Thank you. You built this year. Whether you took on a new role, absorbed a change you didn’t see coming, dropped in, dropped out, or held steady through build and strike, you showed up.

This was our Tessera year, in more ways than one. The theme was about the tile that clicks into place, and that’s exactly what we spent the year doing: after six years of grow-add-expand, we pulled back on purpose, not from the work but from the growth, to see where our pieces actually fit, where we’re missing them, and where some pieces we’d been forcing turned out to belong to a different picture altogether. The lower headcount was a choice, and the numbers underneath are healthy: 467 attendees, an average ticket of about $84 (up from $81 in 2025 and $80 in 2024), and about $113 per attendee once donations and fundraisers are counted. That $29 gap is the part of every ticket our community quietly carries.

On feeling out of the loop. Many of you felt frustrated and uninformed this year. Here’s why it happened: under the surface, this year went into rebuilding the systems we run on, work that was invisible from the outside. New tools that cut admin load, real role definitions so fewer things fall through, and a workable 12-month pre-planned timeline for 2027.

Why is this timeline finally possible? For six years a clean year-ahead plan was never something we could hold: too many cooks, too many competing opinions, and everything routing back through me, with no systems or shared tools underneath. You can’t schedule a year in advance when every decision lives in one person’s head (especially when that person tries to accommodate too much). This quieter year created the room to fix that. That is the whole point: Revival should run without any one of us, and be emotionally sustainable.

A preview. The 2027 theme is chosen, the artwork is already underway, and the announcement is being built now. Woven through the 12 months between this Revival and the next are events that double as fundraisers and community gatherings, carrying the theme forward the whole way.

The next few months:

Now — this survey feeds the post-mortem.

Early/Mid-July — we meet to turn your answers into 2027 decisions.

Within a month — theme camp registration and music and contributor applications open, ahead of the announcement, because building takes the whole winter.

Fall — small gatherings to stay together and raise money for our artists.

October — 2027 theme announced, next early-bird window opens.

Some of next year is already paying for itself: 2027 early-bird tickets are open and have brought in $3,000, and several recurring costs don’t hit until year-end, so this year’s gap on paper is wider now than it will settle.

The survey below shapes our mid-July post-mortem: what to keep, what to change, where I can do better by you. It matters, and so does your time.

With gratitude and respect,

Andrea Silva

Pre- Mortum Form Below DISREGARD