Into the Dark
"Night Club" is on the move.
Welcome to The Sky Connection’s brand new Substack blog/mailing list. We’re so glad to have you here.
Chances are pretty good that you’re coming here from the former mailing list for the Wilderness Awareness School Night Club, and for that, we thank you.
For the last two years, we have run a free, monthly, evening outdoor program in the woods, with the primary aim of reconnecting people to their world at night. We’ve played games, told stories around the fire, sat quietly listening to the sounds of the night, wandered the dark woods, and so much more together. It has been an absolute treat to meet so many of you by firelight, and to play in the dark.
Very recently, we were informed by our host, Wilderness Awareness School, that due to extreme budget constraints, they would no longer be able to host us for the upcoming school year. Fortunately, Hannah and I have been dreaming about the future of Night Club for some time, so we prefer to say that it is not dying, simply evolving. This is a quicker departure from WAS than we had ever intended, but we are stepping into the dark unknown, whether we feel ready or not! We will be moving Night Club under a LLC, The Sky Connection, and we would love your support moving forward. Here's what you can do:
Subscribe Here. On this blog! As we no longer have access to our school mailing list, I've decided to use this juncture to move in a direction I've been curious about for a while - that is, to this, a Substack blog. It is free to subscribe for community updates and events, and you don’t need to make an account or a pledge money. Substack has a cool feature for adding paid content (similar to Patreon), which we may explore later, but we’re not there just yet.
Help us find a new home. We're looking for new places to host Night Club in the Seattle Metropolitan area. One route that we're pursuing is public parks, but this can be tricky for various reasons. We're also considering partnering with landowners and businesses. We are open to places as far out as Duvall again, but we are also looking for spots closer to the city. We might even be interested in having Night Club in a rotation of places. Ideally, we would like to find spots that allow us to use/bring fire/shelter. Let us know if you or someone you know is interested in hosting. You can reach me with leads at natalie@theskyconnection.com.
Share a review with us. As we mentioned, we will be reaching out to parks and businesses, so we would love to have some quotes to share in our marketing packet. What did you love about Night Club? What does it mean to you? Why is it a valuable program? We would love to hear your reviews at natalie@theskyconnection.com. (Please share your city as well, in case we are reaching out near you.)
We are, of course, sad about losing access to the forests, dark skies, and firepits of Linne Doran. We’re also bummed about losing our funding. We will always be grateful for the stability this provided us, and how it allowed us to conduct two successful years of Night Club and explore our content and proof of concept. However, we're also a little excited about the possibilities that accompany freedom. We will surely be slow to implement these ideas, as Night Club is not the only major transition in either of our lives right now, but we hope to keep you engaged, nonetheless.
We had hoped to start Night Club in October this year, and that may still be a possibility, but we will just have to see what happens! We also may have to defer until the winter. We hope to have more community events (such as heading to the planetarium, or Astronomy on Tap), as well as the more traditional Night Club offerings we've been doing. On those more traditional nights, we may also explore moving to more of a Pay What You Can model to foot our expenses.
Thank you for your understanding and support. Don't forget to subscribe to the Substack if you want to hear from us again, and we hope to see you out there in that big, beautiful night!
With scrappy resiliency and stardust,
Natalie (and Hannah)