Arts Alive!, a nonprofit that works to support and connect a sustainable arts community, is excited to welcome five new members to its board of directors, Georgia Cassimatis, Robin Cherof, April Claggett, Alison Wilder, and Jennifer Paone
Georgia Cassimatis
Georgia Cassimatis is the founder of Friends of Public Art and 17ROX. She has been a faithful Public Art Coordinator in the Monadnock Region since 2014. She says, “I am looking forward to serving on the Arts Alive! Board. It has been a desire of mine to work with this esteemed group for many years! Arts Alive! Has positively impacted my life and helped me form a thriving trajectory for myself. I am eternally grateful for its existence and It’s now time to pay it forward!”
Alison Wilder
Alison Wilder is a musician, technologist and entrepreneur who is dedicated to helping artists and businesses effectively use the internet to bring their ideas to others. She runs two digital agencies: Wicked Good Web (helping businesses in northern New England create and implement digital strategies) and Punkt Digital (working with artists and arts organizations to engage audiences online). Alison brings a broad range of experience to her work, including PhD studies in music cognition at McGill University in Montréal, project management and leadership in the music industry, data literacy work for arts professionals, web design and development, and music performance and composition. Alison says, “As a relatively new transport to Keene (most recently, from the White Mountains), I'm thrilled to get to know my new community better, and to bring another helping hand and enthusiastic voice to an already-thriving arts and culture scene!”
Robin Cherof, illustration by Jenni Wu
Robin Cherof is the sous chef and a development assistant at MacDowell, the historic artists' residency in Peterborough. She sees this role as the culmination of life spent loving arts and loving food. Robin moved to the Monadnock region in 2013, following her dance career in New York, to farm at the Nubanusit Neighborhood and Farm cohousing community with her husband Todd. She completed a certificate degree in Arts Management from UMass Amherst in 2019. She now lives in Keene and is excited to join Arts Alive! in support of the local arts scene. For fun, Robin is a member of Joy Moves, a collective that meets every Sunday at 2 in Robin Hood Park for a free-style, feel-good dance jam - it’s free, open to the public, no experience required, so join us!
April Claggett
April Claggett is an artist and art historian with a background in Environmental Studies living in Dublin. She wrote the first NEA Our Town award-winning grant for NH and organized the Children and the Arts Festival in Peterborough for 10 years. She is a 2020 NH State Council on the Arts Entrepreneurial Award recipient. She teaches art at Colby Sawyer College and Franklin Pierce University, and exhibits her work and presents scholarly papers regionally, nationally and internationally. She is also a local musician, recently featured on Park TV. “I am serving on the board of Arts Alive! to give back to the communities that support me,” says April. “The arts are as vital to our sense of wellbeing here in the Monadnock region as anything else, and Arts Alive! is positioned to nurture that diversity and growth for all to thrive."
Jennifer Paone
Jennifer Paone is the owner and Creative Director of The Production House in Keene, New Hampshire. She graduated from Keene State College in 2001 with a BA in Film Production. Her passion for filmmaking started at an early age. With her creativity and need for flexibility, starting a small video production company was a natural progression. Today, she continues to develop her storytelling and filmmaking skills while building a broad client base from local individuals to large companies. From 2013-2017 she was a member of the Monadnock United Way campaign communications committee and served as the filmmaker for the campaign. She is currently on the Development Committee for the Keene Senior Center, as well as Board Adviser for Rwanda One 4 One. She also hosts a regular networking group to encourage peer support around digital marketing strategies. Jennifer says, “I love volunteering in my community and giving back whenever possible.”
The five new board members will join the current board to tackle a new strategic plan developed over the course of 2020, which focuses on building an active and engaged community of arts advocates, arts attendees and creative product buyers, and arts supporters; mobilizing the power of the arts to defeat loneliness in our community; and building robust programming that will ensure the sustainability of arts businesses across the Monadnock region.
“It’s been a year of change and challenge for the world, our country, our region, and the arts,” says Arts Alive! Executive Director Jessica Gelter. “I’m so invigorated by the passion of our board members - new and old - to serve and celebrate our region’s arts businesses and collective creative spirit.”
Current board members include board treasurer CPA Kathy Hodgkins; Musician, artist, and board vice chair Jim Murphy; community mobilizer and board secretary, Pelagia Vincent; Development Director for the Cheshire County HIstorical Society and President of Monadnock Travel Council, Rick Swanson; and chair of the board, Development Professional Eric Owen Russell.