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First Friday Art Trail Cancelled due to COVID Outbreak

This April will be only the second time in the First Friday Art Trail has been cancelled in its 16 year history. The first time was from an ice storm a few years back. Lindsey Maestri, the executive director of the Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts (LHUCA), explains that this is a big deal. She recalls the point they knew they would have to cancel. “As more and more public events started getting limited, down to 200, down to 50, we knew we had to make that decision.”
 

It was not an easy choice one to make. The First Friday Art Trail typically draws crowds of three to five thousand community members. Attendees drift from gallery to gallery soaking in Lubbock’s vibrant art community. It’s a chance for food trucks, vendors, artists and musicians to make money. Without the foot traffic of the art trail, that puts a big dent in the money they bring in.

Maestri explains that from what she’s seen, local musicians have been hit the hardest and fastest in the COVID-19 outbreak. “I think we’re hopeful that some of our local musicians and artists and dancers will be able to take advantage of the care act for self-employed people and be able to utilize that in some ways,” she says. “I know that they’re really struggling so we definitely keep them in our thoughts at LHUCA and we try to come up with creative ways that we could incorporate people into virtual content and still be able to get them a paycheck even though they’re not performing live.”

Just like restaurants around town have been quick to adapt to this new way of life, the arts community has adapted as well. LHUCA and their partners immediately went to work drafting out plans for a virtual first Friday and other video content.

“We’ve been developing online arts projects, family friendly, hands on things that replace our artful family hours that we had on Sunday afternoons,” Maestri says. “Then we’re also doing guided tours of our exhibition. WE have two new exhibitions that were already pretty much in the building when we had to close se we went ahead and hung those exhibitions and we’ll be doing some virtual tours of those to go ahead and get those out there and let those artists have that work be seen.”

So just because you can’t walk the first Friday art trail doesn’t mean you can enjoy the current exhibitions. This First Friday, you can check out the works of Chad Plunket and B.C. Gilbert from the comforts of your home by visiting the Virtual First Friday LBK Facebook event here

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