Greene Building: A conference looks at Greene County’s future in the arts
When the Nathanael Greene Historical Foundation holds its third-annual Creative Communities Conference in the tiny borough of Greensboro, PA this Friday, it may seem like a bold vision of the future - a community in which artists and craftsmen create and trade their works in small, neighborly settings, removed from any bustling town.
After all, when one thinks of Greene and Fayette counties, it’s not ‘the arts’ that first spring to mind - not in a region known more for the coal and steel than paint and canvas. But in Ralph Jannini’s mind, the way forward for these small riverside communities isn’t so much a radical departure from the present, as a return to the way things were in the past.
“Greensboro’s always been a very arts-centric town,” says Jannini, vice president of the Nat Greene Foundation, as it’s locally known. “Glassware, and then pottery, were the trades here [from the 18th century] until mining took over completely - the last potter in Greensboro was in 1920.”
Jannini himself acts as a good example of what could be Greene County’s future: He comes to Greensboro from Boston, via Pittsburgh, and operates his business - creating unique, hand-crafted statuary for awards ceremonies - from his new home where, “the only noise is the occasional barking dog.”
“All of my work is e-commissioned - I can live anywhere,” says Jannini. “Why not move to an area where I have an improved quality of life?” It’s a lesson he hopes the annual Creative Communities Conference, and its new monthly Second Saturdays series funded by a Community Connections Grassroots grant, can model for Greensboro and other Southwestern PA locations.
“We’re acting as a model [of what] any rural community has in leveraging its natural assets and lower cost of living,” says Jannini. “This is what you have available to you, this is how you can leverage it.”
This year’s conference will provide an interesting array of success stories and advisors experienced with just such a perspective. John Fetterman, the mayor of Braddock, PA, has gained national recognition of his efforts to create a ‘community that focuses on the arts’ (the topic of his discussion at the Conference). Peter Lambert, operator of Millvale-based Red Star Ironworks, was awarded the U.S. Small Business Association’s title of Western PA Entrepreneur of the Year. And the presence of PA State Rep., and Majority Leader, H. William DeWeese, will help produce something Jannini thinks is vital to the progress of building arts-focused communities: confidence in the project’s momentum.
“[Artists] are acquiring buildings and starting businesses,” in Greensboro, Waynesburg, and other Greene and Fayette locations, “because of Nat Greene Foundation’s presence - they feel like it’s building to something. What we’re doing is stimulating ideas and growth by communities outside of us. And that’s the grassroots that [Community Connections] is helping to produce - the idea that there’s more to our livelihood than coal and gas.”
Nathanael Greene Historical Foundation’s Creative Communities Conference Monthly Seminars is a Greene County Grassroots Project supported by a $5,000 grant from Pittsburgh 250 Community Connections and The Sprout Fund.
