Crissy Varnell, a manager at the Chattanooga Public Library, has a notebook she keeps handy for jotting down ideas.
As the pandemic wore on in 2020, Varnell began a notebook entry that would later become a project pitch to her supervisors.
She envisioned a regular forum where adults could come to the downtown library to sample hobbies and learn about interesting topics, an idea that eventually hatched into what has become the Curiosity Club.
“(During COVID-19) people were suddenly able to explore curiosities that they may not have allowed themselves to (consider) before,” said Varnell, who is director of the library’s Makerspace, an educational lab on the fourth floor of the library.
“When you look back to those (pandemic) times … the more we stayed productive, the less we had to think about what was going on around us,” Varnell added in an interview with the Chattanooga Times Free Press.