Traverse City Dance Project dancers on stage (photo by Gary Howe)
A Skill Swap with Seth Bernard and Sam Cooper.
CENTERING COMMUNITY Crosshatch Center for Art & Ecology looks back over 17 years
By Lynda Wheatley The mission that drove Amanda and Brad Kik to co-found the Institute of Sustainable Living, Art & Natural Design (ISLAND) in 2005—to build strong communities through the intersections of art, farming, ecology, and economy—might bring to mind that old kindergarten challenge: “One of these things is not like the other.” Farming, ecology, and the economy intersecting, sure. But the arts? Intertwining with ecology? And farming? Does that mean documenting history through song? Growing mushrooms for entertainment? Hosting a dance performance on a farm? Actually, yes. And so much more. In simple terms, ISLAND—which is now Crosshatch Center for Art & Ecology—is a Bellaire-based nonprofit that provides a multitude of resources like workshops, conferences, events, and even good old-fashioned agricultural guilds so communities around northwest Lower Michigan can become stronger, more selfreliant, and more native to place. Amanda Kik explains the logic: “Strong communities are based on a strong culture, and culture is really built through food, agriculture, and the arts. So, our work is to focus on those people who are building the culture through food, farming, ecology, and art. And that’s going to uplift any community that it touches.” A Helping Hand Last month, the nonprofit got a lift of its own: The USDA and partners awarded Crosshatch $50,000 to launch a Carbon Farming Planning Cohorts program. An on-the-ground peer-to-peer program designed to advance climate-smart farming— think: practices that reduce emissions and sequester carbon dioxide—Crosshatch’s carbon cohort will start with a small group of farmers, maybe six to eight, says Amanda. They’ll visit and assess each other’s farms
and, based on the education and bestpractices they and Crosshatch share, make suggestions to improve the particular situation at each farm, such as reducing machine use or sequestering carbon through tree plantings or regenerative soil practices. At the end of the program, each farmer will have a plan tailored to their farm and receive funding to help them implement it. The pilot carbon cohort is slated to start this fall, and Crosshatch will host another this spring. Nevertheless, they have already applied for additional funding to keep the not-yet-started program going next year. “We just applied for a really big USDA grant,” Amanda says. “There’s a big new one that’s focused on climate-smart practices. And if we get that, then we’ll really be able to blow up [the carbon cohort] program, so— fingers crossed.” Grassroots No doubt luck has played a role in the longevity, reach, and impact of Crosshatch, which spearheads 13 major projects, including microloans, renewable energy grants, equipment sharing, and the Chicken Coupe, a portable, MDA-certified chicken processing trailer. But it seems more likely that the nonprofit’s success stems mostly from the Kiks’ approach to the overall endeavor: planting many small seeds of change and nurturing them with years of hard work and a big ambitious vision for the future. It’s been that way since the pair, newly dating after meeting Up North, dreamt up Crosshatch’s precursor, ISLAND, over martinis. Amanda, raised in suburban Detroit and just out of art school in California, wanted to start an artist residency program. Brad, a Michigan State University graduate fresh from doing conservation work in New Zealand, wanted to start a nonprofit devoted to ecology and permaculture. “We said, well, why don’t we do all of that together? So the year we started ISLAND was the same year we got married,” she says.
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One outgrowth of Crosshatch’s work with Grow Benzie has been the offering of workshops in mushroom cultivation and beekeeping (an image from a 2018 workshop in Benzonia shown here), but Josh Stoltz, executive director of Grow Benzie, says the biggest impact Crosshatch has had on the Benzie nonprofit hasn’t been only their collaboration on educational endeavors, but Crosshatch’s approach to guilds. “The big thing we copied from them, with their blessing, is their guild models. It inspired us to pursue being a backbone organization so that these clubs don’t need to formalize and become their own nonprofits.” Thanks to the Crosshatch model, Grow Benzie has a bee guild, a soil guild, a seed guild, a fermentation guild, and now an art guild—and all are thriving.
They didn’t mind that their big vision met with modest means. “Our first fundraising letter went to the mailing list that we used for our wedding invitations,” Amanda adds. “And I loved that it was just family and friends—like, here’s what we’re doing, please support us.” What they were doing was (and continues to be) a multitude. While working other full-time jobs, the couple began organizing ISLAND workshops. They first brought to northern Michigan Dave Jacke, co-author of the groundbreaking 2005 two-volume tome Edible Forest Gardens. In 2006, they partnered with other local organizations for more workshops (e.g., how to keep bees, care for goats, build a brick oven, grow shiitake mushrooms, graft fruit
trees) and launched their annual Skill Swap, which brought communities together so neighbors could teach and learn hands-on skills like how to can tomatoes, identify wild herbs, repair small engines, and write songs for social liberation. And they began betatesting their own artist residency program at the Hill House in Mancelona in 2010. Turning Point(s) In 2013, a major change: ISLAND received a $100,000 grant from the USDA Risk Management Agency. “We were able to do 30 workshops that year, maybe 60—a huge expansion in programming,” Kik says. “And then we also were working with North Central
