THANK YOU for your support, care, and encouragement through this wild 2024. This has been one of the most challenging and exciting years of my entire life.

On a personal level: Upheaval! Loss. Joy and New Developments. My daughter got married! We said goodbye to Apple, my beloved dog and LightHouse mascot. Big things ended. Big things began. Everything all at once.

On a professional level: Every bit as challenging and exhilarating.

Through a steady stream of community supported miracles, we raised $1.5M and borrowed another $2.5M (gulp) through a collaboration between Greenfield Northampton Cooperative Bank and Mass Development, and purchased and partially renovated the 40,000 sq ft. former Gateway City Arts complex at 92 Race St. in Holyoke. In a whirlwind collaboration between Houle Builders and HAI Architects, made beautiful by Sarah Reid at Small Victories Interior Design, we closed on July 18 (appropriately on the birthday of LightHouse CoFounder Josiah Litant), did a million things, and reopened in our new permanent home on September 3.

Like many of you who also love LightHouse, I have spent my life outside of the lines. Perhaps you also share that this was not on purpose. I'm somehow not the right shape for normal. I was never very good at doing things "right." This was a real problem as a young person. As an adult, it turns out to be a gift. 

This personal sharing is relevant so you can see why I'm driven to work 10 million hours to create this space where young people who want and need something different can safely discover who they are and what they are capable of, and where creative adults can gather to try to make the world a better place.

Normal isn't really a thing, and so much of the pain we experience and inflict on each other is because we do not accept that in ourselves, which makes us struggle to accept it in others. As a result we co-create a culture of hierarchy and violence and unsustainable consumerism, which is great for capitalism, but very bad for our human psyches and for the other creatures sharing this planet with us.

Likely you know and understand this already, but perhaps, also like me, you sometimes lament that the problems are too big and too complicated.

All we can do is what we can do, each with our own particular gifts and pieces of an impossibly grand puzzle. LightHouse is a place where there is no one right way to be, where young people can discover and develop whatever their particular gifts are. We don’t know in advance, and we can’t figure it out for them. It’s a process of self discovery; a collaborative, supported process that includes feedback, encouragement, suggestions, and access to opportunities.

LightHouse is creating new possibilities for the young people we serve, and more than that, we are demonstrating that other possibilities are possible. I am sending these words on the last day of a very wild and exciting 2024 because I'd like to invite you to double down on your support and involvement with LightHouse for 2025. There's lots to do yet, and it only works as a together.

One-third of our annual budget comes through philanthropy, and now we’re in the midst of a capital campaign, too. We are deeply grateful for all the work the former owners of our new campus, Lori Divine and Vitek Kruta, put in to bring it to where it is, and much remains for our use as a school and community center. 

We’re developing new real-world vocational programs using the facility’s two professional performance venues, De la Luz Soundstage and De la Luz Divine, as well as a culinary track in our new commercial kitchen and cafe. The basement level will become an 8,000 sq ft community maker space with your help. (Among the painful surprises of 2024 was the sudden loss of our esteemed Logan McFadden who was in the process of developing this collaborative maker space vision. We look forward to creating a tribute to them in this visionary space-to-be.)

In addition to financial contributions we welcome engagement of all kinds to help build these visions into a full reality. We have space on our Board of Directors and on committees and advisory groups. We need ideas and guidance and volunteers. Much is happening and it is SO exciting. 

It’s a mess out here in the world, and it can be hard to get along. Sometimes it’s hard to get up at all. As you know, life in the world is also beautiful, inspiring, and worth showing up for. I’m inviting you to show up for LightHouse. Our cast of characters at LightHouse are often hilarious, and will also break your heart a little or a lot from time to time. Real life. Real hope. Come visit.