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NEA Chairman Sees, Hears About Pittsfield's Cultural Renaissance
By Tammy Daniels, iBerkshires Staff
11:01PM / Monday, June 26, 2017
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NEA Chairwoman Jane Chu poses with state Cultural Council director Anita Walker and Chris Parkinson and Tessa Kelly in one of the writer's studios being launched this summer through an NEA grant.

On the Barrington Stage Company's Main Stage on Union Street.

Chris Parkinson and Tessa Kelly explain the Mastheads program outside City Hall.

Speaking with Mayor Linda Tyer.

Tracy Wilson of Berkshire Music School speaks with Chu.

The roundtable included elected and city officials, and local cultural leaders.

Jen Glockner of the city's Office of Community Development lead off with an overview of projects.



Chu, center, listens at a cultural roundtable on Friday with MCC's Anita Walker, left, Mayor Linda Tyer and Barrington Stage's Julianne Boyd.  
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The creative forces in Pittsfield didn't have to work hard to convince the chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts that the arts can be a powerful force in community and economic restoration. 
 
Jane Chu was, if anything, way ahead of them. 
 
"We believe that there's something in the arts for everyone and there's something for everyone in the arts," she said, adding, "At the heart of why people want to be in a community is because they want to belong, and they want to find meaning, and they're looking for vitality that may be on the level of looking for things to do but also 'I want to contribute to the community in different ways.'"
 
It's an energy that she said she could feel in Pittsfield during a Friday morning tour that took her to two of the Barrington Stage facilities, a look at the new Mastheads writers-in-residency mobile studios and the Lichtenstein Center for the Arts. Barrington Stage had received a $10,000 NEA grant in 2016 toward the premiere of "American Son" and the Office of Cultural Development had scored $75,000 in 2014 toward this year's launch of Mastheads, or In Motion: Pittsfield.
 
Chu said the NEA's ability to leverage matching funds for arts institutions and programs is considerable. 
 
"What we're finding is for every $1 awarded there's actually $7 to $9 of other outside sources coming for the same arts project," she said. 
 
The NEA funds individual grants and more than 40 percent of its grantmaking budget goes directly to state and regional arts organizations like the Massachusetts Cultural Council. A large portion of its funds goes to high-poverty neighborhoods and underserved populations in both urban and rural areas.
 
Chu also participated in roundtable of cultural leaders hosted by the Office of Community Development and hoped to fit in a trip to the Colonial Theatre.
 
She has already been to 48 states before Massachusetts to see the impact of the NEA's partnerships with local cultural councils and arts programs. 
 
"Jane has been very, very interested in creative place making so naturally she looked at Massachusetts," said Anita Walker, executive director of the Massachusetts Cultural Council, who invited her to Pittsfield and Western Massachusetts as examples of how the creative economy is transforming New England. 
 
"This is a longstanding story that has proven that the creative economy, creative placemaking, can be transformative in communities to revitalize them, to change people's lives," she said, adding, "creative development was born and raised in Massachusetts, and named in Massachusetts."
 
Mayor Linda Tyer explained that the process had been slow after the devastation to the city's economy with the departure of General Electric more than 20 years ago. All around the former mill city, however, other communities were reaping rewards from both longtime and newer cultural venues.  
 
"New emerging leaders in the art community saw that Pittsfield could do the same, we were not taking advantage of it," she said. That would change largely with a new mayoral administration and council, including Tyer, shortly after the turn of the century. "For me, it was a really a pivot point." 
 
The city used the economic development fund created as part of the consent decree with GE to invest in cultural attractions including the Colonial, Barrington Stage, Beacon Cinema and Hancock Shaker Village. A years-long streetscape project was launched, and the city became one in the state to have a designated cultural district. Now it's looking toward Tyler Street and the Morningside area as the next natural intersection for creative development. 
 
It was difficult, the mayor told Chu, to change mindsets that were focused on another big manufacturer coming to the city. 
 
"People look at jobs differently," she said. "Engineers want to live in a place that's interesting and we're providing that ... we've got affordable homes, affordable commercial real estate ... there's this great opportunity to intersect all that."
 
Walker said cultural venues are offering opportunities to citizens, especially younger ones, to enrich their lives through free admissions, outreach programs, and partnerships with schools in ways that are allowing them a sense of agency, and to see themselves as agents of change. 
 
"What you've got is a factory that's not under one roof but has 22,000 people working in Berkshire County and more than 300 cultural entities in Berkshire County are putting a billion dollars a year into the economy," she said.
 
The creative industry in Massachusetts alone employs more than 128,000 people for a total compensation of nearly $11 million, more than all the other New England states combined.
 
Chu said she was heartened by how the city's creative potential was being brought together while at the same time creating a diverse community that can weather the ups and downs of the economy. 
 
"It's no magic bullet, it's a bunch of magic beans," she said. "That's more sustainable."
 
During the roundtable, cultural leaders explained their missions and how they got involved in their relative agencies. They talked about how Third Thursday brings in 10,000 or more people to North Street, that so-called "shoulder seasons" are nearly a thing of the past, how programs like Berkshire Music School is finding new students in adults seeking enrichment, how Herman Melville's Arrowhead is expanding programming,  and how Jacob's Pillow in Becket is shuttling residents to performances. How culture and the arts are partnering with schools, with neighborhoods, and with each other.
 
"We cannot say enough about the cultural partners in Pittsfield," said Jen Glockner, director of the city's Office of Community Development. 
 
Chris Parkinson and Tessa Kelly, husband and wife partners and architects in the Mastheads initiative that has created the five writing studios, said the grant has actually allowed them to increase their workforce by two. 
 
"It seemed like an open playing field when it comes to architecture and design," Kelly said. "We're very excited to be collaborating."
 
Her husband, Parkinson, said, "we think it could be model for moving from moving cities into the 21st century ... a grant for the arts was really the foundation of our business."
 
State Sen. Adam Hinds said area was still facing other challenges — declining population, aging infrastructure, and a lack of transportation and broadband. But he was constantly making the argument that the arts has a "very real impact on the economy in bringing people in ... It's about creating a place that's attractive." 
 
The city's gone through a renaissance, and the NEA has been a part of it, said state Rep. Tricia Farley-Bouvier. "Note that even though this is the first time you've been in Pittsfield, the NEA has been here all along."
 
But there's a real possibility that the NEA may no longer be able to help communities like Pittsfield. The president's budget cuts all funding for NEA, which had a budget of $147.9 million in fiscal 2016. Chu, a holdover from the former administration, called it "disappointing" in a statement on the agency's website.
 
"There are many steps in that specific process so we will know more as the budget process unfolds," she said Friday, but added, "we fund in every congressional district for sure in all 50 states. ... we actually see opportunities out there."
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