Buying local and supporting the arts emphasized in coordinated marketing campaign in Pittsfield, MA!
This holiday season, creative businesses in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, both for profit and not-for-profit, are banding together with the Cultural Pittsfield Initiative to encourage consumers to support local creative businesses and organizations this holiday season.
“Family memberships, museum shops, restaurant and theatre gift certificates, affordable art, locally made gift cards, frames, and arts supplies all make incredibly wonderful and creative gifts for the holidays,” noted Pittsfield Mayor James M. Ruberto. “We encourage everyone to put their catalogs away and shop locally AND creatively right here in our community.”
The City of Pittsfield, hub of culturally-rich Berkshire County in western Massachusetts, has become home to growing numbers of artists, arts organizations, and creative businesses in recent years. Participating arts organizations in the initiative include Barrington Stage Company, which will be bringing the holiday favorite This Wonderful Life to the stage in December, Berkshire Museum, featuring a fun membership–in-a-box, the annual Festival of Trees, and their expanded museum shop on the corner of South Street and Park Square filled with tempting and affordable gift ideas, including local made artwork; the Colonial Theatre, featuring gift certificates and a bevy of holiday concerts and performances; and Hancock Shaker Village, offering gift memberships as well as a wonderful array of gifts in their shop.
On North Street, don’t miss the collectible crafts and fiber arts supplies at Twin Hearts Handworks, featuring an array of colorful yarns in natural fibers; handcrafted letterpress cards, picture frames, local art and more at the Museum Facsimiles shop, and functional artisanal ceramics and an array of small affordably-priced artworks perfect for gift giving at the Ferrin Gallery. And on the weekend of December 13 & 14, it’s the Crispina & Friends holiday studio sale in downtown Pittsfield. This year she’s joined by over twenty other local one-of-a-kind artists, including internationally renowned artist (and yes, proud papa to Crispina) John ffrench and the ffrench family’s legendary hand silkscreened calendar; ceramics by Daniel Bellow and Christy Knox; Janice Shield’s rustic home and garden accessories; custom hula hoops by Stefanie Weber, handcrafted fine jewelry by Dawn Meltzer, Emily Cavin, Saskia Larraz and James Kennedy, locally made greenery and wreaths by Sarah Thorne, photography by Julie McCarthy, and much more.
Also available are gift certificates from two downtown restaurants who display local and regional art in partnership with the Ferrin Gallery. The recently opened Mission Bar & Tapas features Spanish wine and small dishes, handcrafted beers, and great live music; while Jae’s Spice features a sushi bar and pan-Asian and contemporary American cuisine. Both offer gift certificates for a thoughtful present that always fits. And when you need to refuel during the holidays, they both offer great food and great atmosphere downtown.
The campaign includes regional newspaper, magazine, radio, billboard and internet advertising and is designed to highlight both the participating businesses as well as the growing variety of creative businesses and organizations in Pittsfield. Design and placement is being carried out by Bookmarc Creative, a Pittsfield-based design and marketing company. The marketing campaign is partially underwritten by the Cultural Pittsfield Initiative, which promotes cultural economic development and the creative economy through a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
“Over two dozen new restaurants, shops, and cultural hotspots have opened shop just in downtown Pittsfield over the past few years, and the variety of wonderful gift options here keeps expanding. Now more than ever it’s a great time to support your neighbors, shop local, shop creatively , and shop Pittsfield!” said Whilden.
For more information on the Shop Creatively. Shop Pittsfield! campaign, visit culturalpittsfield.com!
Berkshire Eagle-Shopping Pittsfield
Sunday, November 30
Pittsfield and Berkshire County residents of a certain age have fond memories of North Street in the days when it could have arrived full-blown from “A Miracle on 34th Street.” Happy Christmas shoppers laden with boxes and bags moved in and out of England’s and other downtown stores in droves, the ringing bells of the Salvation Army Santas echoing the din of the cash registers. Add a light snowfall and you had a Currier & Ives print come to life. Those were the days.
North Street isn’t what it was in the GE days and the national economy isn’t what it was even last Christmas. The most severe economic crisis in decades will test retailers across the nation, and in Pittsfield, where store-owners are at least used to confronting tough times. It will require imagination to survive and thrive, and the “Shop Creatively, Shop Pittsfield!” campaign initiated by downtown businesses and arts organizations is the kind of imaginative idea required.
While North Street may not be what it was in its glory days, it has come a long ways since the despondent days of just five or six years ago. This is because of an ambitious public-private collaboration between City Hall, specifically the cultural development office directed by Megan Whilden, downtown retailers and the arts community, which includes individual artists and nonprofit organizations. Cultural tourism is and will continue to be an important component of the Pittsfield economy, as it long has been throughout the Berkshires, and this collaboration could bring economic dividends this Christmas season.
The participating organizations, and we hope there will be more joining as we move into December, seek to offer unusual gifts, many of them hand-crafted, that can’t be found at more generic mass retailers. Local cultural institutions will offer gift certificates for passes or memberships. The Web site www.culturalpittsfield.com will provide more information, as well as links to the groups participating in the program.
Because Americans do much of their shopping, in particular at the holidays, on-line these days, those box-and-bag-laden holiday shoppers that once crowded streets are now for the most part tapping away on computers in the solitude of their homes. On-line shopping is convenient, but it does nothing for the local economy, the health of which impacts all Berkshire residents. By drawing people downtown, the “Shop Creatively, Shop Pittsfield!” will ideally bring shoppers into the city’s many downtown taverns and restaurants, some of them new, some of them with us since those fondly remembered days of yesteryear.
Economic hard times aren’t new to Pittsfield, and now we have plenty of company. Communities that work together to find ways to boost the economy have the best chance of succeeding, and the opportunity is here to do so this holiday season.
