A Letter to the New Buyer of Goddard

Before You Close - Build A New Model of Collective Creative Stewardship - Honor Tim Pitkin’s Legacy

The future of rural, resilient, regenerative communities belongs to the young people who believe in them, who are willing to fight for them, and who see their potential as more than just extracting a brand or a set of real estate transactions. Tommy, a 21-year-old Brown University student, has spent his life immersed in this work — learning from his family, this community, and the land itself. In the letter below, Tommy expresses the anger, frustration, and unwavering commitment to continue to steward Goddard as a safe harbor for bold progressive independent thinkers, artists, creatives and visionaries willing to work together and co-create a better world.

I am angry.

For years, our family and local community members have been thinking, working, building and nourishing rural regenerative communities. It has shaped my field of study at Brown. Greatwood by Collective Well is the culmination of that vision — a vision that is exciting to my peers and I and growing into a movement among young people.

And yet, you pushed us out. You took credit for work that isn’t yours. You are trying to erase the people who built this vision. That is the opposite of Goddard’s bold, progressive, inclusive tent.

You call your vision the “Creative Campus,” stating that you will create a creative community and require us all to be creative, but that is an insult. We are a creativity supercluster — we are already one of the most creative communities in the world. For example my grandmother is a true creative —someone who has spent her life nurturing the arts in this community — you don’t get credit for her work. People like Ellen Voigt, Louise Glück, and the many artists and thinkers who shaped this place — they didn’t need branding to justify their creativity. They lived it. What you are doing isn’t nourishing creativity — it’s extractive theft.

I am launching a research project on Goddard, and for the first time, I’m truly appreciating what our family and Collective Well, Cooperation Vermont and our community members have been saying all along: This campus was visionary. Its eco-design, its sculpture and painting studios — they were decades ahead of their time. They embody the future of sustainable construction, material reuse, and community-led innovation — all parts of what our family and community has a long history of cultivating.

I want to move back to Plainfield. I want to see this campus thrive from within, driven by the people who love it, not by outsiders looking to extract our goodness, take credit for our work and ideas and profit. Greatwood has the power to bring young people back, to revitalize Plainfield and North Montpelier, to make rural communities a place where people want to stay and build a future. But when you erase the local visionaries behind this work, when you try to control and crush our creativity, and push out the people who care most, you make this place feel unwelcoming for me and for future generations.

This is our home. This is our history. This is Goddard.