BOOM concepts is a creative hub and arts incubator.

We’re 12 years old this year.

We’re dedicated to the advancement of black, brown, queer and femme artists and entrepreneurs.

For us, we would like to say we want to help artists make money.

Help them make a career off of it.

We primarily provide exhibitions and residencies where people can work on their craft and show their craft.

Then we also do professional development, like helping artists with their taxes.

You know, we want to make sure that they have an opportunity to navigate the profit and nonprofit sectors the way that they want to, while also, you know, still being able to, like, build their skills and figure out what they want to do with their careers.

You know, there's a lot of different opportunities that we provide.

For residencies, there's typically an application where artists can dream about their ideas, what they want to make, what they want to create.

If they want to learn a new skill.

We have a selection committee that goes through all of the applications alongside Thomas and myself.

And then we usually select between 6 to 8 artists per year to come and stay with us.

That stay is at our loft.

That's in the neighborhood.

And it's between one week to one month.

We make sure that the community connected with us first.

You know, we kind of had an open door policy where people would come in and ask us question, see what's going on, see type of program.

We never close a door on people with like if they wanted to be curious, they wanted to see what was going on, like, hey, come on in.

You know, we've had a couple people who've lived up on the hill over here in Garfield.

I'm like, I've never really been on the Ave, but I went to a BOOM Concepts They had an event at BOOM Concepts and I enjoyed myself, and they came with open arms and I definitely want to come back.

So, you know, it was great to be able to connect in that way.

We've had over, you know, at this point now 60, 65 exhibitions.

You know, we've done over 250, 300 events, you know, throughout the city and nationally.

So, you know, we have been just progressively building over the like past 12 years.

And there's like always somebody new who comes in and gets a different type of opportunity or does different things.

When people come, they can learn a new skill.

We have great partnerships with center for Contemporary Craft, Artists Image Resource, Center for Creative Reuse and just helping people build what they want to make, and then hopefully trying to help them find a place to share that work.

We host four exhibitions a year.

Sometimes we get invited to do things out of town, so we'll add things to the calendar, but we really want to try to do one per quarter so people can get an opportunity to talk about the artwork, see the artwork, and there was enough time to actually try to sell the work.

If someone wants to come to us, we're not expecting them to be hobbyists, quite frankly.

You know, so it's like we're going to show them things.

We have workbooks.

We have kind of like templates that we share with our people, and we're always hoping that artists are bigger and better after they work with BOOM Concepts.

And we're also a place where people can make mistakes and learn from those mistakes in a high reward, low risk environment.

All right.

So welcome to the rotunda.

This will be BOOM Concepts new home after a three year campaign, fundraising, construction and redevelopment of the space.

We're currently in phase two of a four phase process, so we're halfway home.

Naomi is helping us keep the stay excited and keep the excitement around the project.

Everything that we do now out in the community and the campus model will be moved here at the end of three years.

BOOM Concepts recently joined the National Performance Network, so that will help us really be supportive of national acts and touring acts.

So a lot of our partners from around the country and around the globe will be able to present them here.

Space is 112 years old.

It’s a former synagogue and 35 40ft ceilings.

And I think it's about 110, 115 square foot space.

This will be kind of the primary presentation space for all the events.

There are two ramp and then you can see up top.

There's some space where BOOM Concepts permanent offices will be.

So we'll be fully ingrained into the rotunda.

We're really excited to be working with the Bloomfield-Garfield Corporation to make this work.

And to be, like, having a collaborative approach, you know, because we're better together as opposed to one person trying to do to something or one institution trying to do something.