BRATTLEBORO-By the time 87 sites had signed on to take part in Brattleboro’s December miniatures displays, Erin Scaggs, creative director of the Downtown Brattleboro Alliance (DBA), declared that the event wasn’t going to be just a stroll.
It’d be a festival. It’d be big.
Indeed, throughout December, it was hard to miss the chatter about it. Some maybe just drove through or took it in in course of daily routine. But for others, it was a destination for visitors from throughout New England and beyond — even Chicago.
Brattleboro’s Festival of Miniatures was the first-ever anywhere, says Melany Kahn, the prime visionary behind the project. And it will probably not be the last.
While Brattleboro’s festival leaders are wrapping up with meetings, a survey, and a look at what’s next, the business community is taking stock. First impressions from several business owners in town indicate the event was a success.
The Commons spoke recently with Kahn and Kate Trzaskos, DBA’s executive director, about the festival.
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Annie Landenberger: What was the impact of the Brattleboro Miniature Festival? Cultural? Economic?
Kate Trzaskos: We are working on our survey to get actual, quantitative data, but I will say for qualitative data that several businesses have expressed that this was their best December on record. That they just felt like their store was full all the time. They remarked on how bustling downtown was, that the streets were full of people. Folks they hadn’t seen in years came back downtown.
A.L.: Tell me about the planned survey of store owners.
Melany Kahn: I actually just wrote the first version of it—it’s all percentages and input for next year. I don’t think there are going to be any huge surprises there. I think it’s just going to support what we already know.
I’ve personally talked to dozens of shopkeepers; [Kate’s] talked to dozens. I can tell you anecdotally stories like [one merchant’s]: first day she had the window open — the first day of the walk — she earned two-thirds of her month’s rent that day, in just one afternoon. And she was a really good sport about staying open.
K.T.: So they committed to being open Friday and Saturday nights until 7, and I think that the free parking on the weekends was another thing that really helped, especially with locals. We removed so many barriers.
And Melany said “we want ambassadors” — so we had people on the street, welcoming people, directing people. It really was like a “rediscover Brattleboro” kind of moment for a lot of people. I think that the two big successes were first getting all of these folks on board.
A.L.: That took doing?
K.T.: In our first meeting, the skepticism was high. And it was amazing just to see how it built, how people got on board, and how the businesses encouraged each other.
So the second success was that the community-building of this project was phenomenal. I think across businesses, but also within businesses, their staff teams, the library team, everybody was saying it was so great to have this project to work on together.
A.L.: It’s impressive that this was the first.
M.K.: Yeah, there are miniature shows, which are very commercial in their presentation. But this was geared toward a general audience. Nobody had to like miniatures in order to enjoy it. Because there was something for everybody, whether you liked trains, taxidermy, bears, or tea parties, or puppets, or a cookie contest, or a museum of tiny things. I mean, there were so many Easter eggs of surprises.
A.L.: Lovely phrasing.
M.K.: And if you didn’t like one window — if it wasn’t your thing to look at stuffed ducks — you’d move to the next and [find] a miniature street scene with 3D cutouts. Everything was so incredibly creative and different. I think that because it was so accessible to every age range, it was free, it was open 24 hours a day, seven days a week for 40 days. I mean, it just hit all the right buttons — kind of by accident.
A.L.: How by accident?
K.T.: Well, with the first run, you don’t know, right? We were doing all this planning, and I think we all had a moment where we were like, Is anyone going to come to our party?
A.L.: Oh boy, those feelings...
K.T.: This was the first. Nobody really had expectations, [and in the end] I think that people were so surprised by the breadth of the program and also by the creativity and the technicality of all those pieces.
A.L.: Tell me about the judges.
K.T.: We had been talking about celebrity judges, saying, “Oh, we need such-and-such big name.” But then bringing in folks from the minis world, it elevated [the event] to this place where we all learned so much about the art and science of miniatures. They took it so seriously. That was great.
M.K.: So I think the questions for next year are: What worked? What didn’t work? What could we do better?
I’m a person who doesn’t want to do the same thing twice, so, for example, we’ll engage the schools, but we’re not going to do the same spirit house thing again. It’s going to be something different. And all the feedback around that has been just amazing — off the charts. [One teacher] said there were all sorts of things that came out of it that were a surprise to her curricularly, that she hadn’t really anticipated.
A.L.: I can imagine the benefits.
M.K.: And that of using the hands, the heart, and getting back to being in touch with the things that we make. Yeah, I think about the window at Shoe Tree, you know, the group of people that got together to do that. That was all donated. That was all their hours, all their time, all their resources. And they just did that for the benefit of that store and with so much heart and so much humor.
A.L.: Was there ever a big pushback?
M.K.: I thought we’d have more but we had exactly none, except in the very beginning.
And I really want to address this: There was a question about whether or not this was somehow glossing over our unhoused problem, or being unsympathetic toward it.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this. And I then had a bunch of different experiences that helped me to understand why it is not that.
And most of those experiences had to do with unhoused people appreciating it. [One homeless person walked into] the Museum of Small Things. “I just love coming in here so much. This reminds me of my childhood,” she said. She’s been spending a lot of time taking in the minis.
To suggest somehow that a person who’s unhoused can’t appreciate this to me shows sort of a lack of sensitivity. They had a childhood and they have nostalgia and they have all the feelings that we all have. So offering them something that’s free, that’s nice to look at, that makes their community a nicer place to be in is actually a loving move.
It’s a way to include everyone and to say, “We know that you have struggles and challenges, and we also know that you have the capacity to appreciate these things.”
K.T.: I think that what the DBA strives to embody is that Brattleboro is everyone’s downtown. And we want to create a place where belonging and welcoming, health and safety are held by everybody. There’s lots of tension in different conversations around that. But I think ultimately everybody wants that in this community.
M.K.: We know there’s a big appetite to do it again. But you do something right, and you don’t want to screw it up. A lot of people came out of the woodwork at the end, like, Please let me know if you do this next year, I’d love to do (fill in the blank).” But everybody on the team agreed in keeping our mission laser focused on miniatures.
The event got coverage on ample social media, in Vermont papers, on Vermont television, in The Boston Globe and in at least two magazines, nationwide through the Associated Press wire service — and even as far as New Zealand.
Annie Landenberger is an arts writer and columnist for The Commons. She also is one half of the musical duo Bard Owl, with partner T. Breeze Verdant.
This Arts item by Annie Landenberger was written for The Commons.