Clark Art Presents Final Djs at Sunset

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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — On Sept. 18, the Clark Art Institute presents a free performance by Haitian electronic music composer, percussionist, and turntablist Val-Inc as part of its DJs at Sunset series. 
 
This event takes place at 6 pm on the Fernández Terrace.
 
According to a press release:
 
The DJs at Sunset series is presented in celebration of the exhibition, Kathia St. Hilaire: Invisible Empires. Kathia St. Hilaire (b. 1995, West Palm Beach, Florida; lives and works in New York), whose parents immigrated to the United States from Haiti, tells stories of the island nation’s history and the long shadows it casts, from French colonialism to independence, from U.S. occupation to the diasporic communities in which she was raised. The exhibition is on view through September 22 in the Lunder Center at Stone Hill.
 
Val Jeanty, also known as Val-Inc, is a descendent of composer and pianist Occide Jeanty and Vodou priestess GranMe Shoun. She incorporates African Haitian musical traditions and acoustics with post-modern electronics to evoke her dreamlike realm of Afro-Electronica, also called Vodou-Electro
 
Free. Bring a picnic and a blanket. For accessibility questions, call 413 458 0524. Rain moves the performance to the Clark Center lower level.

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Williamstown Planning Board Hears Results of Sidewalk Analysis

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Two-thirds of the town-owned sidewalks got good grades in a recent analysis ordered by the Planning Board.
 
But, overall, the results were more mixed, with many of the town's less affluent neighborhoods being home to some of its more deficient sidewalks or going without sidewalks at all.
 
On Dec. 10, the Planning Board heard a report from Williams College students Ava Simunovic and Oscar Newman, who conducted the study as part of an environmental planning course. The Planning Board, as it often does, served as the client for the research project.
 
The students drove every street in town, assessing the availability and condition of its sidewalks, and consulted with town officials, including the director of the Department of Public Works.
 
"In northern Williamstown … there are not a lot of sidewalks despite there being a relatively dense population, and when there are sidewalks, they tend to be in poor condition — less than 5 feet wide and made out of asphalt," Simunovic told the board. "As we were doing our research, we began to wonder if there was a correlation between lower income neighborhoods and a lack of adequate sidewalk infrastructure.
 
"So we did a bit of digging and found that streets with lower property values on average lack adequate sidewalk infrastructure — notably on North Hoosac, White Oaks and the northern Cole Avenue area. In comparison, streets like Moorland, Southworth and Linden have higher property values and better sidewalk infrastructure."
 
Newman explained that the study included a detailed map of the town's sidewalk network with scores for networks in a given area based on six criteria: surface condition, sidewalk width, accessibility, connectivity (to the rest of the network), safety (including factors like proximity to the road) and surface material.
 
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