$67,500 Of Art For Social Justice Grants Awarded By Cambridge Arts

 

Winners of Cambridge Arts’ 2026 Art for Social Justice Grants include:

 

• Concerts of revolutionary music from the French Revolution to the George Floyd protests and music highlighting immigration and cultural exchange.

• Monthly public, improvised hip-hop freestyling

• Dance honoring queer, BIPOC, and differently abled

• A mutual aid market for toiletries, books, art, and bartering with local artisans.

• Caribbean carnival

• Public readings about social justice

• Preschool cultural programming

 

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 2026. See full list of grants below.

 

This is the fifth 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 $369,715 to more than 67 artists, cultural organizations, and community-based grant reviewers via grants and stipends in 2026 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.

 

 

Grant Award: $7,500

 

Premiering April 17th and 18th, 2026, Intersections v5 is a performance that highlights BIPOC, queer, and disabled honorees past and present to the stage. We are honoring disability, BIPOC, and queer history through dance and music from MA-based and nationally recognized trailblazers. These honorees are changing the state and national landscape for deaf/disabled communities who want to feel seen both through the subjects and ensuring the work itself is accessible, which very few MA companies do. Additionally, so the message is clear, we have audio descriptions that are also narrative over the music for all to hear in universal design concepts, so that blind/low-vision audiences and audiences new to dance can understand these honorees' stories in movement and music. It helps that this is created and led by a queer/BIPOC/disabled MA based artistic leadership team committed to disability justice in Massachusetts.

 

Intersections v5 will premiere in Cambridge to honor a new slate of queer, BIPOC, and disabled honorees past and present that have influenced disabled and diverse communities, various industries/sectors, and advocacy for the betterment of all. This year will be different as we are not only having new honorees, but thus new choreography and music to match. We are also intentionally focusing on bringing in queer/trans advocacy and history by working with Mass Trans Political Coalition and the Queer History Project. We will partner with Mass Trans Political Coalition to highlight current bills on the MA state floor that impact the queer/trans community. We will also partner with the Queer History Project to further support with our outreach in queer/trans communities and archive our work as part of the broader history being done in greater Boston's LGBTQIA+ movement. We will also continue to partner with Disability Policy Consortium to highlight current bills on the MA state floor for the deaf/disabled community.   

 

Grant Award: $7,500.00

 

Building Belonging Through Art at Alewife Preschool. Our project will embed the themes of identity, belonging and self-expression through culturally responsive arts programming within Alewife Preschool DHSP. 

 

The preschool serves children ages 3-5 from a wide range of racial, cultural, linguistic and 90% of our students come from underrepresented backgrounds in Cambridge. This initiative will include classroom-based arts workshops, visual storytelling, mural creation, community exhibits and performances that highlight student and family voices. The activities will focus on themes like, My Identity, My Family Traditions, My Neighborhood, and What Belonging Feels Like. Children will explore the diversity of art through painting, sculpture, collage, music, and movements supported by teaching artists and community partners.

 

Grant Award: $7,500.00

 

The Bean & Barter Market is an artist-driven, community-centered project that is part market, part mutual aid, and part community gathering. Due to the constant shifts in federal funding and programming, and the intentional systemic attacks on marginalized communities, many who previously received vital government assistance are now floating without an anchor. We all see evidence that this number is likely to grow in the coming years. It’s clear that it’s time to find ways to care for our community ourselves and explore alternative ways of living.?

 

This is why we host Bean & Barter, a mutual aid market, where community members can acquire necessary resources like toiletries, books, and art, and participate in bartering sessions with local artisans. Through Bean & Barter, we ask community members to explore other means of exchange that don’t rigidly rely on money and view our resources as communal. Bean &

 

Barter was started by a group of artists and is anchored within the creative community. Artists are often hit hard during times of crises, when budget cuts are made, the arts are often the first to go. Artists also span diverse experiences and intersect with many of the communities that are feeling the impacts of federal shifts. At the same time, creative communities are resilient, collaborative, and open to experimentation in their practices and approach. Many use their voice and practice to draw attention to injustice and ask hard questions about power, access, and equity in the worlds we live in. At the same time, being an artist in this current world is not separate from the web of capitalism; questions of value, cost, financial stability, and who can thrive and survive in this space are ever-present in our communities. This is one of the many reasons we wanted to center B&B around crafters, makers, and artists, to use our energy of experimentation, care, and critique to dive into this practice of mutual aid and alternative economies.

 

Grant Award: $7,500.00

 

CircuStations begins with these underlying principles. 1) The making of art in a social context contributes to good health. 2) A dimension of the prescription against loneliness is actual circulation, moving across space. 3) Movement across generations, through contact between youth and elders, helps us feel right in everyday life. 4) Artwork that reflects on vibrations, rhythms, and small life experiences can help us feel right.

 

The project will unfold during the year 2026. It will bring artists and art teachers into workshops with groups of youth and elders for multi-modal art making experiences, making art together around the theme of feeling right in everyday life.? A cohort of 50 individuals (35 youth, 15 elders) will circulate across four artmaking spaces in Cambridge.

 

Grant Award: $7,500.00

 

Boston Public Quartet presents two programs of music during their 20th season at Multicultural Arts Center in Cambridge. In Fall 2026, Music of Revolution joins the Boston 250 event roster with pieces from the eras of World War II, the French Revolution, and the George Floyd protests. In Spring 2027, Music of Migration centers pieces which highlight stories of immigration and cultural exchange. With music both old and new, each concert at the Multicultural Arts Center will include a premier performance of a commissioned arrangement for BPQ, a standard work from the classical repertoire, and work by a celebrated contemporary composer who will discuss their music with the audience in concert.

 

Music of Revolution features pieces written during revolts through the ages. Joseph Bologne’s middle quartets were written at the peak of the French Revolution and are windows into the French classical tradition and Bologne’s musical virtuosity. Shostakovich’s piano quintet holds a place among the mammoth pieces of the classical repertory and was written at the commencement of World War II and contains the turmoil of his personal conflict with the Soviet government, while Oliver Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time was written and premiered while in captivity at a German prison during WWII. Long-time Boston resident Jonathan Bailey Holland’s Synchrony features heart wrenching audio clips from 2013-2020 including words from Barack Obama and Cicely Tyson as well as poignant field recordings tied to the deaths of Sandra Bland and George Floyd. The piece ruminates on the sensation of being between two places at once and on the apparent necessity of continuing our daily lives while cultural revolution surrounds us.

 

Grant Award: $7,500.00

 

The 31st Annual Cambridge Carnival, held in September 2025, marked the largest number of parade groups in the parade in the event’s history, an extraordinary milestone for this vibrant, BIPOC-led cultural institution. A one-time grant from MA250 initiative allowed us to triple the number of groups in our parade. Although it rained all day, every single group showed up and presented amazing performances. Groups participating for the first time included: Froca Fitness African Dance Group, Good Trouble Band, DJ Diamond Dale, 4 Star Dance Studio, Tjovi Ginen, Kandjanwou Rara and Zion in Motion, and more.

 

Grant Award: $7,500.00

 

CCTV proposes to host a series of public readings that connect social justice themes from history and literature to issues that are relevant to Cambridge residents today. We held our first public reading in July 2025, with Frederick Douglass’s What to the Slave is the 4th of July, and will build on the success of that event with a series of four readings in 2026. 

 

The CCTV Reads series will take place in our front lobby and in our Blue Studio. The front lobby is a public space, visible to Mass Ave, where passersby can pause for a few minutes and listen to the event. The Blue Studio is our large TV production studio, which holds 40-45 people and offers space for a larger audience experience.

 

Grant Award: $7,500

 

The Cambridge Hip-Hop Collective is seeking funding for a series of Bridgeside Cyphers, a monthly hip-hop event in Cambridge that has been operating since 2017. The Bridgeside Cypher is a live hip-hop experience for local rappers, singers, producers, musicians, and others who wish 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 series of cypher events featuring performances and live instrumentation, showcasing our commitment to diversity and inclusivity. 

 

We welcome artists of all backgrounds, ages, and experience levels to join us in creating a supportive and inclusive environment. At the Bridgeside Cypher, they can build confidence without fear of judgment or criticism from the public. Our cypher is open to everyone and has evolved into a diverse gathering of creatives, performers, and spectators from various backgrounds, ethnicities, social classes, ages, genders, and skill levels, all coming together to collaborate.

 

The cypher circle segment of each show offers a platform for artists of all experience levels to showcase their talent. It creates a safe and supportive environment, especially for newcomers, inspiring and motivating them to perform alongside other artists on stage. This experience of unity has led to many creative collaborations and lasting friendships, with artists networking, working together on songs, albums, and even organizing their own shows.

 

Reaching out to different types of audiences is one of our main goals. The stories told within hip-hop should be heard by as many people in our community as possible. Our mission statement is to build bridges between people of all backgrounds in our community through hip-hop, and by exposing new individuals to these stories, we can begin to break down cultural barriers and deep-rooted biases contributing to systemic racism. One attendee who became a fan at our Starlight Square event mentioned how she recognized her unconscious cultural biases after experiencing our cypher. She then introduced us to the Multicultural Arts Center, and through them, we began connecting with more venues, non-profit organizations, and institutions such as the Charles River Conservancy, Mass Audubon, and MIT.

 

Grant Award: $7,500.00

 

MINARA, meaning beacon of light in Arabic, emerges as both metaphor and method: a light that gathers people, a structure built for collective seeing. Conceived by the Cambridge-based MIPSTERZ non-profit arts and culture collective, MINARA is a multi-sensory, community-rooted art initiative that transforms everyday spaces into sites of reflection, dialogue, and imagination. The project invites residents of Cambridge to come together through story, sound, and shared experience to explore what justice feels like when it’s lived, when it’s made audible, visible, and tangible through art, performance, and dialogue. 

 

In a city known for its intellectual rigor and civic engagement, MINARA offers something different: an affective space, a place where thinking and feeling merge. Over six months, the project unfolds through a constellation of recurring public programs, storytelling nights, intimate lectures, grief circles, film screenings, and participatory installations that bridge the intimate and the collective. Each program becomes a lantern, and together they form a constellation of light guiding the city toward empathy and shared flourishing.

 

The series begins with Stories Under the Light, a monthly storytelling gathering where neighbors step into the space to tell personal, true stories about identity, belonging, and moral courage. Each story lasts only a few minutes, but each one widens the circle of understanding. Listeners sit close, lights warm and low, as laughter and silence ripple between them. In a time of digital noise and social fragmentation, these evenings return to the forgotten ritual of storytelling as civic practice where community is built through attention and vulnerability.