Join us on September 21st from 5:30-8:30 PM for the CONNECT event, held outdoors in the beautiful New England fall weather at the Wyman Tavern Yard off of Main Street in Keene, NH.
Guests will enjoy culinary creations by CC & D’s Kitchen Market, a fashion show, and live music by the bluegrass band Poor Monroe.
This year’s theme is:
FARM, FOOD, and FASHION: Taking our Place in the Circle.
Farms create community, sustain livelihoods, and provide food & fiber – nourishing our souls as well as our tummies. When carried out conscientiously, this Food and Fashion bounty can be returned to the soil to nourish the earth in a reciprocal relationship, a concept known as Circular Economy.
This year at our annual CONNECT event, hundreds of attendees have the opportunity to see “what’s next”, as we celebrate the land with delicious local foods and a Fashion Show featuring farm-to-closet and sustainable fashions.
Come and immerse yourself in our very own Circular Economy. See what is working and what gaps we have in our ecosystem, as you eat, drink, and CONNECT with other innovative thinkers from across the country.
Those who have registered for the summit already have this included in their ticket price.
Those from the community who would like to join just for CONNECT can purchase separate tickets.
CONNECT Tickets
Meet the Fibershed Team.
Laura Jacoby & Cyrus Brooks, Muriel’s
Muriel’s crafts quality knits with New England wool & other responsibly sourced fibers right here in Vermont. By growing a market for local wool we’re supporting our neighbors who sequester carbon by intentionally managing their farmland.
Mary Ewell, Locally Dressed
Locally Dressed seeks to encourage local fashion sustainability and
the associated economic benefits by raising up the conversation around clothing. Locally Dressed educates readers about the environmental and economic regional benefits of investing in locally created clothing and fiber industries.
Aleksandra (Sasha) Azbel, Sashoonya
Aleksandra (Sasha) Azbel, is the founder and creative director of Sashoonya.
Sashoonya is a textile art and design company that creates sustainable textile products
using local materials and dyes derived from our natural surroundings in New England. By growing our own dye gardens, recovering and sustaining the disappearing traditions and knowledge of natural colors, and actively operating and advocating within our local farm-to-fiber+fashion community we generate gratifying, sustainable processes and products for ecosystems and people. Our belief is that our identities are interlinked with our natural world, and that textiles are an important mechanism for communicating and nurturing this connection.
Laura Sullivan, Pipe Dream Hempworks
Laura Sullivan is a fiber artist and farmer working intimately with Hemp Fiber on UVM’s Borderview Research Farm in Alburgh Vermont. With a goal of reviving local fibersheds in the northeast, Laura is deeply interested in disrupting the havoc wrought by a globalized fast fashion industrial complex. The research she is currently embarking on will help guide farmers through the motions of growing textile-grade hemp in the Northeast with the intention of creating a closed loop textile market where farmers are paid a premium for their raw materials grown with environmental integrity. In short, her message is “Clothing is Agriculture,” and her modest line of wares at Pipe Dream Hempworks reflects that through a composition of natural and place-based materials and dyes.
Urban Exchange
Urban Exchange is a brand name and designer resale & consignment shop providing a unique service for new and used quality clothing and accessories. We are composed of a vibrant team of individuals who have a love for fashion. We strive to provide each person with an exclusive and distinguished shopping and consigning experience.
Bobolink Yarns – Katie Sullivan emcee
Bobolink Yarns wants to create bridges across fiber divides. Locally, there are shepherds with small fiber flocks who focus on yarn, and shepherds with large flocks focused on meat and other sheep products. Both have their unique hurdles to selling their fiber. Katie aims to reduce those barriers while supplying unique, small-batch yarns from local flocks that highlight our regional wool heritage to local yarn shops and online sales. Bobolink Yarns provides locally sourced and spun breed specific yarn to support and warm our community.
Slow Process
Slow Process is an independent, one-person clothing label established in 2018 building beautiful & soft garments for a modern masculinity. Historical narrative & the integrity of craft inform our clothing, making a product that is personal & enduring. We sew in small batches. We trust in antique textiles. Our wearer revives their relationship between garment, identity, & utility.
Lea Rossignol
Lea Rossignol is one of the co-founders of the Northern New England Fibershed. After going through her own journey in understanding where her clothes came from, she became interested in the Fibershed movement and is pleased to be a part of this great organization.
Nichole Bainer
Sustainability through conscious consumerism, style services, holistic events, nourishing recipes and helping you navigate life connected to spirit.
Meet CC&D’s Kitchen Market.
Meet Poor Monroe.
Formed at the start of 2021, Poor Monroe is a New England-based bluegrass collaboration of long-time friends with nearly a century’s worth of performing experience (cumulatively speaking).
Drawing from distinct musical paths, this energetic group of seasoned players bring a unique approach to their performances, delivering unmistakably tight vocal harmonies and scorching tempos that are the benchmark of the genre.
Performing original and traditional material with a deep sense of honoring the legacy of bluegrass music while also forging their own unique voice, this group of fiscally-bereft individuals shows how the love of music and a good sense of humor can transcend trying times.
History.
Hannah Grimes Center and the Keene Sentinel came together in 2016 and 2017 to stage CONNECT, an event initiated by Hannah Grimes in 2007 to connect graduates of one of its business programs and grew to include graduates and participants in HG programming, funders, board members, and the local business and community.
The new approach and concept of CONNECT, to showcase the innovation and entrepreneurship in the Monadnock Region, drew crowds of 400 to network in a fusion of art, food and music. This success suggested something bigger was possible: A small town summit at which experts in the arts, downtowns, entrepreneurship, land use, clean energy, healthcare and journalism could gather and share thoughts on sustainable, thriving rural communities. Radically Rural was born with an emphasis, as its name suggests, on inventive, contemporary approaches that attendees could absorb and take home. Radically Rural has kept CONNECT as a key part of the event to this day.
CONNECT is taking place at Wyman Tavern Yard. Read more about the historic site in atHome Magazine.
Sponsored by:
