The summer of 2020 was a challenging one. With all of our regular programming cancelled, we turned our attention to what we could do to help our community. That turned out to be food, art and workspace!
We cooked and offered “Grab & G0” dinners to the Community from May 19th to October 20th and we were sold out every single week.
We also offered our many workspaces within the building for our residents who needed a private, quiet, cool, work place with swift internet. For most weeks of the summer we had every available space filled, and a whole new group of Fishers residents were introduced to the Community Center.
We also hosted Market Day on Saturdays in our parking lot as a venue for our Island chefs to showcase their goodies. It was very popular and people were happy to buy delicious food as well as see each other in a safe (masks on!) and socially distanced way.
We also hosted a local Fishers Island Art Show in August, which proved to be very well received. The art was hung in the Community Center and we limited the attendance of the guests. We also put the show up online for all to see if they didn’t want to come in person. Also on the art front, Stonington artist Howard Park was able to return to Fishers twice to teach art this summer. He was tested for Covid before each visit and our art tables were spaced more than 6′ apart and everyone wore masks. We also limited the number of participants. It was a welcome creative outlet for many of our community members.
We at the Community Center were happy to be able to shift gears and do what we could to help out this summer. As we like to say, we changed our strategy but not our mission!