Laura Hackett

3 days ago | bpr.org | Laura Hackett

Jennifer Pickering got the email that said her grant was canceled a week before LEAF Global Arts’ annual spring retreat. Over the weekend, thousands attended the festival at Lake Eden in Black Mountain. Barns and tents surrounding the lakeshore buzzed with dance classes and musicians from all over the globe. Among the dozens of workshops, some featured artists who shared lessons from surviving natural disasters.

1 week ago | bpr.org | Laura Hackett |Katie Myers

This coverage is made possible through a partnership between BPR and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization. Lauren Bacchus is one of many Ashevillians who have found themselves strangely enamored with the city’s sinkholes. She’s a member of the Asheville Sinkhole Group — an online watering hole of more than 3,400 members — where locals eagerly discuss the chasms that mysteriously emerge throughout the city.

1 week ago | bpr.org | Laura Hackett

Education is the number one line item on Buncombe County’s recommended budget for next year, but advocates for public schools say that the proposed $121 million is not enough and would force layoffs in local schools. At Tuesday’s meeting, County Manager Avril Pinder unrolled a proposed budget totaling $624 million, buttressed with a 3.26-cent property tax rate increase. If approved by commissioners, the annual property tax bill for a home valued at $350,000 would increase by $114.

1 week ago | bpr.org | Laura Hackett

A new book gives a firsthand account of one of the Asheville’s oldest Black legacy neighborhoods. “A Tapestry of Life in the Black Community of Shiloh and Beyond," was written by Tanya Davis who grew up in Shiloh before moving to Chicago as an adult. Davis will appear at Pack Memorial Library on Tuesday, May 6 at 6 p.m. for a reading that will include a book signing and writing exercise.

1 week ago | bpr.org | Laura Hackett

In the throes of the 53-day water crisis brought on by Hurricane Helene, locals found themselves in a stinker of a situation: limited or no access to showers or fresh laundry. As a stopgap, Buncombe County opened eight community care stations to provide laundry machines, showers, water, wi-fi and other resources for the community. The sites operated daily for months, with locations slowly shuttering as demand shrank.