Dear friends and neighbors of the Civic,

 

It’s official: we’ve moved into our New Home at 39 South Main Street! After months of planning, hosting workdays, and brewing several dozen pots of coffee, we're delighted to share that our new headquarters are as wonderful as we dreamed they would be—thanks in large part to tremendous community support of our New Home Fundraiser.

 

On December 10, we celebrated the start of this new chapter with a grand opening attended by more than 100 of our neighbors in Hardwick and surrounding towns. We dished up 192 servings of lasagna to the sound of a local music variety show, auctioned off 18 pies made by expert bakers in our community, and warmed the living room right up on a snowy and blustery evening. Since then, we’ve hosted more Wednesday suppers, Craft Collective gatherings, community meetings, open hours, baking sessions, old-time junkets, and our first movie night.

 

With the year ahead of us, we’re excited to discover what else is possible in our new space, while addressing the ever-present needs for efficiency, comfort, and accessibility. We’ll schedule workdays for the projects and tasks still in progress—painting the second floor hallway and organizing boxes full of Civic essentials like show props and vintage tea cups. Weekly programs will continue running, as will epic events like Hardwick State, live music performances and town-wide dances, free arts programming for all ages, new original Civic theater, and yet unplanned surprises that lie ahead.

 

As of today, we have raised just over $319,000 toward the $400,000 goal we set for our New Home Fund last September. We are actively seeking donations to the fund until Valentine’s Day. These contributions will go directly toward mortgage payments and allow us to make small improvements on the building. In the months ahead, we hope to install a heat pump on the third floor (which will serve as a workshop, studio, and classroom space year-round), enhance our kitchen for the production of community meals, and establish a café and youth-centered hub on the second floor. Further down the line, we hope to install an ADA-accessible bathroom and commercial kitchen on the building’s ground floor. 

 

In this home stretch, we invite everyone to step in where they can—whether by making a donation of any size to the New Home Fund, participating in a workday, purchasing something off of our wishlist, or volunteering at any of the events we host each month. 

 

We are grateful to the many people who have helped us make it this far. Here’s to another year of discovering what we can build together. 

 

Appreciatively,
All of us at the Civic