After careful consideration and much thoughtful discussion, and with support from the City of Easthampton, the Cottage Street Cultural District Subcommittee of Easthampton City Arts has made the decision to refrain from moving forward with Cultural Chaos 2020. As you may imagine – this decision, while clear, was far from simple.
Cultural Chaos is an annual and beloved touchstone event that serves to support individual artists while also providing a strategic and coordinated annual boost for our City‘s local economy – and, it’s where the arts and culture we value so deeply are integrated and actualized through the fabric of our City itself. While the Cottage Street Cultural District Subcommittee – which is largely comprised of Cottage Street business owners – is deeply committed to actively supporting the revitalization of our community of artists and local businesses, it is also committed to maintaining the integrity of Cultural Chaos as a bright, high-spirited, crowded, and celebratory street festival. Upon a thoughtful, thorough, and in-depth evaluation of a wide range of considerations, the group unanimously decided that it would be best to refrain from moving forward with this year’s event altogether, rather than to postpone it to a later date this year.
That being said, the Cottage Street Cultural District Subcommittee will continue to meet monthly and will be redirecting our energies toward establishing an ongoing series of smaller-scale arts and cultural events and activities that will take shape in the fall and winter of 2020, as long as they are permitted by the public safety measures and directives at that time. And, with generous funding from the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s Cultural District Initiative Fund that ECA was awarded with earlier this year, Easthampton City Arts has some healthy resources already in place to cultivate and support these efforts.
In the meantime, please save the date and mark your calendars for Saturday June 12, 2021 for what is sure to be an absolutely fabulous, celebratory, and over-the-top Cultural Chaos.
We wish everyone much love, health, wellness, and continued creativity during these unprecedented and extraordinary times.