January 29, 2008
(Photo: Leonard Manigault, Sweetgrass Cultural Arts Festival Association
Board Member, Thomasena Stokes-Marshall, SCAFA Project Director, and William
L. Golightly, Jr., Ph.D., MPW Commission Chair)
Mount Pleasant Waterworks (MPW) and the Sweetgrass Cultural Arts Festival
Association (SCAFA) are pleased to announce their partnership to help protect
and preserve the sweetgrass basket making art form. MPW and SCAFA signed
a Memorandum of Agreement that will allow local basket makers to plant and
harvest sweetgrass at two MPW properties.
Sweetgrass basket making dates back more than 300 years and a small number
are keeping the art form alive today in the Mount Pleasant area.
“The recent increase in residential and commercial development along
the coastline has contributed to a severe decrease in the availability of
the sweetgrass needed by local basket makers,” said Thomasena Stokes-Marshall,
SCAFA Project Director. “This shortage has a direct economic impact
on the families who rely on their baskets to subsidize their household income
and it has further threatened the continued existence of the sweetgrass
basket art form,” she added.
“Mount Pleasant Waterworks is very happy to partner with SCAFA and
allow planting and harvesting of sweetgrass at our property. We want to
help keep this beautiful art form alive. Preservation and protection of
this art form which depends on our natural environment is something MPW
should support,” commented Dr. Golightly, MPW Commission Chair.
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