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Indie Week Takes over the Month of September
September 2020 www.GlobeMiamiTimes.com INDIE WEEK XXL – SUPPORT ARIZONA BUSINESSES
This came in from our friends with Pin Drop Trailers. Everyone can participate in Local First’s Indie Week Az! Check this out!
Pin Drop Travel Trailers is participating in Local First Arizona’s Independent’s Week XXL. Independent’s Week, normally the first week of July, was postponed this year due to COVID-19. Lucky for all of us, it has been expanded to a whole month long in celebration of Arizona businesses.
Indie Week
This annual event hosted by Local First Arizona highlights independent businesses across the state and their importance to the local economy. Keep your money circulating locally, shop with purpose, and help your community return stronger. Visit localfirstaz.com/indie-week to download your card. You could win prizes just for supporting your favorite local businesses.
The Rules According to LFA
Per Local First Arizona news, #IndieWeekAZ is back and Indie Week XXL brings you a whole month to discover and support Arizona’s small, independent businesses — like us, here at Pin Drop — and right when we need it most! As a consumer, you can join in on the fun by visiting localfirstaz.com/indie-week to download your #IndieWeekAZ Action Card, shop and live locally (which you may already safely be doing), and get rewarded for it. LFA has some incredible prizes for participants. All you have to do is cross just 5 calls-to-action off your Indie Week action card and get entered to win locally-curated prizes. Each week, three randomly selected winners will receive a gift card to their favorite local businesses.
Pin Drop and Indie Week XXL
All month long, Pin Drop Travel Trailers offers a special 20% discount on any #PinDrop rental reservation made in the month of September 2020. Reserve a Pin Drop Road Runner Model from our website using the COUPON CODE: PinDropIndeWeek20. The discount is offered on the nightly rental fee. All daily insurance rates and security deposit fees are required. This one-time 20% offer is good through September 30th, 2020 with only 25 redeemable reservations. Don’t miss the opportunity to rent a teardrop trailer right here in Arizona, isolate locally, and take a pin for a spin.
More about this year’s Independents Week XXL and ways that YOU can participate can be found at: localfirstaz.com/indie-week
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Globe-Miami is fortunate to have two local museums, Bullion Plaza Cultural Center and Museum (BPCCM) and the Gila County Historical Museum (GCHM). Both of these organizations have been dramatically impacted by COVID and closed since early March. Now they are working to reinvent themselves to be both visible and viable during the current pandemic. This involves operating in ways they have never before had to consider.
“It’s no longer about thinking outside the box, it’s about removing the box,” says Tom Foster, Director of BPCCM. “What can we do outside of walls and a ceiling to extend our reach so we can pull people back in, people we’ve lost since we’re not open? … Relevance and invisibility sort of work together because we have to let people know we exist. Even though there’s a sign on the door that says, ‘Closed until further notice,’ I’m still working in here. I’m trying to get things done, finishing exhibits, handling billing and financial stuff, writing grants, whatever. Just because we’re closed doesn’t mean we’re not accomplishing things.”
Foster believes technology is the key to remaining relevant in our new reality. “What is becoming more and more prevalent is virtual. We’re in the middle of the Darwinian concept of ‘adapt to survive’. We can’t bring people here, so we bring what we have to offer to them until we can bring them back… It’s just basically trying to move away from the box, out of the box, abandoning the box maybe in the standpoint of this temporary period of time and reaching out into the electronic ether. It’s out there and waiting for us to use it.”
One way BPCCM is embracing technology is through a partnership grant they are pursuing with the Miami Public Library focused on history and education. Through the grant, they plan to interview local authors and various experts on topics that impact our region (like the effect of the Woodbury fire or the history of the Salado people), create short videos that are published on YouTube, then embed links to the videos on the museum’s website and social media accounts. These videos will expose people to new concepts that the library and museum can support with displays and resources once they reopen.
“The museum is a classroom. We’re educators,” explains Foster. “We’re trying to make it interesting enough and relevant enough for youth to go, ‘Wow, this is better than playing a game!’ It’s the whole idea of excitement and lighting a fire, especially when there’s so many distractions and more immediately rewarding experiences for young people.”
While BPCCM is investigating ways to engage youth, the GCHM is looking at ways to support individuals looking into
The Board of the Gila Historical Museum met recently in August. Normally a robust Board of 24 members are active in planning multiple fundraisers for the museum, like Old Dominion Days in September, which has been hugely successful in the past. Because COVID has forced the cancelation of many of these events, they too are looking at technology to raise funds. Photo by LCGross
their own heritage. Director Sheldon Miller states, “Family research has gone way up during COVID. People have more time to chase the history of their lineage.” To support this, GCHM has five dedicated volunteers (Linda Lopez, Bob Freese, Lynn and Vernon Perry, and Kenneth Johnson) who invest hundreds of hours accessing museum resources for people who cannot physically utilize the museum’s archives while the building is closed.
Like Foster, Miller also emphasizes the role technology plays in remaining accessible and relevant to the community, and acknowledges that this has not come easily to him and his cadre of older volunteers. “If there‘s a blessing in COVID, it’s pushed many of us into technology.” He states they are interacting with the public through a “contact us” button on their website, working to enhance future displays with interactive electronic interfaces within the museum, and striving to get more resources available electronically, like the Old Dominion Days history lectures and even the 150 recently donated antique Globe-Miami postcards. When reopened, Miller states, “We expect to have iPads and tablets available for guests that further explain displays and deep dive into our history, like explaining what pasties and cheese boats are.”
Photo by LCGross
Museums must be relevant and visible in the community, but they also need financial resources to keep their programs alive. Alarmingly, we’re approaching a cliff in museum funding and viability.
Most museums are inching along on savings right now, but many cannot survive past 2021. “Their funding will be exhausted. There’s an insurmountable precipice ahead,” states Foster. His assessment is supported by the
AAM finding that 87% of American museums report they have 12 months or less of financial reserves to cover operating expenses. While museums desperately need funding, they cannot implement their previously successful revenue-generating programs and, consequently, they are scrambling for new revenue streams.
GCHM usually raises funds through Hamburger Frys and the multi-day Old Dominion Days festival. Because these events have been cancelled, they are planning to create a calendar of historic regional postcards to sell this year as their alternative fundraiser. GCHS also receives some of their funding through the City of Globe’s bed tax fund, a revenue stream linked to tourism. BPCCM does not get bed tax funding because “we only have 4-6 beds in Miami,” Foster explained. Instead, BPCCM applies for grants from foundations, nonprofits, and state and federal programs. “A lot of what you see is because of Freeport. They’ve been one hell of a partner in the past.” Unfortunately, many grants were suspended in the midst of the uncertainty of COVID. BPCCM has been bridging the gaps with special gifts, some large, like $60,000 from Congressman Pastor to restore and open two new exhibit rooms upstairs, and some smaller, like the $250 sent out-of-the-blue from an individual who lives in California.
During the COVID pandemic, many small rural museums in Arizona received funding support through the “Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security” (CARES) Act. Fortunately, both GCHM and BPCCM received initial $9,000 and $10,000 grants from the Arizona Humanities Council and plan to apply for a second round of support. But even with this infusion of cash, Foster states, “It’s hard. Looking at the financials and the outflow of money is grim.”
Looking to the future, Foster cannot predict if our local museums will remain open. He hopes so and predicts “things will be different, but not catastrophic. We need to take a breath, think about what is happening, and then determine how we can effect positive change.” u
