Northshore Magazine

Northshore May 2019

Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.

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92 Im|migration features stories as part of an audio visual laser installation. Above, Beth Francis, photographed at the Cabot, is the president and CEO of the Essex County Community Foundation. PHOTOGRAPHS BY JARED CHARNEY (TOP), COURTESY OF NORTHSHORECDC.ORG (BOTTOM) in which arts, culture, and creativity can be at the table in all of our planning in our cities and towns," says Beth Francis, president and CEO of the Essex County Community Foundation. "is is a really great opportunity to bring the system of arts and culture and creativity together." To do this work, the Creative County Initiative did a "deep dive" into the barriers and opportunities that exist for and between artists and communities, surveying artists and holding focus groups to get a handle on their needs. e result is a data-driven four-part approach that aims to break down barriers and connect people who might not otherwise meet or work together, as well as spreading the word about art and culture happenings. One of the four elements is a focused effort to kick-start cultural planning initiatives using several one-day workshops held in subregions throughout the county. ese "cultural planning labs" are conducted with the Metropolitan Area Planning Council and the Merrimack Valley Planning Commission and will eventually culminate in a countywide arts and culture plan. ere's also an annual arts and culture summit that features hundreds of attendees, dynamic speakers, and interactive workshops. is year's 2019 Arts and Culture Summit is their second annual event and is scheduled for Friday, September 27, at the Cabot eatre in Beverly. e third element is the creation of EssexCountyCreates.org, a regional online calendar that allows artists, arts organizations, and cultural venues to promote and share their events and activities. And finally, there are public art and creative placemaking grants, which were awarded to a number of demonstration projects across Essex County. e projects are incredibly interesting and diverse, but what makes this grant program especially notable is the built-in requirement that in order to be eligible for funding, a partnership between arts, business, and municipal organizations must be built into the project. "We're requiring…the cross-sector collaboration that we think is necessary for this work to really thrive," says Karen Ristuben, program director of the Creative County Initiative. "To have that be the core of a grant program, and to kind of see the relationships that develop for the very first time as a result of putting out a call for proposals, is amazing. It's creating new stakeholders for the arts and shifting the way people think about the culture of their community." e projects not only break down barriers between the people and groups who need to work together to make creative placemaking a reality, but they also showcase the incredible richness of the region's artistic and cultural makeup, from the Pentucket Arts Foundation's use of tape art to create pop-up public art murals to Montserrat College of Art's work to make the Salem-Beverly bridge an artistic centerpiece. For instance, Salem's Punto Urban Art Museum will host the outdoor public art festival IM|MIGRATION May 11-19, based on work with artist Stephanie Benenson of Harbor Voices Public Art. Benenson's work will draw on community storytelling workshops where residents of all ages and backgrounds from Salem's Point community shared their immigration and migration experiences. IM|MIGRATION will feature those stories as part of an audiovisual laser installation, photography, and augmented reality experience, showing that despite our different backgrounds, "storytelling can find commonalities through shared experience," says Benenson. Another grantee is the Massachusetts Center for Native American Awareness, which is working to expand its annual powwow in Haverhill, as well as adding additional powwows in the region. One will take place in Danvers in June, and an indoor event at Pingree School in Hamilton is planned for November. "Each venue we hope to transform into a vivid

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