State Sen. Paul Mark speaks as the Berkshire Innovation Center officially opens its first satellite campus, BIC Works @Mass MoCA Friday. The Pittsfield-based innovation center officially opened its first satellite campus, BIC Works @Mass MoCA, on Friday with an on-site grand opening and ribbon cutting ceremony at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.
NORTH ADAMS — The Berkshire Innovation Center is now open for business in the Northern Berkshires.
The Pittsfield-based innovation center officially opened its first satellite campus, BIC Works @Mass MoCA, on Friday with an on-site grand opening and ribbon cutting ceremony at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.
The entrance to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams. The Berkshire Innovation Center opened BIC Works @Mass MoCA, its first location outside of Pittsfield, at the museum on Friday.
Located in a former art gallery adjacent to Bright Ideas Brewing, BIC Works @Mass MoCA is designed to be an experiential learning center that will help develop the county’s talent pipeline through kindergarten through 12th grade STEM programming. The facility will also be used to promote collaborative learning opportunities, provide professional development, and serve as a platform for exploration of innovation through hands-on learning.
Meeting space is also available for the BIC’s more than 30 industry and 15 academic partners to use.
Ben Sosne, the executive director of the Berkshire Innovation Center, stands in the BIC’s main facility in Pittsfield. He referred to Friday’s opening of BIC Works @Mass MoCA, the innovation center’s new facility in North Adams, as an opportunity to give students and organizations in Northern Berkshire easier access to the programs that the BIC offers.
“BIC Works @MoCA will be a collaborative partnership with our member firms, our local and regional academic institutions, and our economic development partners across the Commonwealth,” said BIC Executive Director Ben Sosne in a news release. “It will also leverage the energy of the Mass MoCA community, not only giving the BIC a physical presence and ease-of-access to serve students and organizations in Northern Berkshire County, but concurrently open an opportunity to create new learning experiences at the intersection of creativity and innovation.”
The Pittsfield-based Berkshire Innovation Center officially opened its first satellite campus, BIC Works @Mass MoCA, on Friday with an on-site grand opening and ribbon cutting ceremony at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.
The $13.8 million, 23,000 square foot Berkshire Innovation Center, located in the William Stanley Business Park of the Berkshires, opened in February 2020. It has attracted the interest of a number of groups and projects and the amount of activity has begun to tax the limits of its location in Pittsfield.
According to BIC officials, spaces are often occupied or reserved. Although it is centrally located in the Berkshires, Pittsfield is too far away for people who live in the county’s outer regions, especially students and young professionals that have issues with transportation.
The expansion into the Northern Berkshires represents the first step of a phased growth plan by the BIC that is designed to make the impact the innovation center makes across the region more equitable.
“This collaborative partnership will help educate students and young people about exciting innovations in STEM while inspiring a new generation of workers to enter the field,” said Massachusetts Economic Development Secretary Yvonne Hao, who attended Friday’s ceremony.
People gather at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art Friday to attend the opening ceremony for the Berkshire Innovation Center’s first satellite campus, BIC Works @Mass MoCA.
“We’re grateful to the BIC and Mass MoCA for their long-standing partnership on Team Massachusetts and look forward to seeing the workforce and economic development opportunities that this dynamic collaboration will help make possible,” she said.
Hao and Sosne were joined at the ceremony by members of the BIC’s board, staffers from Mass MoCA, state and local politicians, and academic and industry partners. The event also featured a “Technology-on Display” program that featured several learning stations displaying some of the BIC’s innovative work, including a “Floating 3D Printer Wall.”
“We are thrilled to open access to our technology and learning platforms and expand our community with Mass MoCA,” said BIC Board Chairman Stephen Boyd, the CEO of Boyd Biomedical in Lee. “Our goal is to reach a broader and more diverse population. By linking talent with technology, innovation and creative processes, we can address a pipeline of opportunities and solve big world problems by starting locally. Collective wisdom always wins.”
“In the creative world, we work with technologies and different ideas and try to amplify one another’s knowledge because we have adjacencies,” said Mass MoCA’s Director Kristy Edmunds. “Welcoming the Berkshire Innovation Center to the Mass MoCA campus is an adjacency that artists will crave, our community will crave, and engages with the work we are doing with teens and young people.”