Move4ART

      In early November, a group of six finalists were chosen to develop public art proposals for  the Dudley Square Municipal Center .    Since then, the artists have been hard at work on their proposals, and they will be presenting their conceptual designs to the selection committee on  January 20th and 21st  from  6-8pm   in the Community Room at Central Boston Elder Services.        Each short-listed artist will have twenty minutes to present their concepts for the Wall Design Project or the Outdoor Sculpture Project. The chosen artists will develop their designs for installation at the Dudley Municipal Center in November 2014.    Presentations are free and open to the public The Wall Design finalists are  Best Dressed Signs ,  Cyrille Conan , and  Napoleon Jones-Henderson .  The Outdoor Sculpture finalists are  Christopher Puzio ,  Madeline Weiner , and...

The ICA/Boston 's Barbara Lee Foundation Theater  filled quickly for the "Cultural Planning Learning Session" after lunch on Novembe 18th.  After giving props to MassCreative 's Create the Vote campaign, the BCA 's Veronique LeMelle set the stage for the afternoon's presenters:   Julie Burros, Director of Cultural Planning for the City of Chicago , spoke from a practical perspective about Chicago's Cultural Plan and the need to develop a strategic plan that can carry cultural policies forward through multiple city administrations; and Dr. Maria Rosario Jackson, Senior Advisor to the Arts and Culture Program at the Kresge Foundation and an Obama appointee to the National Council on the Arts (NEA), who spoke from the perspective of one grounded in research. Dr. Jackson's overview of her key findings (summarized below) are drawn from her reflections on how urban planning research about arts and culture has progressed in recent years. (Hi...

Photo credit: G. Sierra Khan              Wheelock Family Theatre showcased the first cohort of young playwrights to participate in its Emerging Playwrights Program  (EPP) last Friday night at the Mattahunt Community Center .          A large, first-floor activity room was converted into a makeshift, flexible theatre space.  And there, with the Boston mural as a backdrop, actors staged readings of the young playwrights' works.      In rapid-fire fashion, the evening's program cycled through five ten-minute plays:  Eden Beleke's Paradise  took a comedic look at cell phone addiction and the tensions it engenders; Jacarrea Garraway's Our Son  finds parents' new possibilities dashed once their son drops out of college and returns home; Alex Drumm, Jr.'s Worst Case Scenario  traps father- and son-in-law to be in an elevator where they hash out their differences, whil...

First, we must give a double shout-out to MassCreative :  for mobilizing artists and arts organizations around a powerful idea, i.e., to " Create The Vote 2013" (implications for future campaigns?  We hope so.); and for facilitating arts-focused candidate forums.  Kudos are also due to WBUR 's TheARTery for " Arts and the Next Mayor: What Boston Wants and What it May Get "--digitally capturing (and archiving) an arts-focused approach to a campaign now winnowed to  Connolly On The Arts  and Walsh On The Arts .   'Cause here and now, TheARTery 's a time-saver as we try to figure out which of these two guys to vote for on Tuesday, 6 November 2013.   Problem is, plans for the arts being forwarded by the candidates are clearly cut from the same cloth--one woven by what TheARTery describes as "Boston's cultural community."   As a result  both candidates kinda sound alike when talking about how their administrations would ...

Mattapan (Environmental) Action Network's most recent post really captures the mood: Meh! Tuning N2 the Mayoral Race . 'Cause I have been feeling a lil "meh!" about the race; especially as the field ballooned and eventually winnowed. Under the circumstances we'll have to cast our vote based on each candidate's commitment to artists and access to "the ahts"--arts education, arts OST-programming, arts institutions, arts facilities, to arts as a portal to civic engagement.   Tomorrow we'll post our findings here.