First Event brings our community together to learn, to connect, to celebrate, to raise awareness, to have fun, and to just be ourselves in a warm, loving and safe environment. Unfortunately, in light of the global Covid-19 Pandemic, having a single large event in January/February 2021 is not something we feel is safe for our community. Our amazing First Event and TCNE team worked every angle to salvage what we could of First Event as a major event, but it’s just not feasible. Indoor gatherings in Massachusetts are capped at 25 people, and there’s no indication this is going to change any time soon.  So we’ve deconstructed First Event to pull together year-round programming to try to serve our community as well as possible:

Workshops
Did you know we run free, live, virtual workshops every Wednesday night? Our First Event Workshop team jumped at the chance to serve you all year-round. Check out the schedule here. We will be posting another few months’ worth there soon.

Seeing friends, meeting new people, and having a safe space to be yourself
We have re-opened the TCNE headquarters in Waltham for small in-person gatherings. We’ve got our traditional socials every Tuesday night and the 2nd and 4th Saturday of every month. We’ve also introduced newcomers’ welcome nights the first Saturday of every month. Learn more about our safety protocols and register here.

Just hanging out
Our popular virtual socials continue every Tuesday and Saturday night via Zoom. These are informal, unmoderated virtual gatherings. Register here.

Doing fun stuff
We are trying to squeeze in some outdoor events while the weather still permits. Cheryl pulled together a group to walk Boston’s Black History Trail a few weeks ago, and rumor is that my favorite social butterfly is planning a blowout later this month. Stay tuned for details.

We at TCNE want to reinforce that there is a team of hard-working humans on the TCNE and First Event teams who love all of you in our community and would wish nothing more than to gather in person with you and the rest of the community in early 2021. Please trust that we’ve explored every option you could think of, and then some, before reaching this conclusion. If and when things start to return to normal, you can trust that we’ll be out there figuring out safe ways to bring us all together again. Questions? Concerns? Please email us at info@tcne.org or join our Facebook group and start a conversation.