Assets of the Valley

Alumni cited the Valley’s natural beauty, quality of life, and plethora of creative professionals like them as assets that the Valley gave them that other locations might not.  Alumni can get feedback from their peers on their work and have a network of like-minded professionals close by.  Business owners cited ease in finding talented professionals close by to help with photo shoots, advertising, editing and writing. 

“The thing about being an artist in Brooklyn is that your rent is really expensive. And you have to have a full-time job.  [Here] I can be a poet and a part-time copy editor and own a house and live with my musician/designer husband who works for himself and have a reasonable existence.  Cost of living and quality of life.” –Lori Shine, Copy Editor at Magazine Publishing Company, MFA in Writing alumna

“For me running this business, there are a lot of writers, a lot of photographers, a lot of illustrators here because they’re attracted to this kind of area so I don’t always have to recruit people from LA or NY in order to find some body good. . . I like the fact that we’re not a suburb of a city, that Northampton and many areas in Western Massachusetts are their own small cities and that we all sort of function together as a vibrant place without having to be dependent on a Boston or New York or another big city to define us.” –Magazine Publishing Executive and MFA in Writing alumna