Grant from Community Arts Partnership to help fund programs at library

The Newfield Public Library (NPL) will be busy this spring and summer, thanks to a grant from the Community Arts Partnership (CAP).

Last month, CAP announced that it had awarded $3,200 to fund NPL’s programing series Stories Unite Us.

This program is made possible in full with funds from the Statewide Community Regrants program from the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of the office of the Governor and NYS Legislature, and from Tompkins County, administered by the Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County.

The program began on March 16, when local storyteller Vanessa Johnson hosted “Women Change The World!” NPL will continue to bring in storytellers of different mediums and backgrounds throughout the spring and summer.

“The idea is that hearing different people’s stories through different methods like the spoken word, music or puppets, dance or understanding history helps us build empathy as individuals,” said NPL Executive Director Sue Chaffee.

The series also consists of multiple puppet shows, including a performance by Dusty and Dot on May 16 and another by Lily Gershon on July 28. A storyteller from the Onondaga Nation will be at the library on July 11. 

Chaffee said she is particularly excited about Gershon’s performance, which will take place during Newfield’s Old Home Days, located on the grounds of the school on Main Street.

“We can leverage [Old Home Days] and get as many people to come as possible,” she said.

Living historian Ken Serfass will close out the series on August 18 with a performance and will return for a reading of “The Polar Express” in December.

Chaffee said that the goal of the series is to show that stories come in different mediums. When deciding whom to invite, library staff wanted storytellers who use different styles to show that no matter how they’re told, stories can unite people.

“There were a couple of performers who we were really interested in bringing here. One of them was Vanessa Johnson, when we looked at the storytelling she does, and in the past we’ve had living historian Ken Serfass here and our community really enjoys his history. And he’s unique because he tells his stories in the first person, and that’s what Vanessa Johnson does on a different subject,” she said. “We also wanted to bring a few different puppet events here. After thinking about it and looking at the list of different performers, we were able to tie it all together. The fact that stories can be tools using many different methods, we came up with the name.”

The CAP grant will cover the professional costs of the performers, while the library will provide the space and refreshments.

This isn’t the first time NPL has worked with CAP, and Chaffee said they have always been good partners.

“We’re familiar with the process. Their grant application is really straightforward, and the whole objective is to get arts into our community. So, folks that don’t normally have an opportunity to attend these events due to cost and maybe transportation [can attend],” she said. “We bring those events here, and they’re free to the community.”

She said she especially appreciates CAP’s generosity this year because this grant was more ambitious than those NPL has applied for in the past.

“We rely on Community Arts Partnership’s grant cycle every year to pay for some programming,” Chaffee said. “Generally, we apply for three different programs throughout the year, but this year they were able to be more generous with their funding, so we decided to expand our request.”

Chaffee is hoping that the free programming can help build a community’s empathy through storytelling, showing that people who don’t look the same or tell stories in the same way still have plenty in common.

To reinforce that idea, she said the library’s summer reading series’ theme will be All Together Now and will tie to Stories Unite Us.

“We tied that to the idea that in order for us to be all together, we need to have empathy and really understand other cultures,” she said. “By learning other people’s stories and understanding the history of events, we find out that we’re not as different as some people might think we are, which builds empathy.”

The library is located at 198 Main St. and is open Monday from 2 to 5 p.m.; Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.; Friday from 2 to 5 p.m.; and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

NPL can be reached by phone at 607-564-3594.

Newfield Notes appears every week in Tompkins Weekly. Send story ideas to editorial@vizellmedia.com or geoffpreston8@gmail.com

In brief:

April events at the library

NPL has announced two more events to add to the calendar in April. On April 20, NPL will sponsor an event at Newfield Elementary School called Family Science Night.

The event, hosted by Sciencenter, will feature hands-on activities and pop-up exhibits, as well as a chance to win a year-long membership to the Sciencenter. NES is located at 247 Main St., and the event starts at 6:30 p.m.

On April 28 at NPL, narrator Martin Clark will share “Route 66: Mother Road,” starting at 6:30 p.m. Clark, who has traveled the road many times, will provide a brief history of the famous American highway with sights to see, places to stay and eat and activities to enjoy along the road.