Inkberry gets $10,000 NEA Grant

NORTH ADAMS — Inkberry is one of only four institutions in Massachusetts selected by the National Endowment for the Arts for a Challenge America Fast-Track grant.

Inkberry will be given $10,000 for a proposed project focusing on “community transitions and rural sense of place,” Executive Director Rachel Barenblat announced last week. Inkberry will collaborate with the Williamstown Rural Lands Foundation, Words are Wonderful, and the Williams College Chaplain’s Office to bring three writers to Northern Berkshire and will schedule a variety of activities with each writer, including readings, workshops and walks.

The project aims to examine and creatively respond to the challenges — economic, environmental, cultural and spiritual — facing Northern Berkshire communities, Barenblat said in a news release. “By confronting and giving voice to those challenges, Inkberry and its collaborators aim to build community through public art,” she said.

“Our intent is to provide residents of Northern Berkshire with access to artists whose work resonates with the challenges we face, to enable our community to give creative voice to the triumphs and frustrations of living in this region and to discuss the changes in rural life, especially economic, environmental, social and spiritual changes, in a way that’s meaningful, accessible and personally relevant,” Barenblat said.

Inkberry and its partner organizations are working to establish a schedule for the Community Transitions program and on securing the collaboration of the three artists. Essayist Verlyn Klinkenborg will be one of the writers, in the summer of 2005, brought by Inkberry and the rural lands foundation.

Plans call for bringing a poet to the area to participate in the events surrounding the rededication of Thompson Memorial Chapel at Williams, which will celebrate its centennial, and to bring a noted children’s book author to participate in Words are Wonderful. According to the NEA’s Web site, the poet is expected to be Mary Oliver and the children’s book author Jane Yolen.

“We could not be more excited about this.” Barenblat said in her news release. “Getting funding from the NEA is a tremendous vote of confidence in what we’re doing, and we’re elated to be able to make these programs a reality.”

The NEA announced on Dec. 15 that it would award $1.7 million through 171 grants in its Challenge America Fast-Track Review Grants category. The awards support projects that provide opportunities for people to experience and participate in a wide range of art forms and activities, enable arts organizations to expand and diversify their audiences and emphasize the potential of the arts to help strengthen communities. Many of the projects extend the arts to underserved populations whose access to the arts is limited by geography, ethnicity, economics or disability.

The other grants in Massachusetts, all of which were for $10,000, will be awarded to the Henry Lee Willis Community Center in Worcester (eighth annual African American Festival), Musicorda Inc. of South Hadley (Summer Festival Series, Young Artist Series and master classes), and Touchable Stories Inc. of Boston, (development of a public art installation — a maze that incorporates soundtracks of stories recorded by community members in lower Roxbury).

Information: www.arts.endow.gov. Information about Inkberry: e-mail Barenblat at rachel@inkberry.org.