MacDowell in the Community
The Colony makes ongoing efforts to bring together the local community with the art and artists at MacDowell.  MacDowell in the Schools, begun in 1996, seeks to bridge the gap in school arts funding by offering a variety of programming to classrooms in the Monadnock region.  MacDowell Downtown, launched in 2002, is a monthly series of presentations from September to May by MacDowell Fellows in the center of Peterborough.  Both programs have enlisted all seven of the Colony’s artistic disciplines and provided filmmaking workshops and screenings, readings and writing seminars, concerts, visual arts shows, dramatic performances, talks, and much more.  In addition to these formal programs, many artists return to Peterborough for community work outside their Fellowships. Those collaborations represent the unique connection many Fellows develop to the area and people of New Hampshire.  

In the past year, 19 Colony Fellows volunteered to share their work in the schools, at the Town Library, or at MacDowell Downtown.  These experiences involved more than 500 adults and children in groups large and small.  To read about both MacDowell Downtown and MacDowell in the Schools, click on the links at left.

Helene Massey-Hemmans works with a student at Peterborough Elementary School.