“It’s time to not only give voice to the stories of the community, but also to the artists, writers, musicians, and performers.”
Who We ARe
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 theater, combining arts performance and education.
Where We’ve Been
The Cheshire Cultural Center, formerly known as The Lightwing Institute in the Berkshires, was founded by Lucia Saradoff in 1993, who also established the Summer Stage in 2004.
The Summer Stage served as an education non-profit organization, provided events such as the Heron Cove Twilight Concerts. The program featured free summertime outdoor entertainment from live music concerts, offering the public a chance to enjoy free concerts during the summer.
Along with these concerts, this educational organization offered cultural performances, discussion groups, forums, and panel lectures for the community.
In 2011, the Summer Stage, Heron Cove Twilight Concerts, and the Lightwing Institute in the Berkshires disappeared from community events, entering hiatus.
Where We’re Headed
It wasn’t until 2016 that the program was picked up by Susan Saradoff, founder of the National Center for Creative Aging and Elders Share the Arts.
Under Susan’s leadership, the Summer Stage and the Lightwing Institute in the Berkshires have been revived and reinvented into the Cheshire Summer Stage and the Cheshire Cultural Center, respectively.
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 Accidentals band member Bruce Knowlton.
The success from the summer of 2018 has motivated Susan to continue this summer event and revive this organization, with the addition of informative performances aimed at encouraging local cultural history.