May 22, 2025 – Amherst Now publishes 500th notice and announces new features

Amherst Now, the community-powered digital noticeboard serving Amherst, Massachusetts and surrounding towns (Hadley, Sunderland, Pelham, Shutesbury, Leverett, Sunderland, & South Hadley), today reached 500 published notices, and is entering its next phase of growth.

Launched on October 25, 2024, with a post about the Lighting of the Merry Maple, Amherst Now was created under the Artist Dynamix AdX Wonder initiative. The platform was designed to bring simplicity and accessibility to local communications, offering a central space for residents, nonprofits, schools, and town departments to post notices that matter.

Amherst Now enables the sharing of short, timely, and factual updates. It covers events, services, opportunities, and local happenings from schools, nonprofits, businesses, and residents.

Any resident or organization can add a notice through a simple upload form.

Today, we announce three new features set to launch this summer:

• Email subscriptions, allowing residents to receive weekly notices and updates directly in their inbox.
• Social Media Profiles. Up until now the platform has advertised by posting physical flyers to noticeboards around downtown Amherst and elsewhere in the community. It is now rolling out different social media profiles to expand its reach.
• Advertising options for small businesses, giving local entrepreneurs a chance to reach an engaged, place-based audience while supporting the platform’s operations.

“500 notices is a great milestone, but we’re just getting started,” said Fungai Tichawangana, founder of Artist Dynamix. “This project began as an experiment to see if a simple tool could help build a more connected community; turns out it can, but we’re still in the early phases of this project. We still need to build more awareness around it.”

“500 notices is a great milestone, but we’re just getting started,” said Fungai Tichawangana, founder of Artist Dynamix. “This project began as an experiment to see if a simple tool could help build a more connected community; turns out it can, but we’re still in the early phases of this project. We still need to build more awareness around it.”

You can check the Amhert Now website out here. If you would like to be involved in some way, or explore ways to partner with us on this project, do reach out and let’s do coffee.