Do you think Andover is a pretty nice place to live? Would you be interested in coming together with others in our community to share ideas about making Andover an even better place to live? If you answered yes, then maybe you’d be interested in talking with other folks about forming an Andover Community Association.

What would an Andover Community Association do? There are numerous possibilities. The answer depends on the collective insight and inspiration of the interested people who might come together to talk about it. Some of the possibilities include:

• Create a local outlet for local craftspeople, farmers, artisans, and folks with various skills to share – could be a farmers market, or something along that line.
• Establish a local venue for creative artists – painters, sculptors, photographers, musicians, actors. Maybe a summer bandstand featuring local talent. Maybe a spring play. Maybe an art show.
• Help coordinate and facilitate the ongoing activities of the organizations that are already doing community-based things in Andover.
• Share ideas and experiences about building local, sustainable agriculture – facilitate a network of people who want to farm locally, whether it’s just backyard farming or something more.
• Create structured opportunities for Andoverites to get to know one another and to help one another. There’s already a lot of this kind of thing going on. Maybe there would be a benefit in greater coordination and collaboration?
• Encourage local tradespeople and businesspeople and work on attracting people with good skills and business ideas to Andover so we become less of a bedroom community and more of an integrated community where you can live, work, and play locally if you want to.
• Work on stewardship of our Andover landscape, for better outdoor recreation opportunities for people living here and to take better advantage of the assets we have like the Northern Rail Trail, the Sunapee-Ragged-Kearsarge Greenway, and other local trail systems like our Class 6 roads.
• Develop local experiential opportunities for young people. These could be in the arts and sciences, in collaboration with the schools, or maybe there are mentoring and internship possibilities.

These are just a few ideas from a few people. Maybe one of these resonates with you, or you have some others you’d like to add? We’re looking for a few people to help organize a gathering of interested people in the next month or two.

Interested? Contact Larry Chase at 735-5135 or LbChase@nullaol.com; or Paul Currier at 735-5280 or PCurrier@nulltds.net.