BRATTLEBORO-It's a win-win.
While Brattleboro has a chance to revel on a healthy Flat Street abuzz with lots of activities and entertainment, dozens of young people have a chance to be in the limelight as artists, planners, and musicians.
On Saturday, Sept. 20, from 5 to 9 p.m., the Preston Lot - the parking lot across from the Transportation Center on Flat Street - morphs into Teen Street, an event for area teens.
The collaboration involving Downtown Brattleboro Alliance (DBA), the Boys & Girls Club of Brattleboro (BGCB), New England Youth Theatre (NEYT), The Latchis Hotel & Theatre, and the town, Teen Street offers live music by young musicians, a youth-organized and stocked art market, a few games, and an inflatable boxing ring, while Kona Ice, Thai Hut, Mama T's Sweet Spot, and Sunshine Lemonade Company sell their fare. (Vouchers will be offered to teens for whom food prices are prohibitive.)
According to DBA Creative Director Erin Scaggs, Teen Street is reflective of a broader intention to start doing more programming on Flat Street. It sprang, she explains, from a perceived need to reimagine the street.
"Over time, Flat Street has acquired a negative narrative and connotation. Some of it earned, some of it not," she observes. "And for those reasons, a lot of folks have stopped going there."
Noting it's "an important project for me personally," she adds that "with energy, people, organizations, and ideals, I feel everything is kind of coming together to really revamp, rebrand, and reimagine that space."
Teen Street figures into that. Conceived as a series of quarterly events, the first was in July; the next is Saturday; another will be at the Boys & Girls Club in January; and another takes place outside in the spring.
By teens, for teens
With Gallery Walk and First Friday - two mostly-overlapping monthly seasonal Brattleboro community events - as a model, Teen Street aims to draw in "as many other organizations and groups as we can to kind of diversify the programming, gain the widest reach, and get a lot of buy-in from the community," Scaggs says.
"I think Flat Street has potential to be kind of the gold standard youth corridor in town," she adds, given the number of institutions - NEYT, BGC, River Gallery School, among them - that offer programs for young people.
"There's been some conversation about youth in Brattleboro and the concept of youth being able to see that this town is for them," Scaggs says. "The driving intention behind this project is really to show them that, yes, there is a place for them here, that they can be part of creating the identity of that space, that it can be what they want it to be."
Scaggs observes that especially since the pandemic, when gathering was discouraged, teens need a sense of belonging. Perhaps they're "still regrouping from that isolation," she says. "The ability for them to gather in public spaces, to connect and feel belonging is incredibly important."
Scaggs, whose work life is split between DBA and Stone Church, where she does "a little bit of everything," says "this whole foray into youth programming has been a really interesting learning experience for me," noting the benefits of having partners from youth-centered organizations.
The July Teen Street, she says, was a success, she says, "but I walked away knowing that the biggest area for improvement would be looping youth into the planning part. They turned out, they came to the event, and they loved it, but they didn't have a ton to do with the organizing.
"So this go-around, we came up with a plan to identify youth who'd be interested in organizing a specific chunk," Scaggs notes.
The art market, for instance, is headed by high school students who have juried entries and will run the market.
Once again, "It should be what teens want it to be," Scaggs says.
Another group oversees and conceptualizes the sports section, "because it's not all about art and music," she points out.
Intentionally bringing young people into Teen Street planning "has required pumping the brakes a tiny bit and taking the time to let them in and let them feel some ownership," Scaggs adds.
At this point, Teen Street will be concentrated on Flat Street. "Our decision was to start small with Preston Lot and let it unfold organically over time and see where we land," she says.
The DBA produces the event "on a shoestring budget" and "we just pounded some pavement to find sponsors for the first event. And some of that will carry us through this event."
Given its nature and targeted participation, she adds, "I think that it's an extremely fundable program. I think it speaks [...] to programming for a community group that needs it more than most, which is youth."
With gratitude for the event sponsors and volunteers, she regrets that they haven't yet had the time needed to apply for grant funding.
BrattRock takes it outside
Key to the evening will be BrattRock, an initiative of Interaction: Youth Services and Restorative Justice, which offers two concerts annually, usually at The Stone Church, featuring young musicians from the area and beyond.
Eight bands comprised of teen musicians will take the stage: The Jackets, Half Giraffe, Sonic Space, The Cheese Priests, Eva Isabella, Judge Judy & Executioner, Silas Will, and the Emily Margaret Band, which will perform at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center Gala that same night.
Interaction Executive Director Russell Bradbury-Carlin explains that BrattRock started nearly 10 years ago as a battle-of-the-bands type event, a fundraiser that coincided with the Strolling of the Heifers parade and associated programming.
Middle- and high-school bands would audition, the chosen would perform, and a panel of three judges and community members would select winners of cash prizes and recording studio time donated by Guilford Sound.
In time and with the influence and work of Jamie Scanlon, mother of Rei Kimura of the youth band Moxie, the event's competitive nature ebbed, and BrattRock emerged as a festival for young bands.
It became a time for the bands to perform and also a time for the young musicians to build community - "to bring them together," Bradbury-Carlin explains, "so they can see their peers and maybe get support for each other. Or maybe a solo performer could connect and become a part of a band."
The first was in 2017, Bradbury-Carlin recalls. Then Covid hit and paused BrattRock, which has since re-emerged for bands that have done some performing before, "giving them the opportunity to perform in a professional setting."
BrattRock leadership supports and guides participants, "but we also have expectations," he says.
"It made complete sense for us to collaborate" on Teen Street, adds Bradbury-Carlin, whose agency works closely with BGCB. "And I really liked the idea of what Teen Street has become."
While Brattleboro area bands are given priority, he says, BrattRock has presented bands from the Northampton/Greenfield area and other regions of western Massachusetts, as well as northern Vermont, New Hampshire, and even Boston, says Bradbury-Carlin, who points to the culture of music in the area as a fomenting force for BrattRock and Teen Street.
'A particularly nurturing area to grow as a young musician'
Among the performers Saturday will be the Emily Margaret Band.
Emily Margaret Matthew-Muller, of Guilford, a 2025 graduate of Brattleboro Union High School, now studies writing, literature, and publishing at Emerson College.
"My love for writing and language extends far beyond music and into literature and the analysis of literature," she says. "I will also be taking music classes at Berklee [College of Music], continuing to play shows, write songs, and grow my music career. I absolutely love music and am willing to follow it where it takes me."
The band - Matthew-Muller on guitar and vocals, Adam Acker on keys, Lewis Wells on bass, and Lucas Majer on drums - does both covers and original music "somewhere between the funk and pop genre though, as an individual artist, I'm still finding my 'genre' in the music world as I'm still growing into my artistic identity," Matthew-Muller explains.
"When it comes to the future of the band, we're just going to continue doing what we love, making and performing as much music as we can," she adds.
She calls Brattleboro "a particularly nurturing area to grow as a young musician."
"I feel so incredibly lucky to call such an artistic, supportive area my home," Matthew-Muller says. "It's the opportunity to play live at such wonderful events as BrattRock that inspires musicians like me to grow from inspired kids into well rounded, passionate musicians."
She credits Dave Snyder and Matt Hall at Guilford Sound, who "were generous enough to help us record our first EP" and "a multitude of local venues and music events [that] want to give young people the opportunity to share their art. It's a very special place."
The music Saturday will be emceed by a group of young people coordinated by NEYT's outreach and education director, Shannon Ward. The production will be overseen by Stone Church Tech Director Dan Richardson with support by Stone Church GRRRLS 2 the Front production graduates.
"Music is a mode of expression - artistic expression, that young people can access," says Bradbury-Carlin "It's theirs. [...] They might not go to movies, they might not watch TV shows, but they have musical interests […]. It's part of their identity."
Admission is free to Teen Street and BrattRock on Sept. 20 at the Preston Lot off Flat Street. For more information, visit brattleboro.com.
This Arts item by Annie Landenberger was written for The Commons.