Featuring poetry by a Berkshire County public school students and designs by Pittsfield High School students, each 11” X 17” broadside poster is printed with Xerox or Risograph on locally-made hemp, bamboo, or cotton paper.

The broadsides were developed as part of the Masthead Needed Arts & Literacy Fellowship, a collaboration between The Mastheads and the children’s publishing press Citation Needed that provides Pittsfield High School ESL students with multimedia arts-sector experience, including instruction in visual art, poetry, songwriting, bookmaking, graphic design, and sales.  

For each broadside, pairs of high school fellows from Marina Coppola’s and Chloe Mascitelli’s ESL classes read dozens of poems written by local elementary school students. Each pair selected a poem and explored the work through different media, including zines, drawing, and printmaking in the PRESS Room at MCLA. Finally, in a series of design and collage workshops, students developed a coherent broadside representation of the work.

Funding for The Masthead Needed Arts & Literacy Fellowship comes from the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, the Blackwing Foundation, and the Feigenbaum Foundation.