What’s Out There Weekend coming to The Berkshires

LENOX – The Berkshires will soon have its outdoor spaces and gardens be the focus of a national effort to bring more attention to landscapes.

The weekend, known as What’s Out There Weekend, is set to take place Sept. 21-22 and will feature free, expert-led tours at more than two-dozen locations around the county.

Hosted in different cities every year, What’s Out There Weekend hopes to bring to light the unique landscape legacy and local character of each city, defined by its publicly accessible parks, gardens, plazas, cemeteries, memorials, and neighborhoods.

The Berkshires version will be the first to take place in a non-urban environment.

The past events have been in Washington D.C., New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia and Los Angeles.

“Our goal is to get people to see landscape different,” said Courtney Spearman of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, which is planning the weekend.

The tours offer people opportunities to learn about landscape architecture and the design and cultural history of places they may pass every day but don’t necessarily know about.

During a recent meeting with the Lenox Events Committee, Ms. Spearman explained the marketing for the event will spread nationally through the foundation’s 15,000 member e-newsletter and other advertising.

To support the event, the committee granted them $5,000 in seed money to help offset the cost of printing from brochures and a book that is being produced with pages that focus on each landmark on the tours.

“This is a the kind of event that we should support, it is an incubator for more attention and growth down the road,” said Events Committee Member Bob Romeo.

The event will spread across the whole county from locations like Gould Farm in Monterey to the Freight Yard Historic District in North Adams.

Yet, where there is one event organizers hope to have a few other events very close for the convenience of tourists who come to the weekend.

“You will be getting New Yorkers that don’t drive, and for them, we try to bundle events in one area to give them four to five locations they can see easily in a day,” said Ms. Spearman.

For instance, in Lenox, Ventfort Hall, Elm Court, Tanglewood, The Mount and the Tub Parade will all be featured.

Posted by Kameron Z. Spaulding on July 18, 2013. Filed under Community Events,News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry