To commemorate our 50th anniversary in 2024, we produced a series of short films that revisit the Mass Humanities archive. Rural by Choice explores the complex idea of what it means to be “rural” in today’s day and age. It draws connections between a documentary film funded by Mass Humanities, and the Smithsonian’s Museum on Main Street program, which visited Massachusetts in 2022-2023.
Rural by Choice begins with an in-depth look at a 1981 film by documentarian Lawrence Hott. The Old Quabbin Valley, which was funded by Mass Humanities, highlights the tensions between urban and rural communities in Massachusetts, specifically through the environmental touchstone of the Quabbin Reservoir. As Hott explains, film can be a vehicle for public discussion, and The Old Quabbin Valley examines the fraught relationship between urban and rural communities over water rights in the commonwealth.
The second half of Rural by Choice explores how the Essex Shipbuilding Museum developed programming about rural identity as part of its Musuem on Main Street exhibition in 2022-2023. KD Montgomery, the museum’s executive director, offers insight into how Essex is a “rural hold out” in the Cape Ann region, and how residents are incredibly proud of their traditions and ways of life, despite being surrounded by industry and development on all sides.