tl;dr: Would you like to lead:
If so, please apply here.
People who have previously organized Solstice are encouraged to apply. We're ideally looking for two co-organizers, one more experienced and an "apprentice."
The 2020 Bay winter solstice team is now looking for people to pass the torch to, to organize the 2021 winter solstice. It so happens that Summer Solstice is also around the corner, and it seemed good to put out a general call for anyone interested in running either a summer-or-winter solstice event. We're unsure how the pandemic will play out in the meantime, but it seemed important to start planning now.
Whether you’ve never run a Solstice before, or whether you’re a veteran organizer, we encourage you to apply to run this year's event.
Moreover, if you're not sure you want to run a solstice this year, but might want to run next year's event, you should also apply. (I think it's useful to build up a pool of potential solstice organizers on a multi-year timescale, so it's easier to find people who'd work well together, and build up some shared cultural knowledge of what goes into solstice-organizing)
Last Year's Winter Solstice
Last year, the Winter Solstice team ended up running an online, global event. This wasn’t a full replacement for singing together in-person, but it went surprisingly well. We built custom singalong software, which (mostly) worked. Some people have said it was the most impactful Solstice had been for them in years. Others mentioned that they wouldn’t have otherwise gotten to attend a Solstice, and appreciated the online format.
The solstice celebration is widely regarded as one of the most valuable and meaningful of community events. But each year only a few people apply to run the next Bay Solstice - almost exactly enough to keep it afloat. So if you're hesitant, or on the fence, or if you'd like to be an organizer but don't think you're strong enough yet -- still reach out to us! We have a lot of resources and experience from all the previous years, and we can give you guidance throughout the year. And in recent years, solstice has been experimenting with having a team of organizers, rather than a single person, to ease the burden of work (which has increased as solstice has grown).
By being a solstice organizer, you'll be helping to sustain the community's tradition. You'll also be able to apply your own creative efforts and aesthetics to the event. And it's also a good opportunity for growing skills that are hard to find other ways to practice!
It’s not clear what the state of the pandemic will be in December, but it might make sense for there to be two separate events – an in-person Bay Solstice event, and an online, remote-first event. It’s also possible we might want to find a way to fully integrate them (i.e. do a good enough job live-streaming the in person Bay event that others get to feel they can participate reasonably).
It’s all pretty new, uncharted territory. It probably makes sense to see who applies, and where their interest lies, before we make a call.
We’d also especially love to have organizers from previous years apply – an idea we’re thinking about is to try and have one experienced veteran and one ‘apprentice’.
(We're also interested in hearing from people who want to volunteer, but of particular importance is finding main organizers; people who will be primarily responsible for the entirety of the event.)
*probably not actually literal solstice.