Each summer the hills, and valleys, are alive with music as the Vermont Symphony performs on town greens and the Von Trapp Lodge hosts the Music in the Meadow series. Music is in the air with the Discover Jazz Festival, the Vermont Mozart Festival, and the Champlain Valley Folk Festival.

The creative tradition is alive here with our writers, theatrical performers, wood workers, glass blowers and other skilled artisans who draw inspiration from these mountains.

Explore Vermont and find works of long-time favorites or seek out the new stars on the horizon before they become well known. Our little state is packed with quality cultural offerings. We have among the highest U.S. concentrations of renowned writers and visual artists and are home to a community of about 1500 professional crafts artisans.

Discover Vermont this summer and fall through more than 500 arts-based events and nearly 1000 cultural attractions listed in the Vermont Travel Planner.

Grandma Moses art is always on display at the Bennington Museum, as is a display of the Bennington pottery tradition still retained through Bennington Potters, the oldest pottery in the country.

Vermont Handcrafters 53rd Annual Holiday Craft and Fine Art Show in November includes art by Woody Jackson, creator of the Ben & Jerry’s cow; Gary Storrs, renowned bird carver and son of Dr. George Ross Starr II, author of Decoys of the Atlantic Flyway; and Danforth Pewterers, a fine Vermont tradition for nearly 30 years.

In July the Noyes House Museum presents Dorothy Canfield Fisher, whose family farmed and gained inspiration from Vermont as far back as the 1700s.

Our resident authors, such as Chris Bohjalian and Civil War author Howard Coffin, participate in Vermont Humanities Council events at local libraries.

As part of Vermont Archaeology Month this September, visit the Hubbardton Battle Field, a Vermont State Historic Site, Sep. 21 and hear Howard Coffin’s insights on Champlain Valley war sites, described in detail in his new book, Guns Over the Champlain Valley.

Folk music lovers will find dozens of performers at the 22nd Champlain Valley Folk Festival, including Vermont traditions Pete & Karen Sutherland, Margaret MacArthur, Patti Casey, Social Band, Rik Palieri, Mark Greenberg and Jeremiah McLane.

Vermont’s history comes alive in many ways, including events at some of the most pristine historic sites in the U.S., Sheldon Museum’s presentation of the traveling John Deere 200th birthday exhibit in Middlebury, where he lived in his early years, and tours of the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park.

For a Vermonters’ insight into what makes Vermont tick, and about its people and places, click here, and take a copy of Vermont Life editor Tom Slayton’s Finding Vermont along on your explorations.