Flywheel Community Arts Space Collection and Zine Library

The booking and promotion series documents Flywheel’s programming history through band contracts, records of ticket sales, and correspondence, as well as event schedules, fliers, and show posters. The quantity of posters and fliers within the collection illustrate the wide variety of artists, musicians, performers, filmmakers, and bands that travelled through Easthampton during this transitional time in the underground music community. The programming at Flywheel was wide and varied and spanned many genres, styles, and forms including: folk, jazz, punk, hardcore, noise, circus, electronic, psych, film, theater, poetry, and many more. This series also demonstrates Flywheel’s commitment to accessibility through an emphasis on low-cost, all-ages shows, and kid-friendly events.

The administrative series illustrates the administrative business of Flywheel through financial and tax documents, meeting minutes, and correspondence, all of which demonstrate Flywheel’s non-traditional structure as a volunteer-run, consensus-based, collectively-run non-profit. This series also contains information on the organizational structure of Flywheel through its by-laws, policies, procedures, and mission statement. A large collection of email from volunteer Jeremy Smith documenting internal discussions is also included.

The artwork series is arranged thematically then chronologically. Contents: The artwork series contains artwork generated by local artists as well as everyday show goers who passed through Flywheel’s doors. This artwork is represented in doodle pads and books, non-show posters, paintings, and mixed media artworks. The “Doodle pads” are notebooks that were made available to show-goers to write or doodle freely in, providing valuable insight into the culture of Flywheel and the music scene in general. This series also contains a selection of non-Flywheel show posters, which provides insight into the D.I.Y. music scene in surrounding towns and throughout Western Massachusetts.

The audiovisual series contains print and digital photographs and videotapes generally concentrated around Flywheel’s founding in 1999 and early 21st century. The photographs capture the construction of Flywheel’s original location, performances, and Flywheel-associated volunteers. The digital photographs are concentrated around the renovation and construction of Flywheel’s second location, Easthampton Town Hall, as well as performances and people.

SERIES SCOPE NOTE