Obviously, there was nothing personal about it.

But still, if your entire goal was to bring people together and then an unexpected pandemic (is there any other kind?) came along that necessitated everyone isolate themselves as much as possible you might be, to put it mildly, bummed out.

But necessity, as they say, is the mother of invention.

And creativity and invention, as everyone knows, are kind of Centrum’s thing.

“What’s weird is we’ve transitioned to online because we had to and it actually can work but it’s not the same,” executive director Robert Birman said as he considered the group’s current calendar.

“The whole idea is we want the world to come to Fort Worden,” he explained. “The state created this park and on the same day they created Centrum. And the purpose of Centrum is to fill these buildings, that’s the whole idea.”

A typical Centrum year is chockablock with workshops, intensive programs, residencies, concerts — all things designed to bring people together — and draw specialist and expert faculty members, too.

But 2020 clearly had other ideas. And still another Centrum strength that quickly became a liability was their emphasis on mingling young and old, which of course was a no-go thanks to COVID.

“This idea of blending young and old together has value for us because it teaches all of us to be more open-minded and more respectful and to learn to see value in elders or youth,” Birman said. “We think of our faculty members as standard bearers; that’s what we call them. So the idea at Centrum is we celebrate different cultures and different traditions. Pick any program; we bring in faculty to share their culture and their tradition with multigenerational audiences. So almost everything we do is for ages 4 to 98, it’s multigenerational.”

And rest assured, it will be again.

Next year’s programing is shaping up to be something special, even by Centrum standards, despite at least some of the necessary COVID precautions likely extending into the prime months of summer 2021.

A hybrid mix of limited and distanced in-person classes, workshops, and events combined with videos broadcast via the web, and virtual participation options, Birman said, will guarantee that no matter if you are seeking to celebrate music, dance, writing or visual arts, the PT-based institution will remain a staple, central entity in the regional creative community.

“We have never done this before,” Birman said. “But because of COVID we now realize this is the future. So we’re in the middle of raising $324,000 for this technology investment so we can broadcast what we do out into the world in real time and blend online participation with in-person participation forever, even after a vaccine is here.”

The potential benefits of making online participation a permanent aspect of Centrum’s offerings, Birman said, are exciting.

“This has the potential of doubling or tripling our reach,” he said. “We already have a global reach. The people who came to Centrum before COVID are from 17 different countries, all 50 states, and from 77 percent of the counties in Washington. So we already serve a global audience, anyway, but if we permanently include online and in-person there is almost no limit to who could attend.”

Centrum’s leadership is further preparing for the uncertain future by detailing three potential budgets for 2021: a plan for exclusively online offerings, a plan for if up to 100 people are allowed to gather, and a plan for if more than 100 people are allowed to gather.

To that end, in addition to the technology investment, Centrum is purchasing tents to be used as outdoor classrooms and performance spaces.

They’re hoping for the best, Birman said, and preparing for the worst. But either way Centrum will endure just fine.

“COVID has taught us to think differently about the future,” he said. “Centrum wasn’t going to go out of business or something like that. But we did, like everybody else, reduce our staff last spring. A lot of those people are still unemployed … We knew we would be OK, but we didn’t think it would take a year to get out of this and it’s probably going to take almost two years.”

Ironically, Birman said the temporary hiatus of in-person events wasn’t a terrible thing money-wise. But measured in other ways, the unexpected costs of COVID are many.

“Our cost basis is almost nothing because we’re not renting buildings, we’re not feeding people, we’re not putting people in housing,” he explained.

“But the downside to that is we’re not making this fort thrive and that ends up minimizing the tax base for the city. So it has some negative consequences and we don’t want to be virtual. We want to be collaborative and in-person because, as I like to say, when people come here they eat, they study, and they learn 24/7.

“It’s almost unlimited, the learning that happens here.”

The full 2021 lineup of Centrum events and workshops is expected to be made public in January. Updates and additional information can be found at www.centrum.org.