As part of the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s Local Cultural Council Program, Cambridge Arts makes annual awards to support arts and culture in the City. The program provides access to professional arts and culture events for Cambridge youth through Field Trip Grants and supports individual artists and organizations through Project Grants.
Funded projects include a program to engage teens and police officers through hip-hop; temporary public art on Cambridge Commons; the production of new theatrical works; a street festival; sculpture racing; and many more dynamic and socially relevant projects.
Music
Dino Cattaneo
North Americana Festival
The North Americana Music Festival is a one day open air music festival celebrating the tradition and evolution of Americana music. Open to all ages and backgrounds. The festival will take place in Harvard Square on Saturday September 17th, 2016 within Revival Month.
Cambridge Community Center
The Hip Hop Transformation
The Hip Hop Transformation is a program for teens ages 14-18 offered by the Cambridge Community Center in partnership with Cambridge Police Department. The project helps teens find their voice through hip hop music to spark conversations about relevant social issues, confront social inequalities, and create a public forum to form opinions.
Equilibrium Concert Series
Equilibrium Ensemble Project
Three composers, three concerts, and three different views of New England Music.
Longy School of Music of Bard College
Sistema Side by Side Third Season
Longy School has become a nationally-recognized leader in El Sistema, the Venezuelan movement that seeks to address issues of poverty through rigorous musical training in community music programs. Through the series, Longy Conservatory students sit "side-by-side" with children musicians (aged 7-15) from undeserved communities for a year of rehearsals and concerts. Each season features a variety of conductors and acclaimed guest artists.
Boston City Singers/Cambridge Children's Chorus
Cambridge Children's Chorus
Cambridge Children's Chorus reaches 135+ young singers ages 4-14 through: Kodaly singing Classes, Melody Makers, Neighborhood Training Choruses and Cantare. Cambridge Children’s Chorus teaches a wide-ranging repertoire including gospel music, international folk music in many languages, opera, jazz and medieval chant with particular emphasis on global music and the African Diaspora.
Theater, Literature & Multidisciplinary
Erich Haygun
Cheap Seats
Cheap Seats is a variety show featuring 5 minute performances from over 2 dozen acts of all genres of live art. It will be staged at the YMCA in Cambridge and welcomes artists of all skill levels where by audience members are immersed in performances happen all around them on the state, balconies, and floor area in rapid succession. Cheap Seats is a deliberately anti-oppressive, all ages, accessible space featuring wheelchair aces and pay-what-you-can ticket prices.
Liars & Believers
Who Would Be King
Cambridge-based Liars and Believers will complete the development of Who Would Be King, a new multidisciplinary theatrical production that explores how contemporary leaders and citizens can heroically strive to improve our world in the face of their own human weaknesses. This production will be presented at Oberon with affordable tickets and targeted marketing to serve the Cambridge community. Captions for the Deaf and audio description for the Blind will increase accessibility and broaden audiences.
The Poets' Theatre
Beowulf
The Poets' Theatre will present a stage adaptation of "Beowulf" translated by Cambridge's own Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney at the Multicultural Arts Center. This rip-roaring tale of monsters, heroes, glory and honor will erupt out of a joyful celebration of the solstice. The audience will sit at long tables, enjoying food, drink and entertainment by jugglers, acrobats, dancers, and musicians presenting a time-warped mash-up of ancient and modern sounds and skills. Three professional actors will lead this group of artists into a dynamic telling of this great poem in among the audience - striding on tables, moving all around the space, using creative staging and the power of language to evoke the Anglo-Saxon fable.
New Repertory Theatre
Classic Repertory Company
Classic Repertory Company brings adaptations of classic plays from the page to the stage in schools, senior centers, and other community venues throughout New England.
Underground Railway Theater
The Convert Community Connectivity Program
Support for Community Connectivity activities and launch of a street team, comprised of members of the Youth Underground resident ensemble.
Agassiz Baldwin Community
Hip Hop Festival
The Hip Hop Festival, taking place during February vacation week, highlights local youth & professional music and dance acts geared towards a school age audience.
Jorge Santiago Arce
Comparsa Boricua
Comparsa Boricua is a Puerto Rican and Afro-Caribbean cultural heritage program that will provide one assembly and four workshops on Piena dance, music and Vejigante mask making for 200 bilingual and ESL children and families at the Amigos Cambridgeport Community School, followed by a parade by the workshop participants at the Cambridge Arts River Festival in June.
Dina Deitsch
Common/Commons
A series of temporary public art projects in Cambridge Common. Cambridge Residents and Visitors of all ages are invited to participate.
Friends of Mount Auburn Cemetery
A Glimpse Beyond
A Glimpse Beyond is a unique tour offering unexpected sights and sounds while strolling through some of the most beautiful and iconic sections of Mount Auburn Cemetery. As they walk, audience members encounter "glimpses" performed by a cast of professional and community-based musicians, choirs, choruses, dancers, and poets.
Dance
Erica Sigal
Dance in Schools
Dance in the Schools brings dance education to Cambridge Public School classrooms. Programs integrate dance and creative movement into academic and arts curricula. Sixteen dance teaching artists will provide 110 sessions in 40 classrooms during March and April.
Capoeira and Arts Association of New England
Capoeira Cultural Exchange Batizado and Workshops
Talented instructors from around the world participated in Capoeira Cultural Exchange Batizado and Workshops benefiting residents of the greater Boston area. Retroactive funding awarded
Dance Complex
Festival of You & Us & We & Them
A twice a year mini festival produced by The Dance Complex. The public will experience dance through workshops, performances, and dance-dialogues that explore the multiple facets of dance as an art form. Residents and guest artists will teach and perform.
Green Street Studios
GSS Community Dance Offerings
GSS plans to cultivate and offer classes that are accessible to the general community between the hours of 3:00-5:00PM M-F. Classes are taught by resident companies, creative residency artists, GSS in-house teachers, or GSS guest teachers specializing in various disciplines (hip hop, contemporary, Irish step, etc.) The target age range for this program is all inclusive and can range from baby to grandparent. Strategic scheduling would allow simultaneous classes to be held so that parents with children can experience dance within the same time frame.
Jean Appolon Expressions
JAE Teen Dance Program
JAE's Teen Program provides a high quality dance program to teens ages 13-19 who are interested in improving their dance technique and learning, rehearsing and performing original choreography by Jean Appolon. The program curriculum focuses on Modern and Haitian folkloric dance.
MetaMovments Latin Dance Company
Salsa in the Park Cambridge
Salsa in the Park offers dance instruction, events, performances and social dancing in parks across Cambridge during the summer months.
Visual Arts, Film & Video
Karen Frostig
The Vienna Project's Naming Memorial Installation
Developed as a sequel project, The Vienna Project’s Naming Memorial Installation represents a unique model of remembrance designed to reach international audiences. The Vienna Project, which was conceived as a temporary social action memorial project situated on the streets of Vienna, was the first public art memorial of its kind in Europe to represent multiple groups of persecuted victims of National Socialism at the same moment as a national narrative. A multi-media, interdisciplinary project forging a dynamic relationship between art, history, technology, and education.
Community Art Center
Port Stories Public Project
The Port Stories Public Art Project is a multi-year initiative which grows the level of civic engagement of Port residents. In 2016, the initiative will present two community workshops, two community events, and result in the completion of two murals celebrating the Port and its surrounding neighborhoods. The Art Center's Youth Council, Youth Advisory Board and Port Arts Council will provide leadership.
Le Leboratoire Cambridge
15 points LA random International Exhibition
A sculptural robotic installation to explore human interaction with technology.
Christan Herold
People's Sculpture Racing: Education & Outreach
People’s Sculpture Racing organizes short races of pushed, pulled, and pedaled fine art sculpture along urban backways. During this process the group recruits and educates emerging & established artists, makers, and engineers to create a new generation of sculpture racers.
Lesley University
The Exhibition: Irving Penn: Beyond Beauty
A public exhibition of photographer Irving Penn, alone with a series of corresponding educational programs.
Tatyana Bronstein
Make Me Dance
Make Me Dance is a documentary that takes an in depth look at one of the most prestigious dance schools in the United States, The Boston Conservatory. Funding awarded to support post-production.
Nicole Teeny
Bullet Proof Stockings: Women Only
A documentary trilogy about unconventional American women in Abrahamic religions: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
Cambridge Community Television
Alumni Media Artist Network and Production Group
The project will provide support for youth media programming and opportunities for alumni to continue their artistic development.
Field Trip Grants
Six field trip grants were awarded supporting access to the arts for children at Community Art Center, Agassiz Baldwin Community (two awards made), East End House, Martin Luther King Junior School, and Henry Bruckner School.