image description — Geoffrey Carter cuts the ribbon on 163 North St., the new home of BeatNest.

BeatNest Celebrates Grand Opening in New Space

By Breanna SteeleiBerkshires Staff
12:36PM / Monday, May 12, 2025Print Story | Email Story

The space has private recording areas and room for group classes.

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — BeatNest, an electronic music program, celebrated its grand opening at 163 North St. on Saturday.

This new space is about 10 times bigger than its former space, owner Geoffrey Carter said, and being on North Street provides more visibility.

"The street visibility has been great because people just walk by and they can see my sign," he said. "I've always been looking for an upgrade to teach bigger groups of classes where I can do group events and expand my offerings."

Carter says the number of classes and the number of students have grown, prompting the need to expand his space.

"We've just finished doing a group class of like 10 kids at once and it's great because it's more affordable for them and I get to teach more kids at once and it's good, and I have also gotten more private students," he said.

Carter says he loves to teach kids and show them how to work with electronic music, including beatmaking, how to DJ, and music production.

"I've been a musician my whole life and I love to work with kids and I like inspiring the youth to create music," he said. "I think it's important to do so with technology where it's become easier and easier for kids to just sit down and start making music that they are happy with and enjoy making from the first lesson they can make something great."

The new space was formerly rented by TheCollab, a collaborative recording studio of which BeatNest was a member and had been holding events and camps. The collaborative offered Carter the space to take over, even leaving a lot of the stuff behind for him to use.

Carter works with other programs, such as Berkshire Music School, and recently added Families Like Ours, a nonprofit supporting children with special needs, to have group classes.

"I would love to continue to work with other organizations in the Berkshires and expand my offerings for larger ranges of kids and increase my teen classes and adult classes," he said, adding he is starting adult events.

Eleanor Kidder, who has been taking weekly lessons with Carter for more than a year, said she is excited to see him move to the new location. Her mother, Kimberly Kidder, met Carter when they both took the Entrepreneurship for All small-business accelerator.

"To go from being a fellow co-hort member to seeing how he has grown from his little space down at the Greylock building to moving into the space so much bigger and just how much he's accomplished in the last two years that I've known him is really cool as well," Kimberly Kidder said.

Eleanor said her music talent has grown and that she loves the creativity aspect she gets to play with during her time.

"I feel like I have gone from a beginner to a pro. I'm always like 'no!' when it ends," she said.

The new space has a main room for performances and events, a private room for private sessions, a vocal booth, and a classroom for group classes.

You can find out more on the website.

If you would like to contribute information on this article, contact us at info@iberkshires.com.

Pittsfield Schools Schedule Morningside, Budget Hearings This Week

By Brittany PolitoiBerkshires Staff
05:23AM / Monday, April 06, 2026

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The School Committee will hold another public hearing for the potential closure of Morningside Community School.

On Thursday, April 9, at 6 p.m., community members will have the chance to give feedback in the Reid Middle School library. Last month, the Pittsfield Public Schools announced the possible closure of Morningside, which serves elementary grades, for the 2026-2027 school year and redistribution of its students to other city schools.

In the last couple of weeks, the district has solicited input from employees and community members through meetings at the school.

Morningside Community School was built in the mid-1970s with an open classroom concept. Morningside serves about 374 students and has a 7 percent accountability score, outperformed by 93 percent of the state.

For fiscal year 2027, the district has allocated about $5.2 million for the school. The committee has also requested a version of the proposed $87.2 million district budget with Morningside closed.

Pittsfield has another open concept school, Conte Community School, that is planned to consolidate with Crosby Elementary School, and possibly Stearns Elementary School, in a new building on the Crosby site by 2030. The status of the project's owner's project manager will be discussed on Tuesday, April 7, at 5 p.m. at Taconic High School during the School Building Needs Commission meeting.

That leaves the school officials wondering if Morningside students could have better educational outcomes if resources followed them to other nearby schools. Interim Superintendent Latifah Phillips has stressed that a decision has not yet been made.

Considerations for the school’s closure include: The feasibility of the facility to provide a conducive teaching and learning environment with an open campus design, the funding allocation needed to ensure Morningside students can have equitable learning opportunities, and declining enrollment across Pittsfield elementary schools.