Opera Vermont’s Artistic Director receives national honor
Brandon’s own Joshua Collier, founder and Artistic Director of Opera Vermont, has been selected as a 2026 Creative Community Fellow by National Arts Strategies (NAS) as part of Creative Community Fellows: New England.
“Opera Vermont strives to make opera welcoming, accessible and deeply connected to community life across our beautiful state,” Collier said. “I’m elated to be recognized by National Arts Strategies for the work that we have been doing at Opera Vermont, and I am delighted to join this cohort of exceptional cultural leader peers who are doing bold, people-centered, important work across New England. I’m beyond grateful to NAS for this opportunity and look forward to bringing new tools, relationships, and even more invigoration to my work at Opera Vermont.”
Read more at The Addison Independent (Subscription required).
Rutland High School's Soup Bowls for Hunger feed the community
Every year hundreds of people turn out for the event, and art teacher Beth McReynolds said, “Without the bowls that (they’re) decorating, we wouldn’t have soup, and I think that’s one of the main draws for people buying tickets, (the students’) role is really important.”
McReynolds is one of the members of Delta Kappa Gamma, an organization that supports women educators and a big sponsor for the event. DKG has been around since 1929, and by 2004, it had grown to almost 3,000 chapters and over 100,000 members. By 2019, it had chapters in 17 countries.
This is the 20th year of DKG’s sponsorship of the soup bowl project, and this year the Paramount Theatre also joined as a sponsor, hosting a free movie night at the theater this Saturday at 4 p.m. with the film “Wicked: For Good.” The film is by donation, and 100% of the proceeds go to Soup Bowls for Hunger, which puts the money back into our area food shelves to help people experiencing food insecurity.
Read this at The Rutland Herald.
Lawmakers want to strengthen data privacy protections by giving Vermonters ‘the right to say no’
Bradford Rep. Monique Priestley said residents have become unwitting participants in a global data industry that generates hundreds of billions of dollars annually from the sale of phone numbers, location histories, political affiliations, health conditions, biometric data and other information.
Priestley said the legislation, modeled after a 2023 California law, provides a level of consumer agency that existing state and federal laws do not.
“It gives Vermonters something they don’t have today — the right to say ‘no’ — to request the deletion of personal information, to interrupt the sale of their personal information,” said Priestley, a Democrat.
Read about this here.