Downtown Wilmington, Delaware Merchant Meeting Recap

For those that were not able to attend our last merchant meeting here is what you missed.  We hope you can join us at our next meeting on Monday, October 22, 2018 at 9AM - The Living Room, (previously Jerry’s Artarama) 706 N. Market Street.

Speaker:

Denita L. Thomas: SBDC, Associate State Director

dlthomas@udel.edu 
302-831-077

Small Business Development Center (SBDC) https://delawaresbdc.org/

• SBDC is an organization that helps small businesses do an anything they need to grow and succeed.

• All services are FREE

• Goal is to promote job growth

• 500 employees or less is considered a small business

  • Only small businesses are eligible to use their resources

• Free 1 on 1 advising and technical assistance

• Provide loan packaging

• Provide help with business planning and help researching the market

  • Link to planning: https://delawaresbdc.org/resources/planning-and-financing/

• SBDC has access to data bases that most small business do not have that can be used in market research

  • Link to research: https://delawaresbdc.org/resources/business-info-and-research/

• Provide information and programs on cyber security  for small business

  • make sure business is prepared/map out a strategy

• Grow Delaware Fund is partnership organization that allows for business who use SBDC  programs to have longer loan terms, lower interest rates

  • https://growdelawarefund.org/

• Horn program- focused on staff and faculty

  • https://www.udel.edu/research-innovation/horn/

• SCORE- managing to succeed program(for established businesses)

  • Link to SCORE: https://www.score.org/

  • Fanatical analysis and review

  • Benchmark ratings

  • Key performance incentives

  • Idea is that SCORE is a launch pad for new business and new concepts

• Free resources available: SBDC, Women’s Business Center, SCORE 

  • https://www.score.org/

  • https://delawaresbdc.org/resources/business-info-and-research/

  • https://delawaresbdc.org/resources/planning-and-financing/

  • http://firststateloan.org/womens-business-center/

• Applications are now being accepted for Delaware Startup Launchpad 2018 

  • the four-week, four-session mini accelerator from the Delaware Founders Initiative, Delaware Small Business Development Center and the University of Delaware’s Horn Entrepreneurship program — returns for the second time this October, and applications are now open.

  • https://www.tfaforms.com/4686422

Small Business Saturday: November 24, 2018

• https://www.americanexpress.com/us/small-business/shop-small/

• National Effort to promote Small Business Saturday and shopping small

• Learn about Small business Saturday: https://www.americanexpress.com/us/small-business/shop-small/about?linknav=us-open-shopsmall-home-nationallanding-sbshistory

• You can connect directly to  Amex to help attract customers all year long

  • Marketing Materials: https://www.americanexpress.com/us/small-business/shop-small/promote

• Send your Small Business Saturday deals & promotions to lschweiger@downtownvisions.org

Celebrate a Gallery that has brought the entire Community Together! It is LaFate Gallery's Third Anniversary!

A Limited Edition Print, available online at www.lafategallery.com

Join us in celebrating the third anniversary of LaFate Gallery, a space that has inspired, educated and most importantly, celebrated the beauty of cultural diversity.

Located within the LOMA district at 227 N Market St, LaFate Gallery has become a community staple, providing workshops, painting classes and art for purchase. Within the three years of the gallery's existence Eunice LaFate, owner of the shop has impacted hundreds of lives with her bubbly personality and gift of creativity.

 LaFate has immersed herself in teaching and helping people of all ages and races, which is why her creative spirit shows itself in folk art that emphasizes the beauty of human diversity and the importance of cultural heritage. 

Her anniversary art sale on September 30th from 1-6 PM will be a benefit show featuring 25% off all original paintings. Attendees are requested to register at eunicelafate@gmail.com 

Stay in the Know in Your City and Contribute to Wilmington's Future! Join us for an Evening of Conversation!

Join Downtown Visions and City of Wilmington, Delaware Mike Purzycki - Mayor of the City of Wilmington for an evening of downtown news and conversation with the Wilmington Department of Police - Delaware, Chief Robert J. Tracy and the new Delaware College of Art and Design President, Jean Dahlgren. All are welcome to join us on Tuesday, June 27th at DCAD, 600 N Market Street, doors open at 5 p.m.!

Light appetizers and refreshments will be served. Following the event, Chelsea Tavern is offering all guests 20% off food and alcoholic beverages!

Sponsored by The Kenny Family Foundation , N.K.S. Distributors and Downtown Visions

Registration is requested but not required here.

Remembering the Past, Celebrating the Future, FREE Events at the Delaware Historical Society

"History is who we are and why we are the way we are. History is not just the past....history is the present." 

Thanks to the Delaware Historical Society and their complimentary programming below, we can continue to educate ourselves on the present by learning from the past. 

Saturday, May 19th: Free WWI Writers Workshop

Image Credit: Timetoast.com

Saturday May 5th and Saturday May 19th are the fifth and sixth World War I-themed writing workshops. Each workshop is open to the public.  By bringing participants of different ages and backgrounds together to discover this history, the dialogue should be engaging and informative.  Each workshop session will use a specific guiding question as the theme, and feature the DHS exhibitions, The First State at the Front: WWI and the Road to Victorious Peace and Delaware, One State Many Stories.

Using World War I and America: Told by the Americans Who Lived It, the anthology published by Library of America, participants in the workshop will read and discuss selected works.  The anthology, edited by A. Scott Berg, brings together 127 pieces that tell the vivid story of battlefront and homefront, from Sarajevo and the invasion of Belgium through the sinking of the Lusitania, the Armenian genocide, the controversy over intervention, and the terrible ferocity of Belleau Wood and the Meuse-Argonne, to the League of Nations debate and the racial violence and political repression that divided postwar America.

Facilitator:  A. Myrna Nurse, Ph.D., Associate Professor of English, Department of English and Foreign Languages, Director, Women's and Gender Studies Minor, Delaware State University

Delaware History Museum 1 PM

FREE PARKING is available courtesy of Colonial Parking on the corner of 6th and Shipley streets.

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Tuesday, May 22nd: New Direction Series Dr. Robyn C. Spencer – Author Discussion and Book Signing

Part of Wilmington 1968 programming schedule http://dehistory.org/wilmington1968

Co-sponsored by Delaware Humanities

Dr. Robyn C. Spencer, Associate Professor, Department of History at Lehman College, City University of New York, will speak on her book, The Revolution Has Come:  Black Power, Gender, and the Black Panther Party in Oakland (Duke University Press, 2016).

The presentation will be followed by a book signing.

The story of the Black Panther Party (BPP) reveals the complexity of everyday life in working-class African American communities.  Focusing on the role of black women in the Party provides an even deeper exploration of the development of community-based and public policy solutions to the problems of under-resourced schools and the impact of mass incarceration on black family life.    Spencer argues that “solutions the Panthers sought, such as community control of the police, freedom for political prisoners, and an end to poverty and war, remain central in many struggles for justice today.  Although this book centers on Oakland…the BPP’s commitment to making linkages with revolutionaries in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and the Caribbean made it one of the most effective ambassadors for Black Power.”

Delaware History Museum 6 PM

Reservations requested

FREE parking available at 6th and Shipley Street courtesy of Colonial Parking.

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Thursday, June 7th: A Dream Deferred: Documentary Screening and Panel Discussion

Part of Wilmington 1968 programming schedule  http://dehistory.org/wilmington1968

Co-sponsored by: The Delaware Historical Society, The Delaware Art Museum, and Delaware Humanities

Join the Delaware Historical Society, Delaware Humanities, and the Delaware Art Museum for a screening of the documentary A Dream Deferred: Remembering the 1968 Occupation of the National Guard in Wilmington.  This 40-minute film, originally produced by Teleduction, Inc. in 2007, presents an oral history of this momentous chapter in Delaware history, from the perspective of political leaders in Wilmington, including Joseph Johnson, James Sills, Harry Haskell, Russell Peterson, Littleton Mitchell, Leonard Williams and Lloyd Casson.  Historical footage illustrates the impact of events from the national, such as the March on Washington, to the local, including campus protests at Delaware State University.  In the wake of Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968, activists broke with the principles of non-violent resistance to proclaim the need for Black nationalism and protest the lack of change in their daily lives.

Following the documentary, a discussion will be held with a panel of individuals who experienced the civil unrest.  Their conversation will bring the events of 1968 into the present as we discuss the current state of race relations in Wilmington and in the United States.

The panel will be moderated by Simone Austin, the Delaware Art Museum’s 2017 Alfred Appel Jr. Curatorial Fellow and M.A. History Graduate Student at the University of Delaware, whose research on this period provides additional context and perspective.

Delaware History Museum 6 PM

Free Admission. Please R.S.V.P to deinfo@dehistory.org

FREE PARKING is available courtesy of Colonial Parking on the corner of 6th and Shipley streets.

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Tuesday June 12th:  New Direction Series John Thabiti Willis Author Discussion & Book Signing

John Thabiti Willis, Associate Professor in the Department of History at Carleton College and Associate Editor of the Journal of West African History, will speak on his book, Masquerading Politics: Kinship, Gender, and Ethnicity in a Yoruba Town (2017).

In West Africa, especially among Yoruba people, masquerades have the power to kill enemies, appoint kings, and grant fertility.  John Thabiti Willis takes a close look at masquerade traditions in the Yoruba town of Otta, exploring transformations in performers, performances, and the institutional structures in which masquerade was used to reveal ongoing changes in notions of gender, kinship, and ethnic identity.  As Willis focuses on performers and spectators, he reveals a history of masquerade that is rich and complex.  His research offers a more nuanced understanding of performance practices in Africa and their role in forging alliances, consolidating state power, incorporating immigrants, executing criminals, and projecting individual and group power on both sides of the Afro-Atlantic world.

Delaware History Museum 6 PM

The presentation will be followed by a book signing, and the book will be available for purchase in the museum gift shop.

FREE
Reservations requested: (302) 655-7161

FREE parking available at 6th and Shipley Street courtesy of Colonial Parking.

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Wednesday, June 27th: Vietnam Mailbag – Author Discussion with Journalist Nancy E. Lynch and Vietnam Veteran Rick Lovekin

Journalist Nancy E. Lynch, author of the award-winning book, Vietnam Mailbag, Voices From the War: 1968-1972, and Vietnam veteran Rick Lovekin  will join forces for a program at 6 p.m., June 27, 2018 at the Delaware History Museum. 

About Nancy E. Lynch:

A former staff reporter for The News Journal in Delaware, Lynch will read selected correspondence from servicemen featured in her book, based on the nearly 1,000 letters and hundreds of pictures mailed to her popular News Journal column Nancy’s Mailbag in the 1960s and 70s. For five years Nancy received correspondence from our troops on the front lines during the undeclared and polarizing war.

In her final column in December 1972 she promised “her guys” she would someday put all their war letters and pictures in a book to honor them. The 2008 Veterans Day release of her 456-page social history fulfills her pledge. The book earned a gold medal from Independent Publisher in 2009 for Best Non-Fiction in the Mid-Atlantic.

About Rick Lovekin:
A medical disability could have provided a means for Lovekin to avoid service in Vietnam, he chose instead to enlist in the Army and spent a year in combat as a door gunner on a Huey helicopter and later as crew chief on a Cobra chopper. He was based in Bien Hoa and Vung Tau with the 147th Helicopter Company.

He wrote frequently to Lynch during his 1969-1970 tour, always signing his letters, “Your Man in Nam.” He will share some of his combat experiences as well as a DVD of images from Vietnam enhanced with 1960s music. Now retired, Lovekin, formerly of New Castle County, lives in North East, MD.

FREE

Delaware History Museum 6 PM

Registration is requested at (302) 655-7161

FREE PARKING is available courtesy of Colonial Parking on the corner of 6th and Shipley Streets.

This presentation is sponsored by the Delaware Historical Society and is underwritten by Delaware Humanities.

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Follow the Delaware Historical Society

Facebook: @DEHistory

Instagram: @DelawareHistoricalSociety

Twitter: @thisisdehistory

Green Thumbs Rejoice a New Community Garden is Coming to Downtown Wilmington and Accepting Reservations for 2018!

Where a business once thrived, a new era for Downtown Wilmington will bloom!

Looking to grow your own produce right downtown? Residents look no further!

This is your opportunity to have your own garden just steps from your apartment or home at 4th and Orange Street in Downtown Wilmington, Delaware.  The brand new Fourth & Orange Community Garden is made possible with support from the Gross Family whose lighting business once occupied this lot and is a project by The Downtown Civic Association.

If you are interested in purchasing a plot at the rate of $40 per plot for the 2018 season, contact Pat Shay at pat.shay@comcast.net or 267.469.5882.

Other generous community sponsors include Downtown Visions, ResideBPG, City of Wilmington, Wohlsen Construction and Rave Realty Corporation.

*One plot will be available per person and per family at a first come, first serve basis.