Creative Conversations Plant Seeds for Collaboration
At the Arts Foundation’s Creative Conversations in March, artist Mark Adams of Truro, brought a large-scale interactive map that looked at humanity’s connection to place and time from a geological and biological perspective. He was one of three local artists who spoke about how nature and the land has informed their work.
The seeds for collaboration between the arts and local land trusts were planted at the beginning of March. As a large swath of snow remained on the ground outside the Harwich Conservation Trust’s Old Bank Street Firehouse, nearly four dozen attendees representing the two sectors laid the framework for forging meaningful partnerships to elevate their work collectively.
“I see just enormous possibilities,” author Lauren Wolk said, at the conclusion of the Arts Foundation’s first Creative Conversations of the year. “With everyone in this room — and there are many, many more like us — working together, could accomplish an awful lot.”
That was the goal of the discussion which was focused on ways the arts could work alongside land stewards utilizing the concept that a rising tide lifts all boats. “Conservation makes you think. Science makes you think,” said Nature Land Conservancy Associate Director Stephen Hart. “Art makes you feel and resonates more when you leave a place.”
Stephen Hart (middle) and Diana Ruiz (right) of the Nature Land Conservancy talk with artist Amy DuFault of the Dennis Conservation Land Trust.
The discussion kicked off with three artists — multidisciplinary artist Gin Stone of Harwich, painter, printmaker, writer, and cartographer Mark Adams of Truro, and musician and educator Carla Kihlstedt of Falmouth — who shared how nature has informed and shaped their work.
What guides Adams’s approach? “I really like to convey something what the land is telling us in all the painting and the work I do,” he said during his presentation, standing near a large-scale map he created that lay on the floor of the firehouse. It was an interactive piece — people were welcome to walk on it — that not only looked at place, but time from a geological, biological, and human perspective.
On the environmental side, attendees heard from Barnstable Land Trust’s Director of Communications and Programs Sue Dahling Sullivan, Dennis Conservation Land Trust Outreach Coordinator Amy Dufault, and Harwich Conservation Land Trust Executive Director Michael Lach about ways that nature and the land has inspired and given meaning to them personally and professionally.
“The people are where we need to focus, on helping to connect them better to and with the land, to make sure that they care, that they know the value [of nature], that they want to be a community of champions and caretaker for today and for tomorrow,” Dahling Sullivan said. “I think that artists have all the tools and the platform and are natural connectors to help us bridge the land and where we live, and how we use it, and how we value it. I hope this conversation helps to plant the seeds to help continue that.”
The Arts Foundation’s newly launched Creative Conversations is inspired by similar discussions that took place at its Creative Exchange Conference last fall. The meetings are strategically designed to connect artists and arts leaders to other sectors — the environment, housing, healthcare, infrastructure, wastewater, technology, and more.
The goal with the conversations is to strengthen existing relationships while forging new ones, and as Executive Director Julie Wake has said, ensure the arts has a seat at every table when it comes to addressing important community issues.