I am the board president of the Harvard Cultural Collaborative, which you may not know about yet, but you will soon. I’ve lived in Harvard for just over seven years, since the spring of 2008. My partner, Diane, and I; our daughter, Lily, a senior at Bromfield; and our dog, Louie, live on East Bare Hill Road.
We moved here for our daughter, for the quality of life we wanted for our family. We will stay—or leave—for the quality of life Diane and I want after Lily goes away to college next year. Suffice it to say, most of our nonworking time and the people we spent it with were centered around our child. What will it be like without her? What kinds of things are happening here? What do people without kids do? Do people like to do the things I like to do? Are there new things I could try? How do I connect with people? When I’m not working, I like to play. Who will I play with?
“Every child is an
artist. The challenge is to remain an artist after you grow up.”
—Pablo Picasso
Our town center has so much to offer: the new library, the pond, the General, the churches, the schools, the Farmers Market, and even a bike shop. Where is the cultural center?
A cultural center provides a place for making and displaying visual arts, a venue for film, talks, and poetry readings, a performance space for storytelling, concerts, and open rehearsals—think string quartet, Indian raga, musical theater, or the blues. And a cultural center can provide space and opportunity for collaboration. It’s a place where people of all ages and backgrounds come together and share ideas, try out new activities, learn together, and make together. I believe that making art, appreciating art, makes community. And as great as the online virtual life is, there is something important about being in the same room with another person. Art—the doing it, seeing it, hearing it, touching it—connects and inspires us. I believe that the old library, the Hapgood Library, the Hap, is where art can thrive. When I think of that, I get excited about the prospect of living in Harvard, even after Lily leaves for college.
Reclaiming a town jewel
If we pass up this chance, if the Hap turns into office space or, worse yet, is sold, we lose more than a beautiful building. We lose a part of the whole, a prized jewel in a necklace that is our town center. Is it just a building, this elegant brick edifice, Romanesque Revival, built purposefully on the Common? I believe that reclaiming it, finding the funds to restore it to its warm beauty on the inside, and filling it with conversation, dance, music, and visual art of all stripes is our responsibility, and a gift to ourselves and future generations.
I am a professional musician, second violinist in (and founder of) the Lydian String Quartet, based at Brandeis University since 1980. I am professor of the practice there, teach at the Boston Conservatory, and tour with the quartet. I also co-founded and directed a music festival in upstate New York in 1986 that is still thriving, and I founded and direct the Brandeis World Music Intercultural Residency Program—MusicUnitesUS—that is celebrating its tenth year.
A similar model
When I co-founded the music festival in Salem, New York, we began a relationship with another organization, Hubbard Hall Projects, in Cambridge, the next town over. Hubbard Hall Projects had formed in 1978 to purchase, restore, and operate Hubbard Hall, the town’s 1878 opera house that had fallen into disrepair and hadn’t been used for 50 years. One hundred years ago, it was home to traveling roadshows, church benefits, concerts, school graduations, town meetings, dress balls, and chautauquas.
My music festival needed a place to perform, and Hubbard Hall wanted partners to help bring back the building. To do so, the original woodwork and stenciling needed restoring; the roof needed repair; new fire escapes, wiring, HVAC, an elevator, and more were necessary.
Now it is a destination point with all the work complete. It is a center for cultural activity, with concerts upstairs, an opera and theater company, a children’s theater, and art and dance classes for all ages. Downstairs is a village store, an artisans’ market, a co-op for local artists to show and sell their work. It is everything the original planning group hoped for and more.
I do think that such a place is missing in Harvard. The arts express and deepen the human experience. They are the glue that holds community together. I think that the process of creating community can be an artful thing in itself.
Pablo Picasso said, “Every child is an artist. The challenge is to remain an artist after you grow up.”
Let’s make Harvard a place where all children, young and grown up, can continue to be artists.
Judith Eissenberg is the board president of the
Harvard Cultural Collaborative (www.harvardculture.org).
