SOcial Impact Initiatives
ARTISTS AT WORK is structured as a network of partnerships designed to leverage cultural recovery for local community impact. As part of their participation in the program, each AAW artist will be embedded in a social impact initiative in their local community that will benefit from their skills and creative thinking. These initiatives include a wide range of programs and organizations whose work supports healthy communities. Learn more about our regional social impact partners and their vital work below.
is housed on 615 acres of wooded hills, gardens, and pastures in rural upstate New York. It hosts adults with special needs and long- and short-term service volunteers to live and work together as equals in extended family homes—an integrated community where people with developmental differences are living a life of dignity, equality, and purpose.
Gardner Athol Area Mental Health Association
is an organization dedicated to providing a wide range of services including substance use disorder and recovery support and a residential substance abuse program.
Northern Berkshire Community Coalition
empowers, connects, convenes and supports communities in the Northern Berkshire region. nbCC offers programming, support and education around substance abuse prevention, intervention, treatment and recovery.
is a youth-led non-profit organization that supports communities in healing themselves from the effects of trauma through therapeutic, artistic, spiritual, and pro-social experiences. The project offers educational opportunities and materials highlighting the voices of the disenfranchised.
is a woman-led nonprofit whose mission is to empower youth and build community through food and farming. Roots Rising’s vision is to lift up teenagers as community changemakers and strengthen the local food system through the transformational power of meaningful work. The organization has two main initiatives: The Pittsfield Farmers Market, the first teen-run market in the region, and Youth Crews, which focuses on hiring teens to work on farms, in food pantries, and at the market.
is an educational organization reconnecting marginalized communities to their place within the natural world through mindful wilderness trips and place-based skills while serving as a platform for ancestral healing, community building, and cultural transformation. The program aims to build a supportive outdoor community that provides space for self-reflection and healing, intimacy with nature, and conscious environmental stewardship for people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals.