Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2021 - Together, We Rise: Summoning a Season of Renewal

Join us for this year’s virtual MLK Jr. Day programming celebrating and reflecting on the life and legacy of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. More detailed information for how to engage throughout the month here.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2021 – Together, We Rise: Summoning a Season of Renewal

Join us for this year’s virtual MLK Jr. Day programming celebrating and reflecting on the life and legacy of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. More detailed information for how to engage throughout the month here.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2021 - Together, We Rise: Summoning a Season of Renewal

Join us for this year’s virtual MLK Jr. Day programming celebrating and reflecting on the life and legacy of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. More detailed information for how to engage throughout the month here.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2021 – Together, We Rise: Summoning a Season of Renewal

Join us for this year’s virtual MLK Jr. Day programming celebrating and reflecting on the life and legacy of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. More detailed information for how to engage throughout the month here.

Cures for Strange Times: Foraging and Flowers

Cures for Strange Times is a series of virtual workshops throughout January that brings wellness and creativity together in hands-on creative exchanges. Pairing wellness practitioners from the Northern Berkshire community with local artists and makers, these interactive......More

Cures for Strange Times is a series of virtual workshops throughout January that brings wellness and creativity together in hands-on creative exchanges. Pairing wellness practitioners from the Northern Berkshire community with local artists and makers, these interactive experiences center reflection, play, making and embodiment as forms of learning and being.The third session brings together botanist Joan Edwards and floral designer Wendy Hybl Fannin, who will call attention to the beauty of the winter landscape in this discussion and workshop featuring foraged and locally-found botanicals.Register for this free virtual event here. No prior experience required. About the artists Joan Edwards is a botanist with a special interest in understanding the evolution of biodiversity by studying organisms in their natural setting. Her current studies on pollination focus on the evolutionary design and conservation of flowers and their pollinators, which is critical to understand in the face of loss of species worldwide. Using time-lapse photography she captures near-complete records of insect visitors to flowers. A special focus is biomechanics and adaptive significance of ultra-fast plant movements—plant actions that are so quick they occur on the order of milliseconds. Using high-speed video (up to 100,000 fps) she studies the evolutionary significance and biomechanics of fast movements including the trebuchet catapults of bunchberry dogwood, the vortex rings of Sphagnum moss, the splash cups of liverworts and the “poppers” of wood sorrel. Her early fieldwork was on the impact of moose herbivory on plants in the boreal forests of Isle Royale National Park. She is  also a Professor of Biology at Williams College where she has been a faculty member since 1979. At Williams she teaches courses in Ecology, Plant Systematics, Tropical Biology and Conservation Biology. She completed her Ph.D. in Botany at the University of Michigan where she also did her undergraduate studies. She is the Samuel Fessenden Clarke Professor of Biology and is also a faculty member in the Environmental Studies Program at Williams. Hailing the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois, Wendy Hybl Fannin studied painting, photography and mixed media at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. More recently she has studied with some of New York’s most exceptional floral artists, and earned a Certificate in Floral Art & Design from Pratt Institute. Her history of entrepreneurship, art, flower farming and her long career in creative direction and project management, naturally culminated in her latest endeavor in Floral Event Design. Wendy started Hybl Fannin Design in 2015 at her home and gardens in the hills of southern Vermont. In June of 2019 she opened her studio at Greylock WORKS in North Adams MA, passionately embracing the rich artistic community and architectural heritage of the Berkshires.

The Power of Art and Activism Launching a Global Climate Change Network

With three Williams students on our team this winter, Reverse the Trend seeks to uplift the voices of youth activists from frontline communities of climate change and nuclear disarmament through education and advocacy. Our panelists include the UN Ambassadors of Costa R......More

With three Williams students on our team this winter, Reverse the Trend seeks to uplift the voices of youth activists from frontline communities of climate change and nuclear disarmament through education and advocacy. Our panelists include the UN Ambassadors of Costa Rica and  Kiribati, Fashion Environmentalist Runa Ray who has worked with couture houses such as Dior and Galliano, Civil Rights activist Jim Anderson, and Marshallese youth activists. Through the art and the discussion of our panelists, we explore the intersection between climate change, activism and expression.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2021 - Together, We Rise: Summoning a Season of Renewal

Join us for this year’s virtual MLK Jr. Day programming celebrating and reflecting on the life and legacy of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. More detailed information for how to engage throughout the month here.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2021 – Together, We Rise: Summoning a Season of Renewal

Join us for this year’s virtual MLK Jr. Day programming celebrating and reflecting on the life and legacy of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. More detailed information for how to engage throughout the month here.

Cures for Strange Times: Farming and Feasting

Cures for Strange Times is a series of virtual workshops throughout January that brings wellness and creativity together in hands-on creative exchanges. Pairing wellness practitioners from the Northern Berkshire community with local artists and makers, these interactive......More

Cures for Strange Times is a series of virtual workshops throughout January that brings wellness and creativity together in hands-on creative exchanges. Pairing wellness practitioners from the Northern Berkshire community with local artists and makers, these interactive experiences center reflection, play, making and embodiment as forms of learning and being.In this fourth and final session, farmer Tu Le of 328North Farm in Williamstown, Mass., and Aaron J. Oster of A-oK BBQ in North Adams, Mass., bring mindfulness to the table with a conversation highlighting bold flavors and local ingredients.Register for this free virtual event here. No prior experience required. About the artists Tu Le is a Vietnamese-American farmer and co-owner of 328North Farm.  In his own words: “I was born in Vietnam and arrived in the US as a refugee along with my family. Growing up in San Diego, CA, my parents put an emphasis on retaining our culture through tradition of growing and cooking our own food. With an education in Fashion and Industrial Design, I spent almost two decades managing and consulting on various industrial construction projects. Craving for a better life after tragedy, my partner, Matt, and I stumbled upon Williamstown en route to Vermont. We started our homestead in 2014, our goal was to be self sufficient and sustainable for our own family’s need. When the Covid-19 pandemic shut things down, we worked quickly to expand what we grew and converted to a farm with a small CSA. With food and flowers, we connected with the community we call home. Unusual greens, fruit and vegetables were paired with recipes on how cooked and consumed those items. My goal is to continue to educate my fellow community members on my culture by sharing a part of myself through the food I grow.” Aaron J. Oster has dedicated the last 20 years to the production of food and the environments in which people share time, food and memories. In the winter of 2017, spurred by local advice and support, he and his partner Alexandra built a restaurant, A-oK Berkshire BBQ on the MASS MoCA campus. In Aaron’s own words “We’ve just celebrated 2 years in our space and the conversation between our community and our staff hasn’t changed since the first meal served, putting better food on the tables of those without our community AND making a space that cares for the people in the business as much as those outside of it. We hope for a long and successful future in this city and want to share our ideals with our friends here in North Adams and beyond.”

New Ecologies: Sustenance

This free program will be held online via Zoom. Register here. This interdisciplinary conversation explores the reciprocal ways we nourish and are nourished by both land and community. Bringing together a range of creative practitioners working at the intersections of a......More

This free program will be held online via Zoom. Register here. This interdisciplinary conversation explores the reciprocal ways we nourish and are nourished by both land and community. Bringing together a range of creative practitioners working at the intersections of artistic practice, land stewardship, education, food studies, and activism, this program touches on topics including food justice, ritual, consumption, care, and the ways sustenance builds connections to place and the beings that inhabit them. Participants include farmer Jen Salinetti, herbalist Mandana Boushee, and artists Yoko Inoue and Sarah Rara. Mandana Boushee is an Iranian-American herbalist, storyteller, earth steward and educator. She weaves her Iranian culture and plant tradition into all facets of her work and is dedicated to re-centering the voices, stories, rituals, and histories of the BIPOC community. Artist Yoko Inoue’s research-creation includes food issues in the theoretical framework of decolonization, considering the collective act of cooking, critiquing and consuming food as the cornerstone of the social and spiritual bond. Jen Salinetti is a co-founder, farmer, and Director of Education & Community Engagement at Woven Roots Farm & Education Center, a farm and CSA in present-day Tyringham, MA, that is celebrating 20 years of growing vegetables, herbs, and flowers using traditional, hand-scale farming practices. Sarah Rara’s multi-disciplinary practice—including performance, writing, and video—explores the position of witness within fragile systems. Her work focuses on states of readiness and attention actual reality digging holes navigation remote sensing the diminishing divide between onscreen and offscreen realities listening entanglements with and within ecosystems landlord-tenant relationship and housing justice and contemplating a feminist objectivity, situated knowledges. Rara is an assistant professor of art at Williams College. Photo: Jen Salinetti, a co-founder, farmer, and Director of Education & Community Engagement at Woven Roots Farm. Photo: Lisa Metzger

"Step Show: The Musical" Part 2, Open Rehearsal and Dialogue

Join us for a multi-part engagement with Maxine Lyle ’00 as she, in collaboration with Soul Steps as they create a new musical, Step Show. Part 2 is a studio visit with Maxine and her collaborators. Check back here for the Zoom link. Step Show: The Musical follows Monie......More

Join us for a multi-part engagement with Maxine Lyle ’00 as she, in collaboration with Soul Steps as they create a new musical, Step Show. Part 2 is a studio visit with Maxine and her collaborators. Check back here for the Zoom link. Step Show: The Musical follows Monie, a college freshman at the fictional Bailey College, as she fights to find a voice for herself through rhythm. Combining step, spoken word and other percussive elements, the show illuminates Monie’s coming of age as she navigates cultural appropriation, systemic oppression, and gender biases within the world of step and academia. Step’s arrival at Williams in 1996 and its continued popularity on campus over twenty years later speaks to a bold carving out of space for Williams’ Black students. STEP SHOW offers a launching point for conversation about the function of step at Williams: What drives African-American young people to step? How does step empower young people who navigate racial and systemic oppression? What does the existence of step at Williams say about the community’s racial discourse and how has that shifted over the years? Artist’s Studio: While so much of the world has slowed down to a halt in response to COVID-19, artists have not ceased to create meaning out of these most unusual circumstances. The Williams community will meet and converse with artists and scholars, following their continued creativity in their studios. Over the course of the academic year, new performances will be created in conversation with guest speakers, faculty, and students. Part III: STEP SHOW: Work-In-Process PerformanceApril 8, 2021