We are embarking on a region-wide look at work, through oral history and related projects.
We have head start on this region wide project: Essential Workers, Paper Making, and Farming in Sheffield, Voices from the Fields – Projects that we are engaging with now. Berkshire Memoirs of Work, with the Monterey Library, is a new project that we are supporting. But we will help partners initiate other working related projects.
TALKING SHOP
We are collaborating with Community Television for the Southern Berkshires (CTSB) on a series called Talking Shop. Our first interview, 2024, Alzie Mercado, Technical Theater Director Berkshire Community College. She does everything from building sets, to managing a production, which includes lighting and sound, to teaching students to do the same.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCqRwXGUZSI
Then, below, is a photo of Pete Gray, who work at Greenagers to introduce young people to work in the trades. We interviewed him in February, 2025, and soon his interview will be available to watch, both at CTSB and here on this site. Below, Pete is shown in a gazebo built by the young people in the trades program.
Also part of this Oral History of Work initiative is the WORK IN THE Working the Forest project, with Mary O’Neill and Great Mountain Forest. Mary conducted oral histories and made podcasts. See this page linked for more information.
We will start with these small, diverse projects and build a collection so that others may listen, enjoy, and learn about the work of our neighbors in the Berkshires of Massachusetts and Northwest Corner of Connecticut.
Paper Making will be the theme of a collaboration with the Berkshire Museum, the working theme: The Art and Science of Paper. Right now, we are helping Crane & Co. with a small oral history project, and working with documentary filmmaker Ben Willis, who will help us tell the story of Lee paper making, through the lens of the story of Onyx Specialty Papers.
A view inside a meeting at Hurlbut Paper, Mead, Mead Westvaco, now Onyx, in Lee, MA.
