Oct 25, 2024 – Check out Amherst Now, Amherst MA’s new digital community noticeboard

Today, we quietly launched Amherst Now, a community-powered digital noticeboard for the town of Amherst, Massachusetts.

The idea is simple: make it easier for people to share and find notices about what’s happening in town; from lost pets and library talks to school announcements, senior center updates, and local job opportunities. The kind of stuff that used to live on bulletin boards at the post office or all over different social media streams, now has a new digital home.

The mission: help people in Amherst MA and surrounding communities show up for each other.

We’ve kept it simple on purpose. No flashy design. No complicated categories. Just short, factual, easy-to-read notices that matter to someone in town.

Why we built Amherst Now

Through our work at Artist Dynamix, we’ve seen how hard it is for important local information to reach the people it’s meant for—especially when it doesn’t come from a big organization or isn’t “newsworthy” in the traditional sense.

We started working on Amherst Now on October 29, 2022, which is when we registered the domain. We were simultaneously working on another big project, a business resources and tools website for Western Massachusetts.

As part of our AdX Wonder initiative, we asked: What if we made a space where even the smallest update could have a home?

That’s what Amherst Now is meant to be.

We didn’t announce it with a splash. No ads. No press. We just hit publish and started sharing. Let’s see where this takes us.

What’s next

We’ll keep adding new notices and encourage people to submit their own. Over time, we’ll improve how notices are categorized, introduce weekly email digests, and expand partnerships with schools, libraries, and local groups.

This is one small piece of a larger puzzle. But we believe that if people have an easy way to stay in the loop, and an easy way to be seen, more good things can happen.

Show up for each other. That’s the line we landed on. We hope Amherst Now makes that just a little easier.