During spring break 2020, starting April 13, Fairlee Community Arts will offer another 5-day giant-puppet-making workshop in Fairlee Town Hall Auditorium with members of the Puppeteers Cooperative of Boston (https://www.puppetco-op.org), an offshoot of Vermont’s own Bread & Puppet Theater. The five 2-hour daily workshops (2-4 pm) culminate in a free public performance by participants on Friday evening. The workshops are open to all, with an emphasis on area students, teachers, parents, grandparents, and members of amateur theatrical and musical groups. Participants will learn how to create their own larger-than-life puppets and develop a group performance with these characters. The program stimulates participants’ imaginations, develops skills needed to bring a creative vision to life in the form of large imaginary characters, and gives local performers another creative tool with which to delight, inspire, and build audiences. For over thirty years The Puppeteers Cooperative and Lending Library, headquartered in Boston, MA, has led workshops, performances, pageants and parades around the country and served as a resource for the giant-puppet community and people interested in puppetry. Thanks to a generous grant from the Vermont Community Foundation's "Spark!" program, this year’s workshops will be expanded with additional instructors and able to accept more registrants. Best of all, participation will be FREE. For more information and to register, see www.fairleearts.org. The Vermont Community Foundation’s Spark! Connecting Community grant program puts building and nurturing community front and center. It supports good work happening throughout Vermont’s 251 towns to build social capital. These grants—where a small amount can make a big difference—are intended to light the spark that keeps Vermonters healthy and happy. FCA is honored to have been a recipient of this program.
Interplay Jazz and Arts in collaboration with Fairlee Community Arts invites all instrumentalists, vocalists and jazz fans to Fairlee Town Hall Auditorium for a free evening of musical fun and improv with like-minded friends, old and new. A jam session is an opportunity for musicians to get together and try out new tunes or arrangements, new riffs or comping techniques, and to hear and be inspired by what others are working on. Interplay’s Third Thursday jam sessions are social gatherings that welcome new players and singers into the Interplay family where we can all make music together, learn, and have fun. Musicians come prepared with a jazz standard to play. Auditors just come to hang with a community of friendly musicians and listen to the magic.
Co-founder of the Vermont Center for Ecostudies, Steve Faccio will present his slide lecture “Vernal Pools: Wicked Big Puddles or Critical Wildlife Habitat” at Fairlee Town Hall Auditorium on April 21 as part of FCA’s “Secret Lives” series of presentations on the secret lives and habitats of the wild neighbors within our Upper Valley hills. For details and tickets see www.fairleearts.org. A Conservation Biologist with wide-ranging interests and skills, Steve is a scientist, naturalist, writer, and photographer. With over 25 years’ experience, much of his work at VCE is focused on forest ecology, including long-term population monitoring of forest songbirds here and at their wintering grounds in Costa Rica, as well as the ecology of pool-breeding amphibians. He is a major State resource for vernal pool mapping and conservation. Steve and his volunteers have been monitoring the habitat health and fascinating creatures found in Vermont's vernal pools for many years, including several pools in Fairlee and West Fairlee.
