Our monthly Fellows Notes shares the latest news from current and past Artist Fellows and Finalists.
We are on the front lines of a war on poverty. Not necessarily a shortage of material wealth, although its distribution in America is both a consequence and contributor to the current distress. The poverty our field confronts every day is that which Robert Kennedy confronted while running for President in 1968. He contrasted the wealth represented in the nation’s gross national product with the wealth necessary to sustain a democracy and make life worth living.
Congratulations to the Fall/Winter grantees from our Festivals Program! Celebrate the vibrancy of our communities at these festivals - and more - throughout the season.
Local Cultural Councils Reimagine Their Role in Community-wide Planning
This fall Hamilton, the musical and cultural phenomenon, drew standing-room-only crowds from adults and children of all ages during its run at the Boston Opera House. Along with the show came the Hamilton Education Program — a partnership between The Gilder Lehrman Institute, the producers of Hamilton, and the Lin-Manuel Miranda family — in which students from high schools with high percentages of low-income families are invited to see the show and integrate Alexander Hamilton and the founding era into their classroom studies.
Watch Hyannis HyArts Cultural District's Melissa Hersh discuss their new Main Street informational kiosks at Mass Cultural Council's Cultural District Convening last month.
The nation’s leading scholars and advocates for folk and traditional arts have awarded Dr. Maggie Holtzberg of Newton their highest national honor for lifetime achievement in public folklore. Dr. Holtzberg was awarded the Benjamin A. Botkin Prize by the American Folklore Society (AFS) at its annual meeting last month in Buffalo, NY.
We encourage arts, humanities, and sciences organizations to apply for UP Designation or to be a part of the Innovation and Learning Network.
We’ve seen how creative expression lifts young people beyond poverty, disability, and other societal barriers here in Massachusetts and across the nation. Today the movement for creative youth transcends national borders. Earlier this month, our neighbors to the south shared some of their insights on the transformative power of the arts in the lives young people at a Harvard University panel discussion.
Dr. Love is an award-winning author and Associate Professor of Educational Theory & Practice at the University of Georgia. She is one of the field’s most esteemed educational researchers in the ways in which urban youth negotiate culture to form social, cultural, and political identities to create new and sustaining ways of thinking about urban education and intersectional social justice.
