38 Artists And Organizations Awarded $120,358 In Local Cultural Council Grants By Cambridge Arts


3/26/2025 • 5 days ago

38 Artists And Organizations Awarded $120,358 In Local Cultural Council Grants By Cambridge Arts

38 Artists And Organizations Awarded $120,358 In Local Cultural Council Grants By Cambridge Arts


38 artists and organizations are being awarded $120,358 in Local Cultural Council Grant funding by Cambridge Arts and the City of Cambridge.

Funded projects include photos documenting the 1970 International Women’s Day March and of the 2017 Women’s March; photos celebrating the beauty, history, and cultural significance of Black hair; workshops teaching Indian dance, salsa and poetry; free comics drawing workshops for teens in foster care; a student-created mural at Fletcher Maynard Academy; a Pride Festival; a Lunar New Year celebration; a festival of Israeli folkdance; a performance of Latin American zarzuela, a traditional Spanish form of musical theater that combines elements of both opera and theater; concerts celebrating the contributions of people of color to American folk music; and the creation of a children’s poetry book about Harriet Jacobs, whose 1861 autobiography "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" was the first published account of a formerly enslaved African American woman, and who was buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery. (See full list below.)

Overall Cambridge Arts and the City are distributing more than $300,000 to 60 artists, cultural organizations and grant reviewers via grants and stipends this year through three funding opportunities offered by Cambridge Arts: Organizational Investment Grants, Art for Social Justice Grants, and Local Cultural Council Project Grants.

Each year, the City of Cambridge contributes substantial funding to support local artists, cultural workers, and arts organizations through the Cambridge Arts Grant Program. This support is coupled with funding received through the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s statewide Local Cultural Council Program. All these grants are awarded on an annual cycle, with the due date to apply usually in mid-October of each year.

LOCAL CULTURAL COUNCIL GRANTS – DANCE/THEATER/LITERATURE

ANINKAYA/Akhra, Inc.
Grant Award: $4,000

In March 2025, students from Cambridge Ringe and Latin’s dance program, advanced ASL students and Multilingual Learners will attend a performance of Conference of the Birds by ANIKAYA Dance Theater. The performance will take place during the school day on March 6 at Arrow Street Arts in Harvard Sq. Before the performance, ANIKAYA Artistic Director Wendy Jehlen will visit the school to prepare students for the performance. She will share with them the story that is the frame of the production, its origin, and will introduce the processes the company used to arrive at their interpretation of this story. In the week following the performance, artists from the ensemble will conduct a residency with the students. The residency will be a combination of two of the workshops outlined in the attached Electronic Press Kit - Migrations and Story Gathering.

Samadrita Bhattacharyya
Grant Award: $600

Souls of India (SoI) in collaboration with the Foundry, Cambridge MA is planning for a spring 2025 workshop/training session on “Evolution of Indian Classical dance with Modernism” for Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced dancers by the co-founders of SoI, Samadrita Bhattacharyya and Meghma Banerjee. This workshop will entail a demo and hands-on training of a 5 minute excerpt from our final presentation. This collaboration will conclude with a final dance presentation by SoI in the form of a 2-hour ticketed concert in Spring 2025. This classical concert will be in conjunction with live musicians (Tabla, Harmonium, and Mridangam) and vocalists from the Greater Boston area and New Jersey.

Boston Adavu
Grant Award: $1,200

Boston Adavu is a community of Indian Classical dancers that meets weekly to practice the basics of Bharatanatyam. Open to any dancer (all races/ages/genders) with knowledge of the basic steps (adavus), it attracts many adults restarting their dance journeys after personal or professional breaks. While performance opportunities help dancers grow, they are often dominated by full time dancers, and producing one's own show can be a significant expense. We aim to host a showcase where our community members can perform group or solo pieces, with the primary goal of sharing their love and joy for dance. Additionally, such a showcase would also share Bharatanatyam’s rich cultural heritage and timeless philosophical concepts it’s dances convey with the larger community.

Cambridge Forum, Inc.
Grant Award: $4,000

"From Mississippi to Massachusetts - a racial odyssey" is the title of a two-part series that Cambridge Forum plans to record between November 2024 and February 2025. It consist of two hour-long Forums which will be recorded with two different writers both of whom have dealt with the history and current reality of race in these two states. The first program centers on Wright Thompson's diligently researched book, "The Barn", which maps the Mississippi's violent past and the dark history behind Emmett Till's murder at a barn which sits 23 miles from the Thompson family farm where he grew up. The second Forum features the writer Omo Moses, son of the civil rights organizer, Bob Moses who was a field secretary for the SNCC in 1960's Mississippi. Moses returned to this state to write "The White Peril", a memoir which traces his own difficult journey toward a "useful black male identity".

Israel Folkdance Festival of Boston
Grant Award: $4,000

The Israel Folkdance Festival of Boston aims to ensure the future of Israeli dancing with an annual show that provides dancers of all ages an opportunity to perform and create new friendships. Younger dancers are given the opportunity to perform pieces they work on all year long, as well as to learn from their fellow dancers in an exciting and cooperative environment. They are exposed to new styles that influence Israel dance, as well as a variety of Israeli music and costumes. The Festival provides dancers with the opportunity to share a positive facet of Israel with an enthusiastic audience and continues to be both a leading barometer of new trends in Jewish music and dance, as well as a reflection of the broad and magnificent diversity of Jewish culture from around the world.

Meta Movements LLC.
Grant Award: $4,000

As a Cambridge resident and the founder of MetaMovements Artist Collective, I am excited to lead the organization of Cambridge Salsa in The Park set for summer 2025. This outdoor dance event aims to transform public spaces for the benefit of the community through the vibrant mediums of Salsa music, dance, and education. On warm summer evenings, a cemented area in Cambridge will be transformed with mobile dance floors, inviting individuals of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities to come together in celebration of Salsa. Attendees will enjoy dance lessons, social dancing to tunes from top local Salsa DJs, cultural performances, a Latin percussion corner, and follow-along dances. A key feature of Cambridge Salsa In The Park will be our commitment to providing intentional and supportive access for the deaf and blind community, ensuring that everyone can experience the joy of social dancing.

Pangyrus
Grant Award: $4,000

This program invites a fresh encounter with Phillis Wheatley Peters’ poetry, her connection to Boston and Cambridge, and her profound and continuing influence as the first Black author of a published book of poetry (in 1773). In Pangyrus's just-published revisiting of her work, "Wheatley at 250: Black Women Poets Re-imagine the Verse of Phillis Wheatley Peters", we asked some of today’s most exciting writers to engage with Wheatley’s poetics and life. In two workshops, one offered at the high school, and one for the general public; we’ll bring aspiring and practicing poets into the conversation through writing exercises, discussion, and analysis meant to deepen their appreciation of Wheatley’s achievements, and to spark their own creative responses. We’ll follow with a reading and performance involving the editors and contributors to Wheatley at 250, accompanied by drumming and music.

Rasik
Grant Award: $4,000

Rasik is a grassroots initiative that curates and presents classical dances of India in their traditional form by artists of diverse backgrounds. Rasik strives to cultivate an informed and invested audience for Indian dance in Massachusetts and reflect our community's vibrant expanding cultural heritage. Through a carefully curated concert series, presented in ways accessible to a thoughtful but uninitiated audience, Rasik aims to strengthen the relationship between Indian dance forms and the larger community. Through the Rasik Concert Series, we seek to create more opportunities to witness high-quality live dance in classical Indian genres. To that end, we plan a live concert by Dr. Neena Prasad, a renowned master artist from Kerala, India who will be touring the United States with a group of live musicians in September-October 2025.

Gowri Vijayakumar
Grant Award: $480

The South Asian dance form Bharatanatyam is often associated with “ancient” culture. Paper Lanterns, a new choreographic piece I am creating with NATyA Dance Collective, broadens the scope of Bharatanatyam by using it to address contemporary issues—migration, sexuality, and the grief of separation across physical and figurative borders. Paper Lanterns uses the poetry of the Indo-Guyanese queer poet Rajiv Mohabir, composed into a neo-soul musical piece by singer-songwriter Khalil Sullivan. NATyA is also choreographing The Hot Winds Cannot Touch Me, based on the work of activist and writer Valerie Kaur and musician Shivpreet Singh, and Love Water Ritual, based on the music of singersongwriter Anju. Together, these pieces offer a uniquely contemporary South Asian dance vocabulary, rooted in our diasporic perspective, to reflect on universal experiences of love and loss.

LOCAL CULTURAL COUNCIL GRANTS – MULTIDISCIPLINARY

Boston Comic Arts Foundation, LLC.
Grant Award: $4,000

Bridges Homeward (BH), formerly Cambridge Family & Children's Service, served 252 children in 2022 and approximately the same in 2023 and 2024. This number represents foster teens. These children receive a variety of educational support but lack access to out-of-school enrichment opportunities. BCAF's goal is to encourage drawing as a healthy coping mechanism in BH's foster teens. Youth aged 13 to 18 have proven to be the most difficult to find forever homes for, and, through no fault of their own, these teenagers live with considerable stress and uncertainty. Drawing comics, doodling, and art-making are basic coping skills which can be done anywhere. We provide free education and free supplies, so kids can continue making art at home.

Boston Opera & Zarzuela Corp
Grant Award: $2,400

"Zarzuela Fest - A Hispanic Lyric Music Celebration " is a classical lyric music concert consisting of a pianist and lyric singers, featuring some of the best works of the most well-known Zarzuela solos and ensembles. Zarzuela is a traditional Spanish form of musical theater that combines elements of both opera and theater, often featuring a mix of spoken dialogue and sung arias and ensembles. It originated in the 17th century and has evolved over the centuries, incorporating various musical and dramatic styles. In Latin America, zarzuela adapted to local customs, incorporating indigenous elements, regional themes, and local musical styles, giving it a unique character in each country. This blending of Spanish and indigenous influences made Latin American zarzuela a distinct and cherished art form. The organization envisions to bring this underrepresented music genre to Cambridge.

Chinese American Association of Cambridge
Grant Award: $4,000

Chinese American Association of Cambridge is a non-profit organization registered in 2021. It is the first such organization to recognize that most Chinese Americans in Cambridge are first generation with their young children. The goal of the association is to bring our community as an integral part of the American life while maintaining the cultural heritage for the second generation. Since it is still at the stage of early foundation, our focus has been greatly on community building. The proposed project forward is to plan and organize the 2025 Lunar New Year Celebration repertoire, including folk arts, martial arts, performing arts, talks, shows and poetry reading as examples.

Citizens of the Worlds, Inc.
Grant Award: $4,000

The 2025 HBCU Tour is an opportunity for high school students from across Massachusetts to explore Historically Black Colleges and Universities in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. Twenty-four high school students from across Massachusetts will travel by airplane to Atlanta, Georgia, then by chartered bus to visit: Clark Atlanta University, Morris Brown College, Spelman College, Morehouse College, Tuskegee University, Alabama State University, Jackson State University, Tougaloo College, Xavier University and Southern University. In addition to touring and learning more about the academic offerings of each school, students will visit historic sites, like: The Legacy Museum, The Tuskegee Airmen Historic Site and the George Washington Carver Museum to gain deeper understanding of American History and how it birthed the need for these Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

Culture House Inc.
Grant Award: $4,000

Opening in early 2025, the Cambridge Kiosk will be a new kind of community space. Housed in the historic Harvard Square Kiosk, the flexible and dynamic space will serve residents and visitors alike with free installations, events, workshops, and information. Systemically marginalized organizations, and creatives within Cambridge are looking for a platform to display their work and connect with their community. At the Kiosk, we will provide the space to uplift these organizations and individuals, leveraging the central location of the space in the center of Harvard Square.

The Friends of Mount Auburn Cemetery
Grant Award: $2,000

Fatima Seck, one of Mount Auburn Cemetery's 2024-2025 Artists-in-Residence (AiR), will be gathering natural pigments, advised by our Horticulture & Landscape team, from botanical material found amongst the Cemetery's horticultural collection for an illustrated children’s poetry book (title TBD) with limited printing about the life of one of Mount Auburn’s most significant residents, Harriet Jacobs, whose 1861 autobiography "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" was the first published account of a formerly enslaved African American woman. Her residency will include on-site workshops for educators on poetry, natural ink-making, and teaching about death, grief, and the history of slavery in early childhood pedagogy, culminating in a storytelling event at Jacobs’ gravesite on Clethra Path at Mount Auburn for young school groups from Roxbury, where Seck is currently an educator.

Yumi Izuyama
Grant Award: $960

"Mottainai" is a term used widely in Japan for centuries. It means to "not waste" any resources that are around you. It is similar to the 3Rs "reduce," "reuse," "recycle," but the word also encompasses a sense of respect and gratitude toward the resource available. This concept is deeply embedded in Japanese culture. I grew up hearing it used by my elders any time they thought I was being wasteful. When the Kenyan activist, Wangari Maathai, visited Japan, she learned the term "mottainai." Maathai was moved by its meaning and used it as a slogan at the UN to promote environmental protection. I propose to create a kamishibai (Japanese paper theater) story that introduces the term "mottainai" and how this extraordinary woman used it to spread her message. The story will be presented at SOARS summer camp programs at the Magazine Beach Park Nature Center.

Massachusetts Audubon Society
Grant Award: $4,000

Mass Audubon will be hosting a free Pride Festival at Magazine Beach Park Nature Center in Cambridge in June, to kick off a month of Pride activities. The festival at Magazine Beach will likely be from noon to the early evening, with art and nature activities including a DJ, a family-friendly, nature-inspired drag show featuring artists from the Boston area and around the Commonwealth, kids' activities like facepainting and glitter tattoos, paddling, birding/nature walks, lawn games, a live animal presentation, community partner booths, food trucks and more. This is our second year hosting this festival at Magazine Beach, and we hope this year to build upon our past success and offer more activities and get more community members involved. Our focus is on providing a fun, familial, queer-centered celebration of art, nature, and LGBTQ+ Pride for all.

Panethnic Pourovers Inc.
Grant Award: $4,000

Panethnic Pourovers, in collaboration with Nine Winters Bakery, will be hosting an Underserved Night Market featuring AAPI + BIPOC small businesses, creators, and artists. The intention of this market is to bring awareness to underserved businesses and creators from underserved populations: vendors will be required to meet certain eligibility criteria to participate. The night market event will be free to the public.

Leticia Priebe Rocha
Grant Award: $4,000

Saudade is an untranslatable Portuguese word for longing, nostalgia. In searching for a word that captures my life as a Brazilian immigrant, saudade often emerges. I've worked in Cambridge for 3 years and deeply admire its cultural diversity. This project celebrates the immigrant communities that elevate Cambridge’s vitality: -6-week poetry workshops at the Cambridge Community Center. Attendees will produce poems that speak to complex experiences of diaspora. We will create collages that pair with poems. The series will be hosted twice, for cohorts of up to 15. Hand-bound anthology booklets with finished products of workshop attendees. Free, distributed at local bookstores (e.g. Grolier Poetry Bookshop) and locations that disseminate literature. PDF copies will be shared online. Anthology launch party & reading at The Lilypad. Workshop participants perform poems and display collages.

LOCAL CULTURAL COUNCIL GRANTS - MUSIC

Boston Children’s Chorus
Grant Award: $2,400

Boston Children’s Chorus’s 2024-25 season is themed People, Get Ready in celebration of the iconic song that became the unofficial anthem of the Civil Rights Movement. In a world where change is constant and vital, BCC's concert this season invites audiences to explore themes of civic engagement, collective action, and perseverance through the power of song. As an important moment in our season, in March 2025 BCC will invite the Spirituals of Boston Arts Academy to join us for the Massachusetts premiere of Rollo Dilworth’s ‘Weather: Stand the Storm’ at First Church Cambridge. This work, with text by the great poet Claudia Rankine, invites us to consider the journey we have made as a global community across the last few years and ponder what it takes to move forward in greater harmony and resilience. We are honored and excited to bring this work to Cambridge and Greater Boston audiences.

Boston Choral Society, Inc.
Grant Amount: $2,281.60

Led by Artistic Director Katherine Chan, The Boston Choral Ensemble presents "To the Hands," a program that celebrates strength, resilience, and grace through the powerful metaphor of human hands. This evocative performance features works predominantly composed by women, including Tracy Wong’s “Antara (Between),” Sarah Quartel’s “I Will Be With You,” and Caroline Shaw’s intricate six-movement piece, “To the Hands.” Each selection explores themes of support, connection, and the human spirit, inviting audiences to reflect on the profound impact of our hands in nurturing relationships and overcoming challenges. With this grant, we can bring this programming to the community of Cambridge and build equity and accessibility to the performing arts by performing diverse and relevant classical music.

Cambridge Youth Gamelan
Grant Award: $4,000

Cambridge Youth Gamelan (CYG) is a multi-generational ensemble for youth ages 6-18 and their families, to learn traditional Balinese music and dance from experienced instructors and guest artists from Bali. Rehearsing weekly from September to June, the group presents participatory and family-friendly programs to the greater Cambridge community. In the past two years, we have collaborated with Balinese artists Putu Tangkas Adi Hiranmayena and Dewa Ayu Eka Putri. We plan to expand this collaboration through a 6-month virtual and in-person residency, where Putu and Ayu will help students co-create an original composition and dance. This project will teach students new Balinese musical practices, focusing on improvisation while also enhancing their aural/oral skills and fostering teamwork to blend traditional Balinese musical practices with their own musical experiences and interests.

Castle of our Skins, Inc.
Grant Award: $4,000

Ensemble-in-residence Castle of our Skins returns to Longy for an immersive three-day residency focused on the music of Jonathan Bailey Holland. Our sixth residency, we are excited to team up with Jonathan to work with students in master classes, classroom visits, and affinity spaces, and present a capstone portrait concert featuring chamber music from the composer. As a capstone to the residency, Castle of our Skins will present a portrait concert featuring solo and chamber music from Holland’s rich body of work. We will also collaborate with a Cambridge-based youth music organization to perform Holland’s music during the capstone performance. The group will receive four, hour-long coaching sessions with Castle of our Skins’ musicians in addition to working directly with the composer.

Kendra Comstock
Grant Award: $1,000

The 4th Annual Worlds Collide Showcase, scheduled for Fall 2025. The Pandora Consort has hosted the Worlds Collide Showcase in Cambridge since 2022. This is a first of its kind genre-blending composition competition and fundraising event. Artists from different musical backgrounds apply and are teamed up to perform original songs and original covers combining different genres of music (for example: EDM and Baroque, hip hop and jazz, etc.). Each performing duo and trio will choose a corresponding charity that they are fundraising for. At the end of the showcase the audience will vote for their favorite performance, and an additional cash prize will be awarded to the winning group, as well as an additional cash prize for their corresponding charity.

JazzBoston
Grant Amount: $4,000

We are engaging in an on-going free public jazz jam program. This project engages a broad spectrum of diverse community participants, in terms of gender, age, race and other dimensions. We employ community-based musicians to host the sessions, and the participants become potential members of our organization. The jam session will take place at Phoenix Landing in Central Square, which is accessible by public transit and attendance and participation are free of charge. We feel that this is a critically important project of JazzBoston that advances our mission of advocating for the broader jazz community. Jazz, a musical artform created in the African American community, teaches spontaneous creativity which we see as an important skill.

Juventas Music Inc.
Grant Award: $3,600

Juventas is a contemporary chamber group with a special focus on emerging voices. We share classical music as a vibrant, living art form, bringing audiences music from a diverse array of composers. Our 2024-25 Mainstage Season “Legacy” celebrates our 20th Anniversary and includes 4 concerts at the Multicultural Arts Center in Cambridge: 1/25/25 “Nicholas Southwick: Center Stage” features our celebrated Flautist in a special solo program with piano and harp accompaniment. 3/22/25 “Encore!” reprises audience-voted favorites. Two Fall 2025 programs, currently in development. As a part of our free Neighborhood Series, we will be returning to Longfellow House in Summer 2025 with an unforgettable trio of flute, violin, and cello. Our recent 9/8/24 Longfellow performance, “Slipstream,” brought 70 + audience members, and we are eagerly anticipating our next appearance at this historic venue.

Newtowne School, Inc.
Grant Award: $2,560

Newtowne School is hosting a free family concert with Alastair Moock and Friends as a part of our Spring Fair. Songs featured in the concert will be co-written by Alastair and Newtowne students during Spring music classes, using documentation of each classroom’s curriculum related to nature, the environment, and climate change curriculum. This project supports our school’s continued work to foster young children’s solidarity with nature during this time of climate crisis. Through songwriting, children will be empowered to share their valuable ideas about environmental justice with the community and understand their role in remaking their world. Offering a free public family concert at our Spring Fair supports our continued goals to elevate social justice work in early childhood and engage a broader and more diverse audience in our school community.

Voices Rising, Inc.
Grant Award: $4,000

Voices Rising chorus will perform a concert titled "We Persist" at First Church Cambridge on Saturday, January 25, 2025. Led by Artistic Director Leora Zimmer, the 60-voice group presents music highlighting modern women composers, including Moira Smiley, Bernice Johnson Reagon, and Alicia Keys. The concert will feature the words of women suffragists Ida B. Wells and Mary Church Terrell, as well as writings of other women whose original words have been set to music. In a time where voter suppression is a real and present danger to democracy, Voices Rising offers this tribute to persisting in the face of those who would silence the voices of the people.

Naomi Westwater Weekes
Grant Amount: $960

Reclaiming Folk is an event series that celebrates the contributions of people of color to American folk music. Created by singer-songwriter Naomi Westwater, the program features performances by BIPOC artists, honoring both the past and present of folk music. The event includes original music, cover songs of historical significance, artist interviews, and a Q&A with the audience. Through this series, we aim to make space for marginalized voices in folk music, educating audiences on the often-overlooked roots of the genre while creating a platform for inclusivity and storytelling. Since its founding in 2024, Reclaiming Folk has hosted 15+ artists across 10 locations in Massachusetts including performances at public libraries, places of worship, cultural centers, and an event at The Boston Public Library in collaboration with the Mayor's Office of Arts & Culture.

LOCAL CULTURAL COUNCIL GRANTS - VISUAL ART/FILM/VIDEO/MEDIA

The Beautiful Stuff Project
Grant Award: $4,000

The Beautiful Stuff Project, a creative re-use center in Cambridge MA, in collaboration with the Cambridge Public Schools director of library services, the Morse School art teacher, and the Morse School Librarian will lead the creation of a collaborative mosaic Storywalk at the Morse School Library. This Storywalk will first hang on the fence surrounding this school playground and then rotate through other school grounds during 2025. Storywalks display pages of a book, written and illustrated by the community, along a walking path or in a public space so that as people walk, they discover the next page of the book. This encourages exercise and infuses the public space with opportunities for literacy and beauty. The Beautiful Stuff Project has created several very successful mosaic Storywalks to date in collaboration with neighboring communities. Now it's Cambridge's turn.

Amber Bemak
Grant Award: $4,500.00

The film follows my uncle Peter Valentine’s unusual journey, weaving around the extraordinary events surrounding Peter, MIT, and his house. Long ago diagnosed as schizophrenic but choosing to live his life unmedicated, Peter lived independently, riding the edge between mental illness and magic. In the early 1990’s, Peter was renting an apartment in a three-story house, living on disability payments. When MIT wanted to demolish his neighborhood to build University Park, Peter refused to move, insisting that he could not leave his apartment because it was his laboratory for research. After years, MIT physically moved his house to another street in Cambridge and sold the house to him for a dollar. A familiar story of gentrification with an unexpected ending, the film also looks at the stigma of mental illness, disrupting and questioning normative narratives around this topic.

Liane Brandon
Grant Award: $3,596

Gallery exhibits of 24 photographs of the historic 1970 International Women’s Day March and of the 2017 Women’s March plus a reception and panel discussion at the main branch of the Cambridge Public Library. It will be co-sponsored by the Cambridge Women’s Commission and the Cambridge Public Library in March 2025, Women’s History Month. The historic 1970 march was organized by Bread and Roses, one of the earliest “women's liberation” groups in the US which was based in Cambridge in the late 1960’s. I was a member of Bread and Roses at that time. I believe these are the only color photographs taken of this historic event and they have never been exhibited as prints. In 2017, I photographed the large (estimated at 100,000) women’s march. All photographs will be exhibited as framed color prints (20” x 28”). These photographs capture the history and issues that still resonate today.

Najee Brown
Grant Award: $4,000

The Crown exhibit celebrates the beauty, history, and cultural significance of Black hair. Through a series of intimate portraits taken in local barbershops, beauty salons, and community spaces, the exhibit captures everyday life in Black communities. A key component is the portrayal of Black elders and their stories, alongside interviews answering the question, "How do you celebrate your hair?" The exhibit includes a historical aspect, featuring archival photographs from educator Robert Sipho Bellinger. The project will be hosted at the Multicultural Arts Center from January to March, with supplementary events including a Hair Expo, live music, and discussions led by DEI consultant Kira Troilo. This exhibit will connect past and present, showcasing Black hair as an important cultural symbol.

The Loop Lab
Grant Award: $4,000

The Charles River Conservancy (CRC) is launching its first-ever Artist-in-Residence program at the Lynch Family Skatepark in 2025, embracing the graffiti and street art that define its character. This initiative builds on years of community engagement with feedback from over 200 park users, including their Public Art Forum Series, Social Justice Skate Jam, and work with public art consultants. The CRC reached out to Loop Lab Studio to partner with CRC to document the stories behind this initiative, including the advisory and artist experiences connected to the Artist in Residence program, as well as the full Cambridge community experience. Our studio will provide all pre-production, production and post-production services for this initiative.

Denise Malis
Grant Award: $4,000

“Visual Visions” is a studio art therapy group for adults living with persistent mental illness. The group provides an avenue for artists to connect with each other in an ongoing manner through the process of art making. It provides social and emotional support while creating a pathway for individuals to establish an artist’s identity outside of a traditional clinical setting. It provides a space for ongoing engagement in individual art making through exploration and growth, and a space for sharing and witnessing. Given ongoing requests for additional studio time, video conferencing will be explored as a means to extend this shared art making community in a cost effective way. To promote exposure within the greater art community, group exhibitions and individual entries to art shows will be pursued, and support in preparation of these events will be provided.

Vicki Paret
Grant Award: $1,200

At Water’s Edge- Exhibition and Workshop: Paintings by Christina Beecher, Vicki Kocher Paret, and Nora Rosenbaum and 2 workshops to create a collaborative, multi-panel artwork. At the workshops, Mass Audubon Field Teachers lead site observations. Workshop participants then create panels, to be mounted into a larger art piece. Gridded images will be used for participants to create an environment on their panel, and resource images will allow for the addition of wildlife found onsite. Participants will engage in close observation of the environment, and artists will provide instruction in drawing and working with art materials. Participants will gain hands-on experience with observation and in-depth artmaking. The individual panels created by the participants will be mounted into a large multi-panel artwork of flora and fauna in the landscape and be displayed in the Nature Center.

Whitney Van Praggh
Grant Award: $4,000

This project is a win-win-win. It establishes a 79-foot screen on an existing fence around the garbage bins and dumpsters at Fletcher Maynard Academy. It will be a mural consisting of 12 panels, designed by the 5th-grade students and painted by the school community. Its creation will be a learning experience for many while they simultaneously add to their neighborhood’s sense of place. This project is led by muralist Whitney Van Praagh and FMA's Arts Educator, Ellie Lawson. They will oversee the students painting the mural during the school day and Daniel Skeritt, Pacesetters’ Program Coordinator, will facilitate painting during the afterschool program. The project will start in October with design exercises and brainstorms. It will be painted in the Spring, and the panels will be installed in June of 2025. The mural will be maintained by the staff of FMA.

FIELD TRIPS

East End House
Grant Award: $3,900

This October and November 2024, East End House’s Middle School Program will host approximately 10 workshops led by teaching artists in their afterschool program. These workshops will feature BIPOC fine and performing artists, many of whom are affiliated with the Longy School of Music or are based in Cambridge, MA. Considering the robust programming this fall, with potential extensions into the spring and summer, we are planning a special field trip, "A Middle School Musical Night Out," for students, families, and staff in late summer 2025. The trip will include attending a performance of The Wiz at Citizens Opera House in August 2025, showcasing the artistry of BIPOC musicians.