Edition 73

It’s our final dispatch of the year, and most of all we want to show our gratitude and thank each of you for your follows, likes, and readership. We’re grateful to work in an amazing industry that’s all about people. And that does it for us too. We’ve met so many tremendous folks over the last ten years, who’ve made an indelible impression upon us. We’ve made new friends and besties, cool collab partners, and worked with some of the kindest, most caring, and selfless individuals and teams, putting everything into making their communities better every day. So to have partners and clients like you — we are humbled, inspired, and grateful af.

As we look forward to the new year in January, we have Bright Brothers 10th Anniversary to celebrate, a slate of great events in 2025 — like IDA’s “Place Matters” summit in Cleveland in May, and the 71st Annual Conference & Marketplace in September in DC  (you know this year’s partner party is gonna be an absolute banger!). And right outta the gate on Jan 23, we’re doing a webinar on construction disruption, that you won’t wanna miss! (see below)

So before we post up the old OOO shingle, and peace out for some much-needed days of respite and rejuvenation, and nights of peaceful slumber — we’d just like to say thank you again, and wish you all the happiest of holidays!

– Your Bright Brothers Team

David Romako / Josh Yeager /  Brandi Walsh

Is your district facing major construction disruption in 2025? If so, you’re not alone, and there’s help to be had. Mark your calendar for Thursday, January 23rd at 3 pm Eastern and save the date for an outstanding seminar on “Surviving Construction”. In this one-hour webinar, you’ll learn from industry experts across a range of place management providers sharing intimate knowledge and experiences on how the downtowns we work with have weathered the threat. Hosted by those amazing ladies from ShopLocal2Win, (an industry-recognized best practice, according to IDA), this panel features former practitioner and strategic mastermind, Jenny Starkey of Starkey Strategies fame, and our co-founder Josh Yeager will moderate the panel. This one-hour session includes information on construction mitigation strategies, funding opportunities, and means of supporting your ratepayers and businesses during disruption — as well as the necessary glow-up to keep your downtown populated through trying times. Your MarCom peeps, in particular, will wanna hear how they can get nearly an 8X ROI on campaign spending, so share this with them, and sign up yourself today!

Photo credit: Envato Elements

Who doesn’t love irreverent puppets? Ofc, we all do! And that lends cred to the latest in a series of sprightly storytelling vids from the Hudson Square BID in NYC. We featured their raucously hilarious home shopping spoof that was their 2023 Annual Meeting vid earlier this year. And not to be outwitted, this year’s pro-puppet narrative cleverly couches the district’s accomplishments, accolades, and major wins (can you say $4.5 mm in state improvement funding?!?) through the context of a frolicsome foursome of street tough puppets touring the district, exploring their assets and taking note of critical pop culture hotspots (don’t miss the infamous table-flipping scene from Housewives), filmed in the district itself. From a cheeky BigBelly campaign to snappy street pole banners, and a mini-musical montage that’ll have your toes tapping and fingers snapping along to the tune — this district is in it to win it! Face it. Annual Meetings can be dryer than your grandma’s… holiday ham (ahem), so if you’re looking for inspo on creatively messaging your district’s notable news, look no further than one of Manhattan’s most creative enclaves Hudson Square!
 

Photo credit: Hudson Square BID, NYC

… that it’s neither the Ghostbusters nor The Muppets that may save Manhattan — rather a humble, yet prodigious bivalved mollusk that just might. That’s right, we’re talking oysters — about a billion of them to be exact! Once a staple of the diets of the native Lenape bands that lived on the continent’s east coast, oysters also served as sustenance for early American colonists, while being a staple species of the brackish estuaries surrounding Manhattan. Oysters are prodigiously proficient filters for the waters in which they live, and while we lost our native oyster populations to raw sewage and pollution decades ago, today’s Hudson River Park and areas like it are on the upswing. Harbingers of biodiversity, millions of much-needed oyster larvae are being seeded into the essential waterways around NYC. Oysters are incredibly efficient cleaners; scrubbing environmental pollutants from the water — an adult oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water daily! So with new programs underway, environmentalists hope to seed up to a billion oysters in NYC’s waterways by 2035. Aside from their filtering capacities, oyster reefs create a natural reef barrier to the shoreline by slowing down destructive waves during storms, like Hurricane Sandy in 2021. And it’s not just NYC that’s getting in on this shell game. Places around the globe, like London and Bangladesh to Australia and Hong Kong are working on their own oyster restoration projects. So the next time you’re craving a lil “aquatic aphrodisiac”, please give a toast to these palm-sized mollusks, as our future may depend upon them!

Photo credit: Envato Elements

Ya want money? The NEA gotchu, fam! We’re sharing the links to two extraordinary grant programs from the National Endowment for the Arts. First up, the Challenge America program supports projects that extend the reach of the arts to underserved groups/communities. Due in April 2025 (it’ll be here before ya know it), this funding provides 1:1 matching grants of up to $10K for small nonprofits for arts programming, audience and community engagement, including educational activities; marketing and promotional activities; and organizational planning. So those of you who have been pining for your own set of custom Bright Brothers Personas, could feasibly get grant-matching dollars to help cover the investment. And the Grants for Arts program supports an expansive range of arts activities to strengthen the nation’s arts and culture ecosystem, including opportunities for public engagement with the arts and arts education, for the integration of the arts with strategies promoting the health and well-being of people and communities, and for the improvement of overall capacity and capabilities within the arts sector. This program ups the ante with between $10K – $100K in grant-matched funds, and special emphasis is encouraged for projects celebrating the forthcoming sesquicentennial in 2026. Both grant programs are now open and include a slate of resources for those submitting. Also, don’t forget that the NEA also offers grants with the lauded Our Town program, as well as numerous fellowship partnerships, technical assistance, and more. “It takes a village…”, as they say — and yours could be flush with the monetary support of these outstanding national awards.

Photo credit: Envato Elements

We’re rounding up the top spots for holiday vibes to cap off the year. From Bethlehem, PA to North Pole, AK — Time Out has done a darling deep dive into the top spots to get your Xmas on. From holiday markets to light displays to enchantingly-named places, this list puts the ho ho ho in your go go go. Christmas not your thing? It’s hard to avoid the omnipresent effects of the xmas season, so we’ve also taken note of this fabulous piece from Forbes, bringing light to the Festival of Lights around the globe. Spin the dreidel and get your latkes on in places such as Prague, Montreal, Miami, and ofc, NYC. And if Kwanzaa is your reason for the season, check out this piece from Travel Noire with six recommended U.S. cities to do you on Karamu, the traditional harvest feast of Kwanzaa. Lastly, Lonely Planet put together a bucket list of global places to celebrate the winter solstice, one of the four core solar sabbats on the Wheel of the Year. Regardless of your reverence, this is a special time of year marked by bringing light into the long nights, fresh, ebullient evergreens indoors, belly-filling feasts and treats with friends and family, and the exchanging of gifts. The biggest gift of all, of course, are the special moments we share, regardless of time, place, or shared space.

Photo credit: Envato Elements

“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.” — Jolly Old St. Nick aka Clement Clarke Moore, “A Visit from Saint Nicholas”, 1823