May 19, 2020

Meaghan Mullally-Gorr:
Hi, this is Meghan Mullally-Gorr, and this is Sullivan 180 Presents…. Take Five! We are interviewing our friends, partners and community leaders. Today. I have Candice and Emily with me from Bethel woods. Hi guys. How are you? Thanks for joining me. Can each of you introduce yourselves, let us know what you do at Bethel woods?

Candace Rivela:
Sure! My name is Candace Rivela and I am the lead teaching artist and also a creative arts therapist in our Museum Education and Creative Programs department.

Emily Casey:
And I am Emily Casey. I’m the director of marketing for Bethel Woods Center for the Arts.

Meaghan Mullally-Gorr:
So a lot has changed recently and as we can see, we’re all working from home. Can you guys let us know how your day to day has changed?

Emily Casey:
Yeah, so it’s definitely been interesting, you know, changing all of our meetings into Zooms, but we have kind of shifted a bit of our communications and our programming to try to have an online presence.

Candace Rivela:
Yes. We’re trying our best to create online content for the community right now. And I’m kind of reaching across departments on our end and using everybody’s brainstorming capabilities and like Emily said, you know, seeing where we can shift our programs online.

Meaghan Mullally-Gorr:
Now, have you made that shift? I know that pre COVID-19 you had your art therapy and photography classes all starting to gear up. Has that started yet online?

Candace Rivela:
Yes, actually our “Project Identity” photo class is doing really well. We were able to shift that whole curriculum online, just because of the nature of that program. And it was easily converted into an online forum. I was able to make a couple of videos that shared some art therapy awareness and some at-home projects for self care and things like that, which has been great. I feel like this whole experience of working from home has given us a new outlet to raise awareness about some of the things that we do at Bethel Woods. People may not even know that we have a Creative Arts Therapy Program or, or even know what it is. So that’s been one positive thing that’s really come out of this whole thing. So is there any programming coming out soon that the community should keep an eye out for? So a lot of it right now is obviously contingent upon the restriction and the stay-at-home. We are looking to do some things utilizing the grounds. You know, we are lucky that our 800 acres do naturally allow for social distancing. So once that is allowed, hopefully we can activate those spaces. We have an outdoor exhibit, ‘Earth and Focus’, and that’s from photographers all over the world to highlight their photos. We did that for Earth Day. And then also we’re really excited about our ‘augmented reality tour’. It’s something we’ve been working on for about two years now, but basically guests will come and be able to rent a sanitized device and take a tour of the site. It’s a walking tour. It will basically put the stage where it was, and it’s all told through alumni and music, and it’s really fun and exciting. So hopefully when the grounds open, we’ll be able to do that.

Meaghan Mullally-Gorr:
Is there anything that the community can do to help?

Emily Casey:
I don’t know if there’s anything necessarily there for them to help with, but, minimally to stay up on the most exciting and recent news for Bethel Woods, just continuing to kind of check in with what we’re doing on social media or on our website or any other outlets where they can stay updated. And just, don’t lose hope that we are going to return to our programming eventually, in whatever shape or form that takes. We hope that people will just continue to want to engage with us and we’ll do our best to offer things that can continue to inspire and educate everybody.

Candace Rivela:
And that does segue nicely into our ‘Growing Hope Program’ that we are softly launching currently. We did respond to this with Sullivan Renaissance to launch our ‘Growing Hope Program’. So that’s planting kits that we are providing to schools to supplement their curriculum. We wanted to do something where it was a creative outlet, but the also kind of a project. So the kits include paint, pots, brushes, directions and seeds. And we’re asking them to decorate the pots and then plant the seeds, and watch the progress. And then once this is all over, we’re inviting everyone back to the historic grounds where we hope to plant a Peace Garden on the field. We do have a landing page on our website ( www.bethelwoodscenter.org/at home ) that includes information on the Growing Hope Program, but also a slew of other resources, canvases, and creative arts therapy videos are on there. We have some tutorials about painting pots, and some links to our historical archives of Woodstock photos. If people want to go through them, basically that’s just become our online resource.

Meaghan Mullally-Gorr:
Is there anything else that you guys would like to add before I let you go?

Emily Casey:
Yes, I want to give a special shout out and acknowledge all of our Bethel Woods teaching artists who are local professional artists and arts educators. And they’ve just been doing such an amazing job to support us and to provide online content for us. They’ve been making video tutorials and music lessons at home. Different kinds of ways to engage the community creatively. And so we’re just super appreciative of our Bethel Woods teaching artists and all that they’re doing to highlight and share what we do a Bethel Woods in such a creative way.

Meaghan Mullally-Gorr:
Thank you guys again for joining us. I really appreciate you. Thank you so much.