Meet the President, Susan Saradoff!

After a five-year hiatus in the community, the former Lightwing Institute in the Berkshires and the Summer Stage are back, having been revived and reinvented by Susan Saradoff as the Cheshire Cultural Center and the Cheshire Summer Stage, respectively.

Susan, the president of the Cheshire Cultural Center, has spent the last 40 years working with nonprofits. She has also received a master’s degree in Social Work from Hunter College as well as a certificate in Non-Profit Management from Columbia University Business School.

“Nonprofits are unique in that they’re set up to serve the social good,” Susan said. “I have worked with educational nonprofits and I believe that they fill the gap in what the government doesn’t provide.”

Susan’s work with nonprofits began in 1979 after visiting a senior center in Bronx, New York, with all the residents wanting to share their stories.

“Everyone wanted to share their stories, so I wanted to collect them and transform them into theater with a program called History Alive,” Susan said. “This program led me to create the organization Elders Share the Arts.”

Working with elder citizens became Susan’s main focus in the years to come as she worked to change the societal stigma around them.

“I wanted to work towards reframing how society sees older people as a problem and change that so society would see the potential of what they could offer us,” Susan said. “I want to acknowledge the lifetime of experiences that older people have.”

In 2001, the National Endowment for the Arts asked Elders Share the Arts to become national. Susan, however, wanted to create a similar organization for the purpose of going national, so she founded the National Center for Creative Aging, whose purpose was to bring programs, research, and policy together around older people and the arts.

“Nonprofits can create models for how to work with whatever issue they’re taking on,” Susan said. “For me, I’ve always loved working with older people because I believe they’re the keepers of our culture.”

In 2016, Susan chose to revive and reinvent the Lightwing Institute in the Berkshires and the Summer Stage into the Cheshire Cultural Center and the Cheshire Summer Stage, respectively.

“I saw it [the Summer Stage] as a unique opportunity for the community to get to know the voices of the musicians and storytellers in this area,” Susan said. “I’m getting to know that there are so many and just tapping into the culture of this community.”

The Cheshire Cultural Center is a nonprofit arts education organization focused on the living history of the area, giving community members a way to engage with oral histories in a unique way through storytelling, music, and theatre, combining arts performance and education. It’s working to bring audiences and artists together in a cultural community that celebrates the rich history of local people and the area while enhancing arts offerings in Cheshire and the Northern Berkshires.

Because she comes from organizations that honor the voices of older people, Susan is looking forward to finding the storytellers of the area’s history, like the time when Farnam’s Quarry was around or GE Electric.

“I hope we will bring the community together through the arts and we will learn more of the stories of people who live here in North County Berkshires,” Susan said. “I’ll be fun and we’ll learn and understand each other better through the arts!”

The Cheshire Summer Stage hosted its first summer program last year in August of 2018, featuring musical performances by the Minerva Art Center’s Cassandra Vaillieres and Craig Caserto, as well as the Tawdry band member Bruce Knowlton with Laurie Brenner.

“We just put up posters and people came,” Susan said.

The success from the summer of 2018 has motivated Susan to continue this event, expanding the program to include four performances this summer, all of which are free and open to the public.

“I look forward to seeing how the Cheshire Cultural Center grows and develops and if anyone has any ideas they’d like to contribute, please get in touch!” Susan continued. “Now it’s time to not only give voice to the stories of the community, but also to the artists, writers, musicians, and performers.”

For more information of the Cheshire Cultural Center, the Cheshire Summer Stage, and events for this summer, visit www.cheshireculturalcenter.org.