Sneak Peek: Revisiting Lisa Donovan Podcast

Lisa Donovan: There was an acknowledgement that we needed to do more around community engagement, that often people who live here (the Berkshires) year around don't necessarily see that the arts are for them; they tend to think initially, "Oh, that's really for our tourists." And so this is where education is so important that if we could work with our students K-12 and beyond, giving them access to the arts so that they understand that this is part of the unique place that we live, that we would develop a clear sense of a Berkshire identity. We have a superintendent who said to me, and I love this quote. He said, "You know, going to school in Berkshire County should be substantially different than anywhere else because of what we have here.” And so a lot of the cultural organizations have been doing amazing work to create access through school opportunities whether that be field trips or bringing artists into schools, providing free admission to our cultural organizations. We've worked with the Massachusetts Cultural Council. They have a Cultural Rx program that allowed some of our medical professionals to give prescriptions for students who are in challenging situations to go to a museum as part of a prescription.