Two days into a new job, having barely learned my colleagues’ names, we all went home to work. Nobody knew what came next. Within weeks, an organization of 200 was reduced to 50. The center closed with no clear end in sight.

The answer, that Fall, was Frontyard Festival: hundreds of individual outdoor "boxes" in the center's plaza, each with tables, chairs, and food and drink delivery. Local restaurants set up stalls. Local artists performed. Students still had a stage, just outside now.

I was new enough that I was still figuring out where things lived on the cloud — but that also meant bandwidth while leadership handled the harder institutional questions. I worked on logo concepts, one of which influenced the direction the Creative Director landed on, then helped build the template system that let a very small team produce an enormous volume of work: signage, flyers, ads, digital banners, merchandise, sponsor materials. I also helped develop the pitch deck used to book artists and secure funding. It was work that wasn't just aesthetic, it was making the argument that Frontyard should exist.

Because I also happened to be a photographer, food and beverage photography became mine too. We wore many hats. (You also, at some point, zip-tied numbered signs to hundreds of pods by hand in Florida heat. Every project has that day.)

Building fast means learning some things the hard way: our digital screens were bright white against a dark sky, visible from approximately the moon. We fixed it, and treated the rest of it as learning material to make things even better.

When Frontyard opened, I worked the events, photographing guests enjoying their first night out in a long time. And at some point I got to just be there as a guest myself (At a trivia night, our team even won grand prize). After months of isolation, it just felt good to enjoy the things from “before”. Carefully, gratefully, together.