Cultural Grants Awarded To Northern Berkshire Communities

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NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — State Representative John Barrett III and the Northern Berkshire Cultural Council jointly announced the award of 63 grants totaling $72,500.00, for cultural programs in Northern Berkshire Communities. 
 
These eleven communities are comprised of ; Adams, Cheshire, Clarksburg, Florida, Hancock, Lanesborough, Monroe, New Ashford, Savoy, Williamstown, and the City of North Adams. A complete list of recipients and grant amounts can be found here. http://Www.mass-culture.org/ccnb
 
"It's the local volunteers who really make this system work," said State Representative Barrett. "They make limited resources go as far as possible, and they make the tough decisions about which projects should be supported. Thanks to them, the arts, sciences, and humanities are part of people's everyday lives in communities across the state."
 
The Cultural Council of Northern Berkshire is part of a network of 329 Local Cultural Councils serving all 351 cities and towns in the Commonwealth. The LCC Program is the largest grassroots cultural funding network in the nation, supporting thousands of community-based projects in the arts, sciences, and humanities every year. The state legislature provides an annual appropriation to the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency, which then allocates funds to each community.
 
Decisions about which activities to support are made at the community level by a board of municipally appointed volunteers. The members of the Cultural Council of Northern Berkshire are:
 
Arthur De Bow, Co-Chair - North Adams               
 
Lorna Gayle - Lanesborough      
 
Cecilia Hirsch, Co-Chair - Williamstown
 
Henry Klein - Adams     
 
Donna Motta - North Adams      
 
Barbara Proper - Cheshire          
 
Linda Rhoads - Adams  
 
Mark Siegars - Lanesborough    
 
Sally Sussman - Williamstown
 
Peter Traub - Savoy
 
Erica Jane Wetherell - Hancock
 
Maureen Riley Moriarty, Staff/Administrator
 
Statewide, more than $3.3 million will be distributed by local cultural councils in 2021. Grants will support an enormous range of grass-roots activities: concerts, exhibitions, radio and video productions, field trips for schoolchildren, after-school youth programs, writing workshops, historical preservation efforts, lectures, First Night celebrations, nature and science education programs for families and town festivals. Nearly half of LCC funds support educational activities for young people.
 
The Cultural Council of Northern Berkshire will seek applications again in the fall. For guidelines and complete information on the Cultural Council of Northern Berkshire, contact us at the email or number above.  Applications and more information about the Local Cultural Council Program are available online at www.mass-culture.org .  Applications are due Oct 15.
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Pittsfield: Should Park Square Be an Historic District?

By Brittany PolitoiBerkshires Staff

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The committee drafting a proposed local historic district around Park Square wants to generate interest and participation in the process. 

Members launched the charge during meetings in August and September. A survey and public hearing are planned to gather feedback early on. 

City Planner Kevin Rayner explained they are not just doing this out of a love for historic buildings, but for the timeless sense of place you get when you step into Park Square, which was laid out over 200 years ago and hosted the first-ever agricultural fair in 1810. 

"I think that the main thing that we need to kind of park on is that this is the heart of our community, and it really sets the stage for the sense of place in Pittsfield, and any change to that should have some review and some consensus from folks who have a passion for protecting the history and that character of Pittsfield," he said to the new Local Historic District Study Committee last week. 

"And there's that private property versus historic resource thing, but I’d say that a lot of these buildings on the square belong to the soul of Pittsfield here, and deserve to be protected, and I don't think that the layer of regulation that we're throwing down here is going to be unreasonable or a real boundary." 

In March, the City Council voted to amend the City Code, Chapter 2, to establish the study committee.

Pittsfield has more than 20 locations on the National Register of Historic Places, including the Park Square Historical District, but the designation just allows communities to apply for federal tax credits and doesn't impose restrictions on buildings. The central area was laid out a few decades after Pittsfield was given a town charter in 1761.

A district can be one building, several buildings, or an area. Historic restrictions only apply to the exterior of buildings; the committee has authority to say a building in the district cannot be demolished. 

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