MCLA Students Make North Adams “Better Together”
June 24, 2026
Dylan Schenck '27 used to think of creativity in a simplistic way: you either have it or you don't.
Thanks to MCLA's Managing Creativity course, he has a newfound understanding and appreciation.
“After this course, I understand creativity is a skill you need to improve on every day,” Schenck said. “Creativity is something that can always be worked on, like a muscle.”
That mental shift is exactly what co-instructors Lisa Chamberlain and Dr. Lisa Donovan envisioned when they designed the Arts Management course. The professors taught the class for the second time this past semester, leading to the fruition of a Better Together Block Party designed by students with collaborative support from the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA).
More than 300 students, faculty, and alumni attended the event, along with North Adams community members, which served as a kickoff for FIRST Fridays North Adams and a celebration of local businesses surrounding the MCLA campus.
“We held a great event, but that's not the rationale for what we did,” Chamberlain said. “What the event taught the students, and what they taught themselves, is that it's about the journey, not the destination. A lot of people benefited from the destination, and we accomplished what we set out to do, which is to make the perceived barrier much more permeable between MCLA and MASS MoCA. But it's really about the journey the students took getting there.”
For Matthew Garrity '27, the journey was one he believes will be valuable for years to come.
“My creative work has shifted me to be more organized,” he said. “When I create things, I tend to do them without a plan in sight. In this course I’ve developed the ability to plan out my intentions before I act on them. I’ve developed more of an organized mindset during this course which will help me in any career I find myself in down the road.”
This year's class built upon the work done by students in the previous year's Managing Creativity course. In that class, students developed three different ideas to introduce MCLA students to MASS MoCA and all it has to offer.
With the decision to host a block party set, this year's students were tasked with bringing one of the ideas to life.
The students spearheaded everything about the block party, from the name of the event and how to market it to how students would get there and what they should experience during the afternoon. The goal was to show MCLA students the vibrancy of the museum and give them a greater sense of belonging in and to North Adams.
“Community is not produced on a checklist,” said Patricia Symonds-Powell '27. “It emerges when the conditions are right. Our job was to create those conditions.”
To do that, the students applied frameworks and lessons they learned in class.
Jacob Bluestein '26 said it was interesting learning from Chamberlain and Donovan about creativity, but that the true value of the course was applying that learning outside the classroom.
“What this course was able to provide for me was the experiential education to put what I know into practice,” he said. “We can talk about toolkit practices and our understanding of managing creativity, but I don’t think the habits begin to solidify until we are actually faced with real life challenges.”
Organizing the Better Together Block Party epitomized the value of an arts management degree, according to Donovan. In her eyes, people see the term “arts management” and think the program is about the business of the arts or supporting the arts.
Those ideas, though, are too limiting.
“We're trying to broaden the tent for how people understand what arts management skills can do,” Donovan said. “One of the things that we see in MCLA students is that they're multi-hyphenate — they have a whole variety of interests. We are seeing students get hired right out of college because of the mosaic of their skills that they've been able to put together.”
