It was probably sometime toward the middle of 2015 that I began to think of the joke as a potential reality. In those action packed work days, we spent a lot of time sitting around the conference tables of the Peabody Essex Museum planning, talking, and dreaming about how to fill more than 20,000 square feet of museum gallery space in thoughtful, engaging, and creative ways.
Our tight knit group of coworkers turned friends, which included Jim and Ed, had all been hired within about eighteen months of one another and, consequently, had become both personally and professionally close. I don’t remember who was the first person to make a joke about the fact that one day we should all quit the museum business and start our own company but the idea stuck like a splinter in my brain. At first, I found the idea amusing–a little daydream to be dusted off on hard days or casually mentioned when bosses made disagreeable choices. But one day, the joke changed shape in my mind. It shifted from something imaginary to something that seemed possible. We are skilled experienced designers, I thought. Why can’t we start our own company?
By the end of 2016, I had decided–with or without my dear friends–to take a crack at changing the joke into a serious endeavor. By that time, a number of the original gang had already moved on and those who stayed put had good reasons for doing so. But even as I began the work of a solo entrepreneur, I still held the original joke in the back of my mind. Maybe someday. Meanwhile, my independent consultancy grew and my connections to Jim and Ed evolved in new directions. Jim and I frequented concerts together while Ed and I met to talk shop over drinks and even took on an interpretive planning project together. Every time I saw them, I was reminded of how much I missed having a team.
The “someday” I’d hoped for presented itself in the Spring of 2020. By mid-March, every cultural space in America was shuttered and the busy year of work I’d expected ground to a halt. I watched in disbelief as museums, theaters, arts organizations, and historic sites–the clients who fueled my livelihood–floundered. Closures, layoffs, and all manner of bad news seeped daily from the cultural sector. In a desperate attempt to make sense of it all, I called a group of colleagues and friends–many of whom I had known in the days the joke first began–together to talk through the disturbing trends we were all witnessing. Jim and Ed were among them. One Zoom call became a bi-weekly Zoom call, and once my initial shock was past, the discussions I became most interested in were focused around what would happen next. I called the group “Something New” and as our discussions continued and my thinking evolved, I returned in my mind to the idea of the joke; a progressive, creative company founded by a group of friends that could remake the cultural landscape in ways that would bolster the creative economy, support creative practitioners of all kinds, and provide access to creative content to anyone who wanted it.
By late spring, the joke had fully transformed itself–the ugly duckling turned swan–in the form of a preliminary business plan, and I approached the “Something New” group with an invitation to join me in its further development. Every single one of them lent their support in some meaningful way, but it was Jim and Ed who stepped fully forward to put flesh on the bones of what was to become The Experience Alchemists. We worked together through the summer of 2020; talking, thinking, reading, and discussing ideas with advisors of all kinds.
By the fall, our trio was fully invested and The Experience Alchemists was incorporated as a public benefit corporation on November 1, 2020 (just days before the election that would become a pivotal moment in our country’s history).
The Experience Alchemists, it turns out, is not a joke. I don’t think it ever was. Instead it is a company; one born from loss and built on love, creativity, and a fierce wish to leave the world a little bit better than how we found it. We launch The Experience Alchemists as an act of hope and defiance at a moment of renewal and change, almost exactly one year after the world as we knew it ended. And there’s nothing funny about that.