The Richmond County Historical Society building was a busy place on Saturday afternoon as people gathered for the third and final stop of Literacy in Action’s (LiA) migratory community arts festival. Having begun with a series of community art workshops in Bury, Stanstead, and Richmond earlier in the fall, the festival then returned to those three municipalities over the course of three weekends in October to present the works that had been created and collectively discuss and celebrate the things that bring people together.
“It was really special to be able to reconnect with families we hadn’t seen in a few years
But also meet new families that were just coming into town or who we hadn’t met before the pandemic,” said Joanna Bateman, executive director of Literacy in Action.
Bateman described the festival as a broadening of the “arts and scraps” workshops that the organization has been in the habit of doing over the last several years as a form of outreach. “That activity was always about getting to know a community, but this took that a step further,” she said, pointing out that each of the communities selected was a place where the organization had done work prior to the pandemic, but where connection had been a bit limited since 2020.
Migratory arts festival comes to a rest after a final weekend in Richmond
By Gordon Lambie
