Community Calendar

Please join us for a celebration of the 2023 Holyoke Local Cultural Council grant recipients. Learn more about this year's projects and events while celebrating culture and art in the great city of Holyoke. Make connections, enjoy some great food, and help us toast the grantees! Appetizers will be provided, and a cash bar will be available. Fame Lounge/Eatery is fully accessible. Free on-site and street parking is available. Event questions can be sent to holyokeculture@gmail.com

Nationally-known, prize-winning author and former public editor of the New York Times Daniel Okrent will visit us virtually on May 4 at 5:00 PM on the big screen in the Holyoke Public Library Community Room. The author of six books, Okrent has been described by Publishers Weekly as “one of our most interesting and eclectic writers of nonfiction over the past 25 years.” Two of Okrent's books available to borrow from the Library and on Libby.  Informal, drop-in discussions of Last Call and The Guarded Gate take place at the Holyoke Public Library History Room on 4/25 and 5/2, 4:00-6:00 […]

May the Fourth be with you! This month we’re heading back out to a long time ago and far, far away. Emily Rome The Wacky History of Restoration-Era Shakespeare Performance A happy ending for “King Lear,” opera numbers for the “Macbeth” witches, and a mash-up of “Much Ado About Nothing” and “Measure for Measure.” No, these are not new pitches for a Hollywood movie but actual 17th-century adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays. Come learn how political upheaval not long after Shakespeare’s death and the reopening of London theaters in 1660 have defined Shakespeare’s legacy. Emily Rome is an educator and journalist […]

It’s hard to think of an artist in traditional Irish music more influential than Seamus Egan. From his beginnings as a teen prodigy, to his founding of Irish-American powerhouse band Solas in 1996, to his current work as one of the leading composers and interpreters of the tradition, Egan has inspired multiple generations of musicians and helped define the sound of Irish music today. In 2018, with Solas on hiatus, Egan began touring as a solo performer, bringing along friends and musical guests, and making music as Seamus Egan Project that points towards the origins of Solas in the 1990s. In […]

For adults and teens. Migrant birds are now returning from various regions in the south. Join the park interpreter to search for birds in canals, trees, ground cover and riverside. Learn of the amazing distances they travel, difficulties they face, and how climate change is affecting them. Be ready to walk around Holyoke Heritage State Park and up to Pulaski Park. Bring binoculars. A few sets are available to borrow. A spotting scope is available for participants’ use. Program is free. Meet at the Holyoke Heritage State Park Visitor Center. Dress for the weather. Severe weather cancels. Call for more […]

Arts & Crafts fair featuring 8 additional vendors at the ARTery. Perfect chance to buy 'Gifts for mothers and others'.

Maple Street Walking Tour will walk from the circle near Mater Dolorosa to 10 blocks up Maple Street.  Learn about parks, churches, buildings, schools, and other institutions along the way. meet at the Maple Street circle at the northern end of the street

Spafford are known for their astonishing improvisational ability and off-the-cuff extended jams, Spafford paints a picture in real-time each night with a musical palette known only to each other. It’s a private language comprised of both their talent as musicians as well as their formidable catalog of influences, spanning 90’s alt-rock radio hits to Steely Dan and The Crystal Method. Each Spafford show is a sonic pilgrimage, the journey of a team of musicians so in tune with each other that a single note communicates intent and purpose. Spafford is amongst the most creative and hard-traveling bands on the contemporary […]