Event Type : Professional & Networking

On Sunday, July 10th, more than 1,000 enthusiastic community members, fans, and artists gathered for a beautiful, warm day on the verdant grounds of MacDowell to celebrate the internationally renowned poet, writer, and 62nd Edward MacDowell Medalist Sonia Sanchez! The weather was stunning for our first public Medal Day since 2019. Under the big white tent, Board President Andrew Senchak welcomed our guests before Board Chair and MacDowell Fellow Nell Painter spoke on how Sonia's work illuminates the redeeming qualities of American society. Executive Director Philip Himberg then introduced prolific novelist and MacDowell Fellow Walter Mosley, who reflected on the impact of Sonia's incredible decades-long career. The ceremony concluded with a heartfelt and rousing acceptance speech from Sonia, followed by a poetry performance with musical accompaniment on electric bass from MacDowell Fellow Jamaaladeen Tacuma. After a picnic lunch, the MacDowell grounds bustled with visitors on the usually quiet paths as artists-in-residence graciously invited the public into their open studios, showing works in progress and describing the artistic processes being undertaken at MacDowell. This year we were joined by the Peterborough Town Library, whose staff set up a Pop-up Poetry Library in our lilac garden where visitors browsed poetry on display and were invited to create their own poems using local artist Erin Sweeney’s zine as a guide and by gathering words found on the MacDowell grounds. An author and international lecturer on Black culture and literature, women’s liberation, peace, and racial justice, Sonia Sanchez joins an august group of other MacDowell Medal winners such as Robert Frost (1962), Georgia O’Keeffe (1972), Leonard Bernstein (1987), Louise Bourgeois (1990), I.M. Pei (1998), Sonny Rollins (2010), Stephen Sondheim (2013), Toni Morrison (2016), Art Spiegelman (2018), Charles Gaines (2019), and Rosanne Cash (2021). Sanchez is the author of more than 20 books of poetry, children’s literature, and plays, including We a BaddDDD People, Homegirls and Handgrenades (winner of the 1985 American Book Award), Under a Soprano Sky, Does Your House Have Lions?, Like the Singing Coming off the Drums, Shake Loose My Skin, and Morning Haiku.

Radically Rural, as a summit, started in 2018 as a partnership between the Hannah Grimes Center for Entrepreneurship and The Keene Sentinel. The two organizations had come together in 2016 and 2017 to stage CONNECT, an event initiated by Hannah Grimes in 2006 to connect graduates of one of its business programs and grew to include graduates and participants in HG programming, funders, board members, and the local business and community. The new approach and concept of CONNECT, to showcase the innovation and entrepreneurship in the Monadnock Region, drew crowds of 400 to network in a fusion of art, food and music. This success suggested something bigger was possible: A small town summit at which experts in the arts, downtowns, entrepreneurship, land use, clean energy, healthcare and journalism could gather and share thoughts on sustainable, thriving rural communities. Radically Rural was born with an emphasis, as its name suggests, on inventive, contemporary approaches that attendees could absorb and take home. The 2018 summit drew more than 500 registrants from 24 states. The 2019 gathering expanded to more than 600 attendees. And the summit in 2020, held online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, still attracted 500, but this time from 43 states. The 2021 summit was hybrid, both in person and online, a format we plan to continue to use moving forward because of it’s helpful impact of accessibility. Today, Radically Rural has moved beyond a summit, to year-round programming offered in the track areas showcased at the summit. And now it has its own full-time director. The mission, a simple one, is the same: Radically Rural builds powerful networks of passionate, engaged, innovative people willing to share ideas and resources and take action to strengthen their small communities across the country.