Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/1115953
93 Above right, Karen Ristuben is the program director of the Creative County Initiative, Top left, Massachusetts Center for Native American Awareness is looking to expand its annual pow-wow in Haverhill. Bottom right, Essex Shipbuilding Museum is using its grant to research Essex's clamming history. site of cultural activities," with food, music, dance, regalia, native dwellings, artisans, storytelling, and craft making, says board member Anthony "Skyhawk" Silva. "e general public have an opportunity to experience our culture by being involved in the powwow through activities and total immersion." ere's also the Essex Shipbuilding Museum, which is using its grant funding to examine Essex's clamming history. e museum will be working with students, a local boatbuilder and clammer, and the town of Essex to study, recreate, demonstrate, and eventually display two traditional clamming tools that were once ubiquitous in Essex: a wooden skiff and a metal-and-wood clamming basket. "It's not a historically romantic profession, so there hasn't been a lot of scholarship in the tools that they used," says Christopher Stepler, operations administrator for the Essex Shipbuilding Museum. "We want to give them some of the due that they might not get otherwise by sharing some of their own history." ese projects are exciting and ambitious in their own right, but they're just the start of the Creative County Initiative's larger work and focus. According to Ristuben, "is combination of significant funding and the community foundation as a place for this work to live has given so many people hope for the sector overall." eccf.org PHOTOGRAPHS BY JARED CHARNEY (TOP RIGHT), COURTESY OF MASSACHUSETTS CENTER FOR NATIVE AMERICAN AWARENESS (TOP LEFT), COURTESY OF NORTHSHORECDC.ORG (BOTTOM LEFT)