportunity to hear from one another directly.
We can talk about specific concerns and strategies for our spaces, events, and communities, or we can just talk about the obstacles we're personally facing that make that work difficult. If you're not available, feel free to share any thoughts over email. We'll take some notes, which I'll share afterwards.
Join here: https://zoom.us/j/228774127
Outline
The goal here is to seed as many ideas/perspectives as possible around organizer issues during the coronavirus outbreak.
With the overwhelming amount of information we’re absorbing as a society in the last few days, it’s difficult to find specific resources for people running small businesses and responsible for events, and that’s the space I want to make available here. Resolution on any exact strategies isn’t necessary - it’s a brainstorm, not a debate.
Because of volume, we’ll forgo introductions in the beginning, but we ask that anyone who is comfortable speaking is invited to take a few minutes to introduce themselves, their programs, and their community. This part is important, as it helps contextualize concerns for spaces around the country. Different kinds of spaces and communities will need different solutions.
Then, consider the following prompts - although any thoughts are welcome.
Share something you’re concerned about
...and a strategy you have for dealing with it
...or that you’re asking for help dealing with
In response to something someone else said
...a different strategy for dealing with it
...or a new concern that it raises
At first, we’ll likely cover some familiar ground, but if we all try and take our time to add something new, I feel confident we’ll all come out of here with the beginnings of a lot of conversations that we’ll want to continue working on amongst ourselves over the next week and beyond.
A few more technical notes
- When you want to speak, add a comment with your name to the chat; I will do my best to keep “stack”
- To help keep things moving I may step in if you go longer than 5 minutes
- I plan to wrap this up after an hour; it will likely feel like we’re cutting things short
- We’ll be looking at ways to facilitate more of these conversations going forward - and we just added organizer search and discovery features to Withfriends this weekend, so you can look organizers up if you want to follow up with them later
Resources
This is a brief list of resources that have been shared with us to date.
China Residences Report: A general guide that started in early February, updated regularly
Cherrybombe: Resources for food & beverage organizers in New York, Austin, Seattle, Oakland
Independent Venue Week: Organizer parallel conversations (to be published)
New York City Small Business Relief: A list of resources NYC is offering businesses
COVID-19 Grassroots Relief Models: A list of ideas from the New York City Artist Coalition
House Coalition: A list of ideas from the House Coalition
Virtual Events Directory: A list of strategies around presenting events virtually
Withfriends Features
We’re a small team, and the past week has been a struggle just to facilitate refunds and event management from all the inspiring organizers on the platforms, but we have two ideas we are very excited about working on this week.
The first is community memberships. Based on around locations or categories, these are memberships without any material benefits, which automatically distribute support between (for example) all the organizers in Oakland, or all the organizers organizing film programs. Like index funds for the stock market, these would allow concerned community members to invest more broadly in the resilience of their local organizers.
The second is membership referrals. The idea is to make it extremely easy and incentivized for members in our community to encourage their friends to become members to their favorite spaces in this difficult time. We would recognize them by giving the members points, redeemable at the organizer’s discretion, or simply for status. Additionally, Withfriends could offer the referrer an ongoing share of the Withfriends fee for the new membership, which would create an ecosystem of mutual aid at a time when many others (artists, workers) are also in crisis.
If you have more ideas you think we should consider, please let us know! ...but we’re only one piece of the puzzle; this isn’t really intended to be a platform feedback session. This is for you.
Participants
A list of organizers and their location (as collected to date).
Dimo's Pizza, Chicago
Family Dance Brooklyn, Brooklyn
Awarehouse, New York
Unit 2, Toronto
Opera House Tenants Union, Brooklyn
Nublu, New York
Outpost, Queens
Potter's House, Washington, DC
3rdWavvE, Boston
Wonderville, Brooklyn
Secret Venue, San Francisco
Ambient Church, US
Brain Arts, Boston
Home Audio, Brooklyn
Discakes, New York
Indexical, Santa Cruz
Coaxial, Los Angeles
Drom, New York
Independent Venue Week, US
Live Poetic, Phoenix
AdHoc, Brooklyn
Renaissance Person, New York
Thyme Space, Brooklyn
Babycastles, New York
Magick City, Brooklyn
Gloria's, Queens
Beverly's, New York
Elijah Wheat Showroom, New York
Solidarity Room, Brooklyn
