The Bicentenary Event

We started at 5 pm on October 21 with a special reception for our friends and partners in the wider community. At 6 pm the doors opened for everyone, and people were greeted with a chocolate in the shape of a globe and incredible banners hanging from the ceiling and balconies, and they were encouraged to explore the family activity room, the art display, the display about the Baha’i Faith, and listen to Second Nature Jazz Quintet, as well as enjoy refreshments and take photos in the photo booth. We hired a local photo booth company from Hyde Park, and they did a great job. People really seemed to enjoy the live jazz…we had to have jazz music in Chicago!

At 7:30 pm, everyone was invited to the theater for the main stage performances. The decision was made to focus on the arts and on our relationships with various performers that we know through our work in the community. Many of our performers were not Baha’is, and it was wonderful to see these talented individuals participating in our event.

Our performers included Van Gilmer (composer, vocalist, and choir director at the Baha’i House of Worship, joined by a few friends on the day of the performance!), Emily Price (mezzo-soprano who sings with Chicago a cappella, the Lyric Opera Chorus, and Grant Park Music Festival Chorus), Shki-Bmaadzi, Deeply Rooted Dance Theater, and Tsukasa Taiko.

I was doing stage management during the event, so I saw all of the performances from the side of the stage, and they all did a fantastic job. Our hosts for the evening were the Taylor family, and we had so many volunteers making sure the lights worked (thanks Leslie!), that people got a seat, and that those with accessibility needs were accommodated fully.

A year of work culminated in a spectacular event and I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to participate in it.

Part 1 and Part 2 of the series.

Event Day setup for the Chicago Bicentenary event

In part 1 of this series I highlighted a little bit about the planning process for the Bicentenary. Now, I will review the actual setup of the event.

We arrived at the venue (The South Shore Cultural Center, located on Chicago’s South Side by Lake Michigan) at around noon on Saturday, October 21. We had asked a number of people to come help as the setup crew, and there were 4 different areas to set up: the foyer with the art displays and the display about Baha’u’llah, the family activity room, the special reception room, and the theater, where the main program was taking place. We needed every minute of our setup time! We had to be ready to go at 5 pm for the first wave of attendees. The most complicated part of the setup was the beautiful reusable display that Robert Reddy designed and fabricated, which had lighting and multimedia portions.

We borrowed some items from the Baha’i National Center, and were especially grateful for some talented people who were able to jump in at the last minute to set up displays, run to the store, and take care of little details that the task force members did not have time to do.  I wish I had spent more time documenting the setup, because it was really incredible, but I was running from one end of this very large building to another, responding to questions and running through the show flow.

The main stage room needed the least amount of setup outside of the audiovisual needs, as it was already a beautiful space. Luckily we had a professional AV team from Meeting Tomorrow (which is where I work for my day job!), and they were incredible. We had a lot of needs, particularly with all the singing and mic switching, and they handled it smoothly and got through rehearsals with the performers with very little guidance from our team.

“Wert thou to consider this world, and realize how fleeting are the things that pertain unto it, thou wouldst choose to tread no path except the path of service to the Cause of thy Lord. None would have the power to deter thee from celebrating His praise, though all men should arise to oppose thee.” -Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh

The Planning Process for the Chicago Bicentenary event

So there is this funny thing that happens in my brain and heart when I get asked to serve the Faith by planning events. Since I am a certified meeting planner in my professional life, it brings me great joy to be able to use the resources and skills that I have developed over years of work in making the planning and execution of events more efficient, professional, and easier. However, I also recognize that I have limited time and energy, so I try to be careful about committing to things hastily. It is easy to get burned out, anxious, or frustrated when trying to do things in service that are also what you do for a living. Meeting planning is a highly skilled, technical job.

When the Local Spiritual Assembly asked me to be on this task force to work on the Bicentenary of the Birth of Baha’u’llah, it didn’t take long to say yes, especially when I was informed who else would be working with. Serving with people who you can truly be partners with and consult about the work in a mature, thoughtful way is a true gift!

We got pretty lucky with our planning team. We all had strengths in different areas and were able to consult on everything from volunteers to program elements to budgets. We utilized Google Docs to track our work and divided responsibilities. We tried to get a sense of attendance by using Eventbrite and social media to encourage people to register in advance. (The photos in this post are from after one of our meetings, and we used these photos to tell people to register in a fun way.) My estimate, based on the minutes of our meetings and additional time spent as individuals, is that we each spent about 125 hours planning the Bicentenary event in Chicago over the course of one year. That is a lot of time! We had 26 task force meetings and split off into smaller groups to consult and take action as needed. It wasn’t easy, but we had the support of our families and the Local Spiritual Assembly, which made the task a little bit less taxing at times.

“Let them step forth to take their places in the arena of service where their talents and skills, their specialized training, their material resources, their offers of time and energy and, above all, their dedication to Bahá’í principles, can be put to work in improving the lot of man.” -The Universal House of Justice, 20 October 1983

(Part 2)