Lifestyle
By Jonathan Secor
Though there are some debates on the year the house on Florida Mountain was bought, I am relatively confident that I have been coming to the Berkshires since a very early age, for some forty something years at minimum.
It had always been a dream to be able to move to that house in the Berkshires, live on Florida Mountain surveying my kingdom, and somehow still make a decent living working in the arts, at a somewhat later point my chosen profession. It was for many years just that – a dream. The Berkshires for the most part was still a place of seasonal theater and culture, and my work as a manager and producer of the arts was in need of larger urban markets.
This all changed with the construction that began at the old Sprague factory in North Adams. I began to take great interest in the building of MASS MoCA, and to my great fortune it soon took notice of me.
Originally hired to help oversee the design and implementation of the performing arts spaces and program at MASS MoCA, I quickly realized that this is truly where I wanted to be, and in 1999 took a full time job at MASS MoCA, moved my family up to the old farmhouse on the mountain and began what has been a truly wonderful relationship with the ever growing cultural and creative community of the Berkshires.
After six extraordinarily fulfilling, though mildly exhausting, years as director of performing arts at MASS MoCA, it was time to move on. Luckily by now there was a much greater breadth of year-round opportunities to be had in the arts.
MCLA’s Berkshire Cultural Resource Center (BCRC) provides professional development training, resources, and support to the artists, art managers, and creative workers of Berkshire County. Through its multiple programs and presentations, BCRC brings the best of performance and art to the Berkshires and showcases the best of the Berkshires to the world.
Programs that I have the pleasure of working on at MCLA’s BCRC include The Berkshire Hills Internship Program (B-HIP), DownStreet Art, BerkshireArtStart.org, MCLA Presents, MCLA Gallery 51, Tricks of the Trade and the upcoming New New Deal – Creative Economy 2.0 Summit.