Building a community of collaborators

Over the weekend, Paperkite was lucky enough to be part of an event in our community that brought together local arts and recreation groups who offer programming for children and families. Close to 200 people gathered at the Fenimore Art Museum to attend to a concert by Uncle Rock, listen to a reading of original ghost stories written by 3-6th-graders, do crafts and watch paintings in the Museum’s collection come to life with the help of some costumed interpreters.
We live in a small community that is blessed with a wide variety of cultural resources. With such a small population, competition is steep, not only for funds but for a basic share of attention. You can plan an event for a year, but if it happens to coincide with almost anything else, your attendance will suffer greatly.
Meanwhile, families who are looking for something to do often rely on word of mouth and a lot of happenstance to learn about events.
So when we heard about an initiative to bring those groups together to create a comprehensive events calendar, we couldn’t wait to join the effort.
As parents, we’ll be thrilled to have that resource for ourselves. As creative teachers, we’ll be glad to have another venue to promote our workshops. And as members of the community, we think this effort will make arts, culture and recreation more accessible to everyone in the community.
Paperkite is donating our services to help get this collaboration off the ground and online. We’re set to launch in the next couple of weeks, and we’ll give you a peek behind the scenes of all the hows and whys of what we did.