2023-2024 Grant Recipients
Cambridge Arts and the City of Cambridge are distributing grants totaling $260,961 to 53 artists and cultural organizations for fiscal year 2024 through three funding opportunities that Cambridge Arts offered last fall—including Art for Social Justice Grants, Local Cultural Council Grants, and Organizational Investment Grants.
34 Artists And Organizations Awarded $112,461 In Local Cultural Council Grant Funding By Cambridge Arts
Pictured clockwise from top: Zhonghe (Elena) Li, All Things Dance Boston, Dance in the Schools, Juventas Music and Cambridge Foundry.
34 Artists And Organizations Awarded $112,461 In Local Cultural Council Grant Funding By Cambridge Arts
34 artists and organizations are being awarded $112,461 in Local Cultural Council Grant funding by Cambridge Arts and the City of Cambridge. Funded projects include a comics camp for foster children, a hip-hop dance class for seniors, a celebration of the history of Black American music, a poetry writing program pairing teens with older adults, an elementary school playwriting project addressing the indigenous history and ecosystem of the Charles River, performances of short plays by Asian Americans, a documentary about the late Cambridge artist Peter Valentine, and a documentary about The Middle East Restaurant and Nightclub. (See full list below.)
Overall, Cambridge Arts and the City are distributing grants totaling $260,961 to 53 artists and cultural organizations this year through three funding opportunities that Cambridge Arts offered last fall—including Art for Social Justice Grants, Local Cultural Council Grants, and Organizational Investment 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 – MULTIDISCIPLINARY
Davis R. Bates, III
Grant Award: $495.00
A program for children and families celebrating reading, adventure, the imagination, nature, and cultural diversity. Award winning performer Davis Bates shares participatory stories and songs designed to educate, entertain, and create a feeling of community, while encouraging reading in families. The program includes age-appropriate participatory songs and stories from around the world (see attached flyer.) Instruments played include spoons, limberjack and a variety of ethnic percussion instruments. The concert is roughly 60 minutes long and will be sponsored by the Cambridge Public Library and held during the summer reading program at the Main Branch Library on Wednesday, July 17th, 2024, at 1:00 pm.
Boston Comic Arts Foundation, LLC.
Grant Award: $4,500.00
Three (3) one-day "Comics Camp: Cambridge" workshops for 75 total foster kids (ages 13-18) through Bridges Homeward in Cambridge in 2024. Each BCAF workshop will be structured with an instructional class for 120 minutes, followed by practice with the professional offering comments and guidance to participants. Funding will cover an instructor's time, travel, and curriculum. Bridges Homeward will promote the free class to its network of foster teens. BCAF intends to help with gas funding, as this population would need to be bused to each two-hour event. Additionally, BCAF will include a book buy for Mindfulness Drawing (25 copies of author's book, 1 per teen) and Autobio Comics (25 copies of author's book, 1 per teen), as well as supplies buy for World-building with Comics (25 books and pens, 1 set per teen).
Katie Callam
Grant Award: $4,050.00
This humanities-arts project will celebrate the 150th birthday of trailblazing music historian, pianist, and community organizer Maud Cuney-Hare (1874-1936), a graduate of the New England Conservatory who lived in the Boston area for much of her adult life. Cuney-Hare was the first Black woman to publish a book-length history of Black music in the Americas (1936). Though hers is not a well-known name today, her writing (including in the NAACP journal The Crisis), exhibits, concerts, and other events shared Black music history with audiences across Boston and beyond during her lifetime. Our two-day celebration will feature a panel discussion with both scholars and community leaders, an exhibit of archival materials, and a concert of music from Cuney-Hare's archived collection of sheet music.
Choreo Lab dba OYAY, LLC
Grant Award: $4,464.00
The Cambridge Choreo Lab hosted by Gavin McDowell consists of a free weekly choreographic lab space on Wednesdays from 7-9pm, a 2-hour monthly choreography workshop or coaching session with a professional dancer/choreographer, and finally, and an opportunity to collaboratively choreograph and perform original works in an informal recital showing. All body shapes, orientations, identities, levels, and all movement backgrounds welcome. The program is a community platform for exploration, experimentation, movement generation, creative process, and community to grow something together. Gavin McDowell is a queer, non-binary Cambridge-based dancer, maker, and performing artist who has choreographed and performed original works, created site-specific improvisational installation works, and performed with choreographers Jill Johnson, Chanel DaSilva, Peter Chu, Jenny Oliver, and others.
Peter DiMuro
Grant Award: $4,500
Our Words and Our Movement Connecting Us All/Phase 1 is a 6-month exploration of how the creative forces of dance and movement when combined with personal histories can expand the power and impact of the art forms involved. With words and movement "holding hands" to create new forms of performance, PDM and collaborators will offer new ways to see, value and appreciate participant's own stories, and the stories of others through multiple aspects of word- poetry, prose, song lyrics; and movement- world dance genres, American Sign Language. This proposal is for a 1st phase of the project that includes two major events: 1): "Intention and Illumination: ", a mini festival exploring words, poetry, and movement in workshop and informal "open mic/open floor" showing and 2): "All Our Families' Story Hour," workshops and mini readings/performance focused on LGTBQ+.
Foundry Consortium/Cambridge Foundry
Grant Award: $4,050.00
Our festival aims to utilize art to drive social change and inspire community engagement. Our programming offers diverse workshops in carpentry, fashion design, protest art and design, to empower creativity and artistic exploration. An intergenerational story sharing project bridges the generational gap, fostering connections and transferring knowledge. Local scholars will deliver thought-provoking talks promoting critical discussions. By fostering collaboration among community organizations, emerging groups, and artists, our festival provides engaging programming and showcases available services and resources. We aspire to inspire creativity, cultivate social connections, and catalyze positive change.
Yumi Izuyama
Grant Award: $1,890
I’ll be presenting kamishibai nature stories during five public events in Cambridge. Four will be events organized by the Mass Audubon Society, one will be the 10th Anniversary Monarch Butterfly Release Celebration organized by the City of Cambridge Water Department. The stories will be about plants and insects of Cambridge and will help Cambridge children and their families feel an emotional connection to the nature that surrounds them. In addition, families will engage in community art activities. Each participant will write on a piece of paper a message of gratitude to the trees and insects that live with us and use it to decorate a tree installation. In the case of the monarch butterfly event, the tree installation will be 6.5 feet high paper mâché Oyamel Fir Tree--a kind of tree monarchs roost during winter in Mexico.
Aparna Paul
Grant Award: $313.00
A one-day showcase/workshop/performance highlighting the creative fiber/textile works of three generations of women in my family. Specifically: my mom’s quilts + sewn home goods; her mom’s handmade lace + apparel; my handbound books + spoken-word poetry performances. My mom and grandmother will host basic sewing, quilting, and crocheting workshops throughout the event (supplies provided). This event will take place at the Cambridge Public Library, and the venue will supply light refreshments and further marketing opportunities for the event. Additionally, this showcase will stay in the Community Room at the CPL for an additional 2 weeks following this event (which is essentially an opening reception). With this exhibit, I hope to explore the creative intricacies of almost 100 cumulative years of women in my family weaving a home, again & again.
Patricia Russo
Grant Award: $3,082.50
Partners in Rhyme is a six-week intergenerational poetry program where older adults from Cambridge and teens from the Mayor's Summer Youth Employment Program gather to read, discuss, and write poetry. Teens and adults work in small groups so relationships can develop. Each session, we'll read contemporary and classic poems on Social Emotional Learning topics such as gratitude, mindfulness, and resilience. We'll also explore Cambridge Sidewalk poems. During our intergenerational discussions, participants are encouraged to share personal reactions to poems instead of analyzing the poem's style, form, or intended message. Next, all are invited to write and share personal poems. The series will end with an Open Mic event where participants and the Cambridge community can perform original works created during the program or a favorite poem.
Survivor Theater Project
Grant Award: $4,500.00
Isolation, silence, and shame are some of the most devastating effects of sexual violence, regardless of race, culture, gender, class. Trauma numbs us to our truth. For years HTCA workshops have shed light on the tenderness, courage, expressiveness, and creative wells that lie beneath survivors' wounds once they break silence in a safe, encouraging community. Thanks to funded projects the last 2 years, HTCA workshops now provide even stronger BIPOC and LGBTQ+ leadership and facilitators from these communities, thus uplifting artistic survivor voices from communities that have also been historically silenced and isolated. The community, as a whole, stands only to gain from the power of these voices that bring depth and life wisdom to all.
LOCAL CULTURAL COUNCIL GRANTS - MUSIC
Castle of our Skins, Inc.
Grant Award: $4,500.00
For its fifth season as Ensemble-in-Residence at the Longy School of Music, Castle of our Skins will lead an immersive, three-day residency focused on the music of African American composer Adolphus Hailstork. The ensemble and guest composer will work with students in chamber music and composition master classes, classroom lectures, and affinity spaces with a “meet and greet” social for Black Student Union members. As a capstone to the residency, Castle of our Skins will present a portrait concert featuring solo and chamber music from Hailstork’s rich body of work. An invited high school student ensemble from Project STEP (an advanced string training program for ethnic groups historically underrepresented in classical music) will also perform. The group will receive four hour-long coaching sessions with Castle of our Skins’ musicians in addition to working directly with the composer.
Betty Ding
Grant Amount: $4,500.00
Our goal is to create a show at the Multicultural Arts Center in Cambridge to bridge the East and West through fusing and reinterpreting Chinese folk music, r&b, neo soul, hip hop and gospel music. The concert will take place in May 2024 in celebration of Asian American Pacific Islander month. The band consists of drums, electric bass, electric guitar, electric keys, and Chinese traditional instruments such as the guzheng (a Chinese harp) and the Chinese bass drum dagu. This concert will feature my original music and reinterpretations of r&b songs through an eastern perspective and Chinese traditional folk music with r&b influences. There will also be local vendors to support local Asian business and black businesses.
Cambridge Community Center, Inc.
Grant Award: $4,500.00
The Hip Hop Transformation (THHT) is an award-winning year-round program that utilizes the founding values of hip-hop culture to support young people between the ages of 12 - 24 in their professional and personal development. We do this by teaching and exploring the unique history of hip-hop culture and the role it plays in their lives and communities, while equipping them with the skills, resources, and support to write, record, perform, and distribute their own authentic music. While we are primarily a music program, we have worked hard over the past decade to make THHT accessible across a variety of artistic disciplines such as graphic design, photography, videography, fashion. We aim to provide a framework for social and emotional learning and creative discovery of essential 21st Century Skills such as collaboration, leadership, and technology.
Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble, Inc.
Grant Amount: $1,800.00
The program centers on Asian American experiences and stories of trauma and resilience as conveyed through music and multimedia. The ensemble will be premiering composer Yoon-Ji Lee's "An Unending Winter," which is “dedicated to the plight and lives of so-called Korean ‘comfort women’.” Lee’s understanding of this tragic, inhumane episode in history – and her continued research into its surrounding issues – is incorporated into a piece for ensemble, electronic sound, and video. To supplement this work, the ensemble will also collaborate with Susan Lieu and present theatrical work on Vietnamese beauty standards with live music. The is based on the author/performer's personal experience of losing her mother to medical malpractice from a plastic surgery procedure gone wrong. The ensemble piece "Germinate," by composer Yu-Hui Chang rounds out the program.
Juventas Music, Inc.
Grant Award: $2,700.00
Juventas will present five Cambridge concerts in 2024. We are a contemporary chamber group with a focus on emerging voices. Juventas shares classical music as a vibrant, living art form, bringing audiences music from a diverse array of composers that live in today’s world and respond to our time. Our 2024 Cambridge series includes 4 performances at the Multicultural Art Center 1/27/24: centered on the theme of water, including 3 world premieres by Judith Shatin, Justin Casinghino and Oliver Caplan; and selections by Wayne Lu and Catherine Likhuta. 3/23/24: calling for action on climate change, featuring 2 world premieres by Kyle Rivera and Joseph Sedarski, and selections by Eliza Brown, Catarina Domenici, and Mary Montgomery Koppel. 2 Fall 2024 programs, in development.
Newtowne School
Grant Award: $900.00
To engage a broader and more diverse audience, the Newtowne School is hosting a free family concert with Alastair Moock and Friends as a part of our Spring Fair. Newtowne is committed to making our programming accessible for a variety of families in the Cambridge area. Newtowne supports socioeconomic diversity in our community by providing financial support for approximately 20-25% of our students in a given year. Newtowne understands the need to address the systemic racism that impacts the structure of our society and believes our very youngest citizens should be engaged in dismantling it. As a cooperative program, we are particularly mindful of how our community must partner together to engage in anti-bias and anti-racism work. Alastair Moock is a wonderful choice to lead our youngest citizens joyfully and playfully in this crucial work.
Shelter Music Boston, Inc.
Grant Award: $4,500.00
Shelter Music Boston (SMB) presents classical chamber music concerts, of the highest artistic standards, in homeless shelters and other sheltering environments. Our goal is to promote community, creative interaction, respect, and therapeutic benefit. We believe all people deserve access to the dignity, creativity, and passion of classical music whether they have a home or not. SMB’s professional musicians perform each month in ensembles of 2-4 players at shelters, recovery centers, and affordable housing sites. SMB performs in-person concerts at 7 partner sites, including children’s programs. Our Cambridge partner sites include Putnam Square Apartments, an affordable housing program of HRI, and CASPAR Emergency Shelter. Heading Home and On the Rise receive our concert videos.
Naomi Westwater Weekes
Grant Amount: $968.00
The Reclamation Project is a celebration of people of color in Folk Music. Folk Music is traditional music, folk music is storytelling, folk music is music of the people, folk music is a voice for what’s happening in the world today. In society, there is often no space for marginalized people to tell their stories. The Reclamation Project seeks to make space for musicians of color to tell their stories and tell the stories of our past, so that our future can be a more inclusive place for all. The 90-minute program includes a 60-minute performance by 3 Mass based folk artists of color singing songs in a round. Following the performance will be a 30-minute talk back and discussion where the musicians will talk about their songs and their experience as folk musicians and then the discussion will open to a Q&A.
Matt York
Grant Award: $450.00
Songs and Stories - Johnny Cash is a musical presentation in which I perform songs and tell stories about the country music icon Johnny Cash. This is a free performance that would be open to the public. I also think it’s a subject that would be of interest to a wide swath of the town’s residents. The performance I do combines some of Cash’s most famous songs with some stories about his career and how he not only changed the course of popular music but did so in a very dynamic and powerful way. There are also many videos and info at www.mattyorksongsandstories.com. The country musician Marty Stuart once said, "there are two kinds of people, those that love Johnny Cash's music and those that will". I agree. This video will give you a good sense of what I do.
LOCAL CULTURAL COUNCIL GRANTS – THEATER/DANCE/LITERATURE
All Things Dance Boston
Grant Award: $3,690.00
“The Bridge Vol 2” will be a 2nd annual event hosted by All Things Dance Boston (ATDB) with a night including dance cyphers, exhibition battles & performances. The event will be held at the safe & ADA accessible Sonia in Cambridge. This 18+ event brings people together to connect & build new bridges within our diverse communities. The Bridge will feature exhibition dance battles between dance styles with a high contrast in movement & music such as House, Hip Hop, Vogue, Popping & many more. The Bridge will also include choreographed sets by local dance groups. Local BIPOC vendors will be there representing & selling their flavorful merchandise. In between acts, we will socially dance as part of the cypher; a nonjudgmental space for everyone to move as they feel. With these elements combined, we hope to deliver a special night to the community & celebrate people from all walks of life.
Cambridgeport Elementary School
Grant Award: $4,500.00
Cambridgeport School and Central Square Theater (CST) propose to offer a three-month playwriting and performance residency for third-grade students that meaningfully explores the history and ecosystem of the Quinobequin, now commonly known as the Charles River. The residency will deepen understanding of two curriculum units: a social studies unit focused on local indigenous peoples, including the Wampanoag and Massachusett; and a science unit focused on the river and its ecosystem. In bridging these two units, students will additionally explore the intersecting theme of environmental stewardship, understanding how the history of Massachusetts residents and industry has impacted the river and its native plants and animals. Residency activities will focus on collaborative playwriting exercises, staging and rehearsal workshops, and performance of the final play on the CST Mainstage.
Christina R. Chan
Grant Award: $4,500.00
The proposed project is to produce the Asian American Playwright Collective Playfest 7 and publication of a companion anthology. The annual short plays festival and book is the celebration of new work by local playwrights who identify as Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islanders. The venue will be Starlight Square for its fourth consecutive year and AAPC’s 7th production. The plays in the Playfest are published in an annual anthology and sold during the Playfest. They are also available on Amazon. In Massachusetts, the combination of AAPC performance and anthology is unique in highlighting local AAPI playwrights, actors, and directors on stage and in print.
Dance In Schools, LLC.
Grant Award: $4,500.00
Dance in the Schools (DIS) will bring a team of dance teaching artists into the twelve Cambridge Elementary Public-School classrooms to integrate dance and movement into the academic and arts curricula during school hours. Every Special Start/preschool to 3rd grade classroom teacher is eligible and encouraged to register. Prior to program implementation, dance teaching artists are matched with classroom teachers based on special skills, qualifications, and experience. Participating teachers then collaborate to discuss the curriculum and choose themes like storytelling, rhythm, patterns, spatial awareness, and body control. Classroom teachers are offered 3-4 sessions, with the upper limit based on funding. As DIS enters its 27th year, a major goal is to increase the number of sessions offered from 141 to 200. DIS could then reach new classrooms and benefit many more people.
MUSIC Dance.edu
Grant Award: $810.00
Hip Hop Chair Dance for Seniors! The dance class is about an hour. Elders do a complete chair, dance, warm-up, and hip-hop class that begins and ends in the chairs. We travel through time on the “Soul Train” and chair dance to clean cut hip hop and R & B songs. We use creative props such as smiley faces and the African maracas to help make our soul train journey come to life. Senior participants will leave feeling more limber. “All Aboard the Hip Hop Soul Train Express”
Laura Sánchez
Grant Award: $4,500.00
Welcome to Holland!” is a multidisciplinary work that combines flamenco with poetry, humor, spoken word and installation to uplift the traditionally invisible role of the caregiver. This autobiographical project is inspired by my experience as an Hispanic, immigrant woman and mother of two kids, one of them with multiple disabilities including Cortical Visual Impairment. . “Welcome to Holland!” is an immersive multidisciplinary performance accessible to deaf and blind audiences. This project will shift the paradigm for traditional dance production, reducing reliance on the visual sense and amplifying tactile, taste and aural components, giving the audience a texture, taste and feeling of what Welcome to Holland! is about.
United Dance
Grant Award: $4,500
Carnival of the Animals: A Celebration of Diversity, is an inclusive dance performance by United Dance Company with dancers of different abilities promoting acceptance, diversity & inclusion. This project is a family-friendly & sensory-friendly performance providing an artistic outlet and employment for individuals self-identifying as having a disability (predominantly individuals with Down Syndrome), showcase artists with a disability as artists first, and promote diversity through story and representation in an engaging manner. The protagonist goes on a journey to find and accept who they are and their singularity by meeting animals of all shapes, abilities, types, and personalities. In addition, there will be inclusive activities including on and off-site inclusive dance workshops, school group workshops and viewings of rehearsals promoting diversity.
LOCAL CULTURAL COUNCIL GRANTS - VISUAL ART/FILM
Belmont World Film, Inc.
Grant Award: $4,239.00
Workshops & talk by a former George Lucas animator and a workshop on multicultural identity in foreign films. Films are in multiple languages, many based on children's books with multicultural casts: short films about MLK Jr.; DANCING QUEEN, about a shy 7th grader who joins a hip-hop dance crew, where she must decide who she is and what matters most; COCO FERME, about a 12-year-old boy who starts a small organic egg business; ADVENTURES IN THE LAND OF ASHA, about a 9-year-old boy who searches for a cure for his rare disease with the help of an Indigenous girl; Julia Donaldson's TABBY McTAT, featuring the voice of Jodie Whitaker (DR. WHO); TITINA, about the dog who went with Roald Amundsen & Umberto Nobile to the North Pole; NINA & THE HEDGEHOG'S SECRET, about a 10-year-old girl and her best friend search for money hidden in the abandoned factory where her father was laid off; & more!
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.
Ligia Bouton
Grant Award: $4,500.00
‘On the Corner’ is a film that will document the legacy of The Middle East Restaurant & Nightclub, and its history as a focal point of Central Square’s music scene. The film will also chronicle the redevelopment efforts to transform The Middle East into a six-floor boutique hotel, and the public’s desire to preserve The Middle East, and its mural ‘Crosswinds’ as being culturally significant. The threat of losing this beloved landmark makes the archiving of The Middle East while it stands essential, but equally important is capturin
g the dialogue and process of this redevelopment process for future transparency. The finished film will be screened in public at The Middle East will a filmmaker Q & A.
Just-A-Start
Grant Award: $4,500.00
Just A Start's mission is to promote equity by creating access to stable housing and building pathways to economic opportunity. We are currently renovating a storefront space in Central Square, which will house our financial coaching programs, tax preparation services, and financial mentorship services, with flexible use space for other programs like housing mediation. This storefront building has a 10x30ft brick wall facing one of our residential walkways, and we wish to brighten the space by creating a public-facing mural. We will seek input from community members on design and invite residents and program participants to contribute to painting this mural. The purpose of the mural is not only to provide a more welcoming, friendly environment as a new community space, but also to provide more opportunities for collaborative work and engagement with our current and future participants.
Zhonghe (Elena) Li
Grant Award: $4,500
Rivers have played crucial roles in civilizations and were considered sacred by our ancestors in most cultures. In ancient Chinese mythology, dragons are thought to inhabit major rivers. Dragons symbolize water, weather and the power of the Tao (Nature). Properly respected, a dragon has the power to bring rain, harvest, and prosperity, while when humans fail to respect nature, dragons can bring destruction, such as droughts and floods. The lower Charles (Quinobequin) River is in the shape of a dragon and next year is the year of the dragon. In 2024 I will work with Mass Audubon to develop themes on "River, Dragon and Climate Resilience" and bring interactive, multimedia workshops and participatory storytelling to Cambridge communities, especially under-served children & youth. Will improving on the visual installation with sound recorded from Charles River and multi-media stories.
Denise Malis
Grant Award: $4,239.00
This project is designed as a 14-month art group for marginalized adults with persistent mental illness (PMI and is a unique approach to underserved members of the local Cambridge community. Viewed as a mentoring group/program participants experience support via their art-making, which allows each individual to build an identity outside of the system of mental health care and focus on building agency through developing problem-solving and decision-making skill sets. The programming provides a monthly studio that will augment the skill sets of the participants by offering alternative art processes. As self-taught artists the skills range, however the cost, education and space restrictions disallow artists to experience contemporary approaches. This program allows for exposure to new media and art processes which will be learned and incorporated into their unique art-making approaches.
Photographic Resource Center
Grant Award: $1,350.00
The PRC Speaker Series connects innovative photographer-artists working in the field today with the local photographic arts community. The series offers audiences an opportunity to learn new modes of artistic practice directly from acclaimed artists in a relaxed setting. The four lecture-style events encourage interaction through the presentation of images, ideas, and engaging discourse. Topics include art, culture, society, technology, politics, science, race, and identity. The PRC is committed to offering an inclusive range of artists reflecting today’s diverse art world and our community.
FIELD TRIPS
Friends of Tobin
Grant Award: $3,634.00
The Wheelock experience is for Grades 1 - 3 and introduces many children to the live arts for the first time. Children will read materials related to the production and compare written stories to the live performance.
We’re going to bring the Puppet Showplace Theatre to school for Children’s House Classrooms (3YO through kindergarten) so they can be introduced to theater which is shown to be beneficial to speech and language development and introduces different cultures.
$67,500 In Art For Social Justice Grants Awarded By Cambridge Arts
Pictured from top: Cambridge Hip-Hop Collective and Asian American Ballet Project.
Winners of Cambridge Arts’ 2024 Art for Social Justice Grants include a program that will have teens research enslaved Africans buried in Cambridge cemeteries and create offerings to be left at the graves; theater performances designed to remove barriers to Black attendance; an Asian American ballet company; steel pan music performed in Cambridge parks; live hip-hop performances; a celebration of jazz history; and support for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and other people of color) dance artists.
These are among the nine projects that have been awarded Art for Social Justice Grants totaling $67,500 by Cambridge Arts and the City of Cambridge in 2024. See full list of grants below. This is the third year of the funding program—grants are $7,500 each—which supports projects that present the themes and ongoing work of social justice to the Cambridge public through the arts.
Overall, Cambridge Arts and the City are distributing grants totaling $260,961 to 53 artists and cultural organizations this year through three funding opportunities that Cambridge Arts offered last fall—including Art for Social Justice Grants, Local Cultural Council Grants, and Organizational Investment 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.
ART FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE GRANTS
Asian American Ballet Project
Grant Award: $7,500.00
Asian American Ballet Project (AABP) uses ballet as a medium to increase the representation of Asian Americans in the arts/entertainment industry. We believe it is critical to the development of young people, that they see themselves represented in a wide variety of areas, including ballet. We aim to become role models in our community and inspire young people to dream big. Our first concert left a strong impression on our audience members; the existence of a ballet company made up entirely of Asian American dancers is important and meaningful. We want to continue to share this message with a larger audience.
AABP brings something different to the local arts scene, instead of overlooking the race of our dancers, our ballets acknowledge our actual, self-identified racial identities, long ignored or stereotyped in classical ballet. AABP performs ballets that have never been performed solely by Asian Americans. We rework traditional favorites in ways that help us connect to the stories and share our retellings in an authentic way. AABP also showcases the work of up-and-coming AAPI choreographers who have the unique opportunity of setting their ballets on all-Asian American casts.
Cambridge Carnival International
Grant Award: $7,500.00
Pan in the Park is a series of traditional steel pan performances in various parks across the City of Cambridge presented by Cambridge Carnival International. This series of events will be one of the highlights of Cambridge Carnival International’s 30th Anniversary City-wide celebration. Each event will showcase the organizations Cambridge Youth Steel Orchestra (CYSO) and the folkloric tradition of steel pan music. This series will kick off in June 2024, and culminate in August 2024.
Cambridge Carnival International is a nonprofit grassroots organization led by a diverse and committed board and Carnival Committee and supported by volunteers. Our signature program, the annual Cambridge Carnival festival, is a colorful and festive celebration that is rooted in African traditions. Carnival secretly allowed public communication and cultural bonding for the Afro-Caribbean cultures from as far back as the 1600s. In 2024 we will celebrate 30 years of bringing a fun, engaging, and culturally diverse event to the City of Cambridge. The festival is a Cambridge institution and attracts thousands of residents and visitors. The highlight of the festival is a grand costume parade accompanied by rich rhythmic musicality promoting all types of cultures that can be seen as revelers masquerade through the streets of Cambridge in dazzling handmade costumes, dancing to the beat of Carnival.
Cambridge Hip-Hop Collective
Grant Award: $7,500
The Bridgeside Cypher is a live hip-hop experience for local rappers, singers, and musicians to collaborate in a public, improvised format. We define a cypher as a gathering of rappers, singers, beatboxers, and/or musicians taking turns freestyling and performing in a circle. What started as an informal gathering of street performers in Graffiti Alley has since transformed into a concert series with featured performances and live instrumentation.
We welcome artists from all backgrounds, ages, and experience levels to join us in creating a supportive and inclusive environment where they can build confidence without worrying about being judged or criticized by the public. Our cypher is open to all and has grown into a diverse gathering of creatives, performers, and spectators from many different backgrounds, ethnicities, social classes, ages, genders, and skill levels to collaborate in unity.
Cambridge Jazz Foundation
Grant Award: $7,500.00
"Harmony in Struggle: Jazz Musicians and the Rhythm of Social Justice" In the heart of Cambridge, as the sun shines over Danehy Park, the 9th annual 2024 Cambridge Jazz Festival comes to life. This year, the festival takes a special focus on the intertwining stories of jazz musicians who not only played mesmerizing melodies but also championed the cause of social justice. Here, we present seven extraordinary jazz musicians, each with their unique tales of using their music as a powerful tool for change. Louis Armstrong - The Ambassador of Swing, Billie Holiday - The Songbird of Protest, John Coltrane - The Spiritual Seeker, Nina Simone - The High Priestess of Soul, Max Roach - The Drummer of Protest, Abbey Lincoln - The Voice of Empowerment, Charles Mingus - The Maverick of Melody. As the 2024 Cambridge Jazz Festival celebrates these legendary jazz musicians and share that their music was not just a soundtrack to the times; it was a catalyst for social change. Their melodies were harmonies of hope, and their rhythms echoed the struggle for justice. In their memory, CJF will continue the legacy of using music to amplify the voices of the oppressed and to inspire a world where all can find their own place in the jazz of life. This will start a dialog with the diverse festival participants. These conversations will be videotaped and exist on our online jazz museum to be viewed by hundreds of thousands!
Kristen Joy Emack
Grant Award: $7,500.00
What does it mean to exist in the shadow of an innovation economy? To live in one of the oldest intellectual capitals of the world, see opportunity around every corner, but know that it remains just out of reach?
Cambridge, Massachusetts, is now one of the top 25 innovation cities in the country and is known for incubating global tech companies and developing life-saving vaccines. While lower-income and working-class families have always struggled here, this tech-driven gentrification model is particularly invasive. It prioritizes wealth building for the financially secure and doesn't consider or incentivize equity. This documentary project is my response to watching the demographics of my city neighborhoods change, and seeing familiar and loved community spaces redefined by, and for, the benefit of the wealthy. Instead of investing in opportunity for all, replacement, displacement, and cultural harm is the norm, as the existing digital, educational, and access gaps widen.
A saint in its simplest definition, is an ordinary person who lives a courageous life, and because of this, is worthy of imitation. My project, “Book of Saints,” is my way to venerate those most affected by these societal gaps, neighbors, family, friends, activists, artists, wordsmiths, musicians, city employees, students, the undocumented, and others, by making a visual archive of their portraits, and their disappearing, everyday landscapes. They, like my own family, are most impacted by the overlooked consequences of an innovation economy. Yet, they continue to create, hustle, love, learn, and thrive in spite of it.
The Flavor Continues
Grant Award: $7,500.00
The Flavor Continues actively works to uphold spacial, health, and cultural justice through the multi-pronged approach of the Community Space Program. To participate in Street and Club Dance is to actively fight against the segregation and systemic oppression in the US that inevitably placed this Culture in the marginalized category. In reclaiming space and history through the establishment of a physical home, TFC utilizes this art form to form community and belonging as a means for spatial equity, social justice, and cultural justice.
TFC uses dance as a tool to foster mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing, specifically caters to the Street and Club Dance communities, something that no other organization in the state does; the organizational leaders are members of the community, and as such, have an authentic perspective on how to best serve the community.
TFC uses a peer-to-peer learning model, rather than a traditional instructor/student model, to build community, technical skills, and foster a sense of belonging.
The Front Porch Arts Collective (The Porch)
Grant Award: $7,500.00
The Porch has been a leader producing and facilitating BlackOut performances in the Greater Boston area. BlackOuts are designated select performances for exclusively Black audiences within a standard run of a production that depicts the Black experience. Featured in WBUR, The New York Times, and BBC America, BlackOut shows remove common barriers Black audiences experience in predominantly white theaters. The Porch has facilitated BlackOuts in area theaters including SpeakEasy Stage, The Huntington, and Central Square Theater. BlackOut performances require an expanded marketing and promotion strategy beyond the standard production marketing plan. BlackOut performances are designed to provide deeply subsidized ticketing and pay what you want admission models. Thoughtful staffing prioritizing black and brown front-of-house and support staff and companion programming like post-performance discussion and a pre-show reception are also curated to ensure that the entire experience is elevated, joyful, and above all creates a welcoming, exclusive, and safe space.
Midday Movement Series
Grant Award: $7,500.00
"Shades of Movement" (working title), is a program holistically supporting BIPOC dance artists individually and communally with offerings that include individual consultations, social events, and professional development workshops that are open and free of charge for local dance artists of color.
Growing from our work on our Decentering Whiteness in Contemporary Dance Pedagogy workshops, our BIPOC Professional Dancer Mentorship Program, and the mentorship and professional development coaching we have provided to our dedicated teachers since our inception, “Shades of Movement” aims to support BIPOC artists --individually and collectively-- as a key method toward racial justice: whereas equity seeks to reform our system, justice aims to transform our culture.
Fatima Seck
Grant Award: $7,500.00
This project will lead a group of Cambridge teens through the act of doing archival and site-based research about the presence of enslaved Africans in Cambridge cemeteries; creating ceramic poem-jugs & ceramic flower arrangements to leave as offerings at tombstones of Africans buried in the Old Burial Grounds & Mt Auburn Cemetery; and putting on a community event to acknowledge Cambridge slave history.
Over the course of the 5-6 workshops, five teens will have the opportunity to explore the histories of slavery that shape Cambridge; craft techniques from coil-method ceramics in African & African American traditions to Edgefield poem-jugs to poetry making with found text; the politics of history, memory & public space; and our responsibility to history and the dead. We’ll learn and develop new skills, engage with marginalized histories, and consider seriously how to practice our responsibility to the dead -- particularly those who were marginalized in their lives -- with care & compassion.
$81,000 In Organizational Investment Grants Awarded To 9 Cambridge Nonprofits
Pictured clockwise from top left: Maria Baldwin Community & Maud Morgan Arts, The Loop Lab, and Cambridge Community Art Center.
Nine Cambridge cultural organizations have been awarded $81,000 in Organizational Investment Grants by Cambridge Arts and the City of Cambridge. The nonprofits are community art centers, associations and performance venues. They offer teaching and professional development, live music and dance, and broadcast cultural programming to diverse audiences. The funding program provides $9,000 grants to each nonprofit to support operational costs, sustainability, and resiliency for local cultural organizations that benefit Cambridge residents.
This year’s recipients are:
• Cambridge Art Association
• Cambridge Community Art Center
• Cambridge Community Television
• Club Passim
• The Dance Complex
• Dunamis
• Global Arts Live
• The Loop Lab
• Maria Baldwin Community & Maud Morgan Arts
(Full organization descriptions see below.)
This is the fourth year Cambridge Arts has awarded Organizational Investment Grants, which began as part of Cambridge Arts’ covid relief efforts. Rather than funding individual cultural projects, like most Cambridge Arts grants, our Organizational Investment Grants offer our largest financial grants to local organizations to support their ongoing, overall good work. Creating this category just for organizations also helps individual artists by creating more funding opportunities for them in our other grant categories—because of less competition there with substantial organizations.
Overall Cambridge Arts and the City are distributing grants totaling $260,961 to 53 artists and cultural organizations this year through three funding opportunities that Cambridge Arts offered last fall—including Art for Social Justice Grants, Local Cultural Council Grants, and Organizational Investment 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.
Cambridge Arts’ Organizational Investment Grants are awarded on an annual cycle, with the due date to apply usually in mid-October of each year.
$81,000 In Organizational Investment Grants Awarded To 9 Cambridge Nonprofits
2024 Cambridge Arts Organizational Investment Grant Winners:
Cambridge Art Association
Grant Award: $9,000
https://www.cambridgeart.org
Since 1944, the Cambridge Art Association has served as a community hub and career catalyst for visual artists in the Greater Boston Area.
Our mission - to build a vibrant community through visual art: connecting individuals and facilitating dialogue among artists and art lovers of all ages and backgrounds.
Cambridge Art Association, (CAA), hosts acclaimed exhibits of regional and national artists in three galleries across Cambridge: the Kathryn Schultz Gallery, CAA @ University Place Gallery in West Cambridge, and CAA @ Canal in Kendall Square. We present educational programs for practicing artists, host talks open to arts appreciators, and maintain a corporate art program connecting artists with businesses of all sizes. CAA is, above all, a community open to all. The Community Art Center’s (CAC's) mission is to cultivate an engaged community of youth whose powerful artistic voices transform their lives, neighborhoods, and worlds. The Art Center believes in the power of young people, of artistic expression, of taking care of oneself and of one another, and of creating positive change in its home neighborhood and beyond.
Cambridge Community Art Center
Grant Award: $9,000.00
https://www.communityartcenter.org
The Art Center is a mutual aid organization founded by a group of parents in 1937 in Cambridge's Port neighborhood to provide comprehensive human services to their fellow public housing residents, with a focus on the arts and holistic youth development. The Art Center offers childcare and summer camps, junior leadership groups, intermediate arts classes, and Teen Programs for youth ages 5-19. At least 60% of registrations is reserved for low-income families, and most families access the organization's programming for free or at steep discounts. The Art Center’s collective impact Port ARISE Institute is a collective impact family stabilization program that supports a cohort of 15 families in navigating federal, state, and local applications for emergency assistance.
Cambridge Community Television
Grant Award: $9,000.00
https://www.cctvcambridge.org
Cambridge Community Television nurtures a strong, equitable and diverse community by providing tools and training to foster free speech, civic engagement, and creative expression while connecting people to collaboratively produce media that is responsive, relevant, and effective in a fast-changing technological environment.
For 35 years we have made high-end technology and training available to anyone who wants to tell their story. CCTV operates Three local cable channels, 8, 9 & 96, featuring programming produced by Cambridge residents, including youth and elders. We are committed to radical access, examining barriers to membership, and providing open access to technology and education that supports creativity. Radical Access is getting out into the community (like our pop ups) and creative collaboration across municipalities and programs. It’s language justice and intergenerational exchange. We are also a core hub for the Arts & Culture community in Cambridge as a driver of the CREATE Cambridge initiative and a host and platform for music, visual arts, dance, comedy, and theater arts.
Club Passim
Grant Award: $9,000.00
https://www.passim.org
The mission of Passim is to provide truly exceptional and interactive live musical experiences for both performers and audiences, to nurture artists at all stages of their career, and to build a vibrant, inclusive music community. We do so through our legendary listening venue, music school, artist grants and outreach programs.
As a nonprofit since 1994, Passim carries on the heritage of our predecessors Club 47 (1958-1968), and for-profit Passim (1969-1994). Located in Harvard Square, Passim serves Cambridge and New England by featuring local, national and international artists at all levels of their musical career. We cultivate a diverse range of musical traditions, where the emphasis is on the relationship between performers and audience and teachers and students. Our ultimate goal is to help the performance arts flourish and thereby enrich the lives of members of our community, and beyond.
Passim has five main programs that allow us to achieve our mission of providing exceptional live music experiences and building a vibrant, inclusive music community: Club Passim, the Passim School of Music, the Folk Collective, Grants and Community Festivals and Series.
The Dance Complex
Grant Award: $9,000.00
https://www.dancecomplex.org/
The Dance Complex enables the creation, study, and performance of dance. We sustain artists, audiences, and community through programs that connect and celebrate the wonder and curiosity for movement/dance. We embrace the widest definition of movement: we include the heritage dances from around the world: dances from Africa, the Middle East, South America, and diaspora nations' evolution, live at The DC side by side with new dances made today. These new dances are inspired by the true diversity of age, race, social and economic background of those who study, teach, and perform here, and we embrace the widest definition of dancer: dancing at all levels and for all intents opens our circle to all. We see the stories of these individuals and communities as the source of new dances of inherent communicative power as impactful tools of human empathy.
Dunamis
Grant Award: $9,000.00
https://www.dunamisboston.org
Dunamis first began to gestate in 2013 as an academic project from founder J. Cottle while he was in graduate school as a response to the lack of job preparedness, he had experienced in all his arts training. Today, Dunamis is a Boston-based nonprofit serving the entire Greater Boston area whose mission is to ignite agency and transformative growth for emerging artists and arts-managers of color by serving as a nexus for professional development, community-building, consultation, production, advocacy and developing equitable pipelines for access and leadership in creative spaces. We give folx the support they need to grow into greater and more complete versions of themselves.
Dunamis does everything we can to support and create space for creatives of color. Our work extends into ongoing internal programming including our Emerging Artist Fellowship, Arts Management Apprenticeship, Young Artist Mixer Series, The Allison Wade Masterclass Series, Artists Anonymous and JP Porchfest. We were recently contracted by The City of Cambridge to provide six professional development trainings for Cambridge's emerging artists. Additionally, we serve on the steering committee for Create the Vote, a MA bipartisan initiative advocating for the arts in local politics.
Global Arts Live
Grant Award: $9,000.00
https://globalartslive.org
Global Arts Live was founded in 1990 by Maure Aronson under the name World Music. As a recent immigrant from South Africa who missed the music of his home country, Aronson wanted to bring international music to the local Boston community. He assembled a board of directors, raised a small amount of money, presented three concerts with South African artists, and grew the organization to what it is today.
In 2019, we recognized a need for a powerful new brand that better represented our wide array of programming, so we changed our name to Global Arts Live. This new brand puts the spotlight on what we value most, the transformative power of live performance to enrich lives, and better reflects our place in today’s globalized world.
The Loop Lab
Grant Award: $9,000.00
https://www.thelooplab.org/
The Loop Lab is a BIPOC-led nonprofit social enterprise specializing in media arts fellowships and digital storytelling. Cambridge-based, our mission is to empower Womxn and People of Color in the media arts to develop careers in audio/video through job training and job placement. We were founded in 2017 when Chris Hope, desperate to create positive change for young people of color, surveyed young adults in the Port Neighborhood about what kinds of opportunities they wanted to see available. Two answers consistently came up: creativity, and economic opportunities. In response, Artplace America and local foundations empowered Chris to create The Loop Lab.
Now a leading nonprofit dedicated to providing media arts opportunities for young people of color, in 2021 we were selected by the Social Innovation Forum as one of six nonprofits for their Social Innovator cohort. In 2021, we were also selected as one of 15 organizations for Powering Cultural Futures, a Barr Foundation multi-year initiative to establish a more just and inclusive arts sector in Massachusetts. Through this initiative, we partner with socially conscious organizations to increase access to arts and cultural expression of BIPOC communities.
Maria Baldwin Community & Maud Morgan Arts
Grant Award: $9,000.00
https://maudmorganarts.com
Maud Morgan Arts sprang from the vision of two forward-looking women, Wendy Prellwitz and Terry DeLancey, in 1992. They recognized the need for an art center in Cambridge for children, families, and professional artists. The 19th century carriage house standing behind the (formerly known as) Agassiz Baldwin Community with its expansive yard and overarching trees became this opportunity. The proposed art center was named in honor of Maud Morgan, a neighborhood resident and noted artist. Maud Morgan was an artist of great talent and vitality who gave generously to younger generations and her community. Her spirit continues to guide the art center. In 1999 the city of Cambridge issued a zoning permit to ABC to operate an arts center at 20 Sacramento Street. The capital campaign was launched and eventually raised $1.2M of the $1.4M goal. Contributions came from foundations, institutions, families, community leaders, neighbors, artists, and friends of Maud Morgan. An unanticipated legal challenge delayed construction until the fall of 2010. At that point, the capital campaign reached its goal, the permit to build was issued, and construction began. In 2010 Maud Morgan Arts opened its doors and students of all ages enrolled in classes and workshops. Programs have continued to evolve, and the pandemic challenged us deeply, but also provided us with opportunities to adjust our program structures to better meet the needs of the community.