(audience cheering)
♪ Like an arrow ♪
♪ You fall back before we spring ahead ♪
♪ Like a sparrow ♪
♪ We must fall before we fly again ♪
♪ And like the ocean ♪
♪ We hold all our secrets within ♪
♪ And then we hurricane, and we ♪
♪ Make it rain all the
thoughts we kept hidden ♪
♪ We hold all the world's
sorrow and pride ♪
♪ Keep all the culture
and history inside ♪
♪ And when everything
starts to look rough ♪
♪ Then we will turn pain to love ♪
♪ Yeah ♪
♪ And our minds, they grow ♪
♪ And our hearts, they flow ♪
♪ And nobody knows just what art can do ♪
♪ And we can change the world ♪
♪ But you're in the world, too ♪
♪ You must let art change you ♪
♪ We hold all the world's
sorrow and pride ♪
♪ Keep all the culture
and history inside ♪
♪ And when everything
starts to look rough ♪
♪ We turn that pain to love ♪
♪ And all the arts, whether new or old ♪
♪ There is a story that wants to be told ♪
♪ And when that story
reaches more than enough ♪
♪ Then we'll turn pain to love ♪
♪ We will paint our love ♪
(audience cheering)
Thank you.
Oh, thank you.
Okay.
Hi, everyone.
I'm Alexis Maxwell, I'm
from Boston, Massachusetts,
and I'm an arts advocate,
because I believe
arts can change the world.
(audience cheering)
(muffled) And I'm an arts advocate,
because creativity connects me with joy,
and with hope for the future.
My name is Brian Boyles,
I'm from North Hampton,
and I'm an arts advocate,
because creativity
connects me with our past, and
helps us imagine our future.
My name is Justina Crawford from Boston,
and I'm an arts advocate
because creativity
connects me to communities
who inspire me to be bold.
I'm Lynn Nichols from Gil,
and I'm an arts advocate
because creativity
connects me to traditions,
both past and new.
Sorry for the false start.
My name is Lauren Welk,
I'm from from Centerville,
and I'm an arts advocate
because creativity
connects me to my very best self.
My name is Declan
McDermott from North Adams,
and I'm an arts advocate
because creativity
connects me to the culture
and lives of those around me.
With ArtsEmerson and HowlRound,
who's live streaming, and I
am from Milton, Massachusetts.
And I am an art advocate,
because creativity connects us
to our common humanity.
Our common humanity.
(audience cheering)
Welcome, everybody, to
MASSCreative's Creating Connects
Arts Advocacy Day.
(audience cheering)
Very good, here we are.
Thank you, Alexis, for
your wonderful performance.
Alexis is here with us
from Boston arts Academy,
one of the most robust and
comprehensive arts programs
in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Let's give her a hand.
(audience cheering)
Thank you.
it is great to see all of you here
in the beautiful Paramount Center.
I'll be your emcee for the morning
as we kick off Arts Advocacy Day.
Sound like a plan?
Yeah.
So, how many of you
were here two years ago?
I can't actually see, but
that's okay, you're here.
How many of you were here two years ago
when we were here celebrating?
(audience cheering)
Yes, great.
So, you know that we have a good time
as we spend this day
together, really celebrating
all the things that we
care about so deeply.
It's said that service is the rent
that we pay to live on this earth.
And I, like many of you, have
chosen arts as my service.
I personally dedicated.
(man yelling)
Yes, that's right.
I personally dedicated my
life's work to leveraging arts
to connect us more deeply to each other.
If Maya Angelou was speaking for me
when she said, and I quote,
"I believe in all of my work
"and in everything I do that
we as humans are more alike
"than we are unalike,
and to use this statement
"to tear down the walls that we build
"between ourselves
because we are different."
End quote.
And so, I am here because
I believe that arts
is a powerful tool to connecting us here.
That's mine to do.
But what's ours to do?
We can build connections that
only arts can actually do.
We have a role to play.
Through our good work, we
can make clear the task
to address the many issues
that impact our communities.
At ArtsEmerson, we made a
commitment several years ago
to be a part of a
city-wide effort to foster
civic transformation around race.
That's the work that we do do a lot of.
The work that we put into the world
reflects that commitment.
Again, that's ArtsEmerson's to do,
but what's ours to do together?
Whatever your work is, we
should be doing it together,
in consort with one another,
like we're doing here today,
coming together as a
sector to flex our muscles,
to show our political leaders that we,
as arts and arts community,
really matter in the
state of Massachusetts.
(audience cheering)
So, I am your official traffic cop.
And you'll see me
throughout the entire day.
I will encourage you to move along.
I will encourage you to take
your seats or find your groups.
So, you will bear with
me as I bear with you.
So, I hope you won't tire of me.
I want to go through our agenda for today,
so, please pull out your
goldenrod sheet and follow along.
My goldenrod sheet that I left backstage,
but you have yours.
Wave it high.
Yes.
We will spend the day celebrating you,
members of the arts and culture community.
We will share stories about the arts
and cultural communities
impact across the Commonwealth,
and we'll give you everything you need
to be an effective arts
advocate at the Statehouse.
Then we will march across Boston Common
to the Statehouse for
meetings with legislators
and gather together for a debrief.
This year, we want to keep
the celebration going,
so we hope you'll join
us for an after party
at Democracy Brewery, where we can
share our day's successes together.
Yes?
Are you still with me?
Great.
See, I like to know you're alive and well,
so a little hoots and
hollers every now and then
really help keep things moving.
So, please Take out your phone.
We know most everyone has one.
Take out your phone, before we move on
to the next part of the agenda,
Rachel Byrd, MASSCreative's
campaign organizer,
and I want us all to
tell the outside world
what is happening here today.
So, I want everyone to use a phone
and take a minute to write
a post with a picture
with #CreativityConnects.
Feel free to use Twitter,
Facebook, or Instagram,
and if you're not on social media,
get in a friend's photo,
and add your name to it.
So, I am gonna take a
picture of all of you.
So, I just need a little
few houselights up here,
and while I am taking a picture of you,
you do your hashtags, and
post to social media, yes?
Okay.
You can talk amongst
yourselves as you do this.
Okay.
No, I can't see anything.
All right.
Excellent.
So, I have to post it.
So, #CreativityConnects,
this'll take me a second.
On Twitter, yes.
Okay.
If I knew how to work my Twitter.
Okay.
I think last year, or two
years ago, we were trending.
We were doing quite well,
so, let's try to keep
that going this year.
Let's see if it works.
Is this supposed to work?
Do you see your tweets up there?
Are they coming?
They're coming, yes.
All right, as you keep going.
(audience cheering)
Oh, do you see something?
Oh yeah, there you go.
That's me right there,
see, Creativity Connects.
You do it.
Make sure you tweet and
post throughout the day
here at the Paramount and the march,
and after the legislative meetings.
You will see handles for
speakers on the agenda
and for legislators on the meeting list
to include in your posts.
For every one of us who are here,
there are thousands who share our passion
and know that arts matter to all of us
here in the Commonwealth.
Yes, are you still tweeting?
Okay, great.
Now, we're gonna keep going as you tweet.
So, pay attention and
tweet at the same time.
Now, It's my pleasure to welcome
and introduce Lee Pelton, the
president of Emerson College,
to share a few remarks with us.
(audience cheering)
Yes, I did tweet.
Good morning, everyone, how are you?
So, It's a real pleasure for me to be here
with so many artists and patrons
and local supporters and staunch advocates
for the arts and arts education,
and I want to thank Matt Wilson
and all the people at MASSCreative
who were involved in making today happen.
Of course, I want to thank
all of you for being here.
And from Emerson, I want
to recognize David Howse,
who just spoke, and those at ArtsEmerson
and HowlRound as well
as the Elma Lewis Center
for Civic Engagement,
Learning, and Research,
and Emerson Stage for their
role in today's events.
You know, Emerson is
well-known for excellence
in the arts, the communication
and the liberal arts.
We educate young artists and communicators
to become a creative force
in the diverse fields
that shape our culture and our society.
But it's not enough to
prepare educated citizens
for the 21st century,
we must prepare educated
and engaged citizens, as you
heard from David earlier,
for the 21st century.
We take seriously our
responsibility as a leader
in the community and the world.
And we pursue this vision
by embracing excellence,
diversity, inclusion, co-joined with
global and civic engagement.
We partner with various
community organizations
to support artists and
art projects in the city,
including, for example, among a few
of the Asian Community
Development Corporation,
Artist Humanities, the
ReelAbilities Film Festival,
and the Boston Poetry Festival.
And the last two poet laureates,
by the way, in the city, are
graduates of Emerson College.
There you go, I like that.
Our Elma Lewis Center inspires engagement
and action by using
the college's strengths
and the communication in the arts
to support social change.
And we are very proud
of the work happening
at our Engagement Lab,
which is the innovation hub
focused on civic media.
For instance, our researchers
are currently working
to develop a prototype
smart city technology
through the several local communities.
And Emerson is likewise committed
to public arts programming
through Emerson's Urban
Arts Media Art Gallery,
which is located here on Avery Street.
And if you haven't been there,
I suggest that you go see it.
It's just around the corner from us.
Indeed, an Emerson education
is an education rooted
in creativity and critical
thinking in collaboration
and in communication.
Creativity, critical thinking,
collaboration, communication.
Those four Cs are the
capacities that the world
cannot get enough of in the 21st century.
And today we come together
for an important cause,
and we begin on this
stage, which is named for
the ArtsEmerson founder, Robert Orchard,
who has been a driving force
in Boston's theater scene
for more than four decades.
And so, we come together today in support
of the arts and support of collaboration
and creativity and in
support of the great need
to use our collective
and collaborative voices
to advocate for the arts.
I need not tell you that
we must invest in the arts
because the arts matter.
The arts bring people together.
The arts connect diverse
ideas and disciplines.
The art helps us to understand the world.
You know, there are those who see
the future and they run from it.
There are those who see the future,
and they hide from it.
And there are those who see the future,
and run towards it, and the arts always
will run toward the future,
something that we need so desperately.
(audience cheering)
We also know that arts boost the economy.
Regional arts and cultural organizations
directly create more than
a billion dollars a year
in our local economy and
provides almost 30,000 jobs.
And so, today, among many days,
this is a critical moment
to make our voices heard,
to advocate for investing in the arts,
and to do it as effectively as possible.
Today, you will have the
opportunity to learn about
and practice just that,
and I hope you will take
what you learn today and
apply it to the arts,
of course, but also to
advocate about issues
which you are passionate so others may see
the incredible value of the arts.
The one message that I want you to take
to the Statehouse today is that
Massachusetts currently lacks
a comprehensive and coordinated
plan to support art,
artists, and the vital
institutions that support both.
These institutions rely on
dwindling corporate support
and private donations to bridge the gap
between ticket revenue and the high cost
of staging performances,
events, and exhibitions,
or they simply have to
foot the bill themselves.
And that is the message that
I want you to take today
to the Statehouse to
remind our legislators
that arts and artists build
bridges, and not walls,
and today we need you
more than ever before.
So.
(audience cheering)
So, I thank you in
participating in today's events.
Bundle up, 'cause it's a
little chilly out there.
And thank you for all you do to support,
promote and advance arts, the arts,
and artists in our community.
Thank you very much.
(audience applauding)
(audience cheering)
Woo.
Good morning.
Good morning up in the balcony.
My name's Matt Wilson,
and I'm the executive
director of MASSCreative.
For the past six years,
MASSCreative has organized
grassroots supporters
like yourself of the arts,
creative leaders, partner
organizations, and working artists
from around the commonwealth
to build a culture
here in Massachusetts,
where arts and creativity
are expected, are recognized and valued
as a part of everyday life.
Today's Arts Advocacy
Day, Creativity Connects,
is a great example of how we
at MASSCreative do our work.
With each of our projects and campaigns,
our first step always is to
collaborate with great partners.
I want to thank a very warm thank you
to the many people and organizations
who really helped make today happen.
First of all, the in house entities
of Emerson College and
ArtsEmerson for hosting us
and HowlRound for live
streaming this event
and for the closed caption
that they're providing.
And a special thanks to David
for keeping us in line today.
Our legislative champions,
who you will be meeting
over the course of the day,
state representatives
Mary Keefe of Worcester,
Paul McMurtry from
Dedham, and state senator,
Edward Kennedy of Lowell.
I wanna thank all of our
financial supporters,
who throughout the year keep us going
from our 400 member organizations,
and individual members,
and our longtime foundation supporters.
And I'm really thrilled to thank
our most recent supporters,
who have stepped up to
specifically support this event.
The Cambridge Savings Bank,
and a number of community foundations,
who for the first time have stepped up
to support the great statewide
work that's being done.
The Cambridge Community Foundation,
the Community Foundations of
Southeastern Massachusetts,
the Essex County Community Foundation,
the Greater Lowell Community Foundation,
and the trustees and advisors fund
of the Foundation For MetroWest.
So, support from all across the state.
(audience cheering)
And as you have seen,
it's really a village
of volunteers here that are partnering
with the staff today
to make it all happen.
From the volunteers, who
you met at registration
to our stellar Board of Directors,
who are helping in all phases of the day,
both on stage and behind the scene,
to all of our speakers and performers,
and to the captains who are
holding those great signs
who are gonna lead us to the
Statehouse this afternoon.
And bottom line, we can't achieve anything
that we're doing, and the charge that
President Pelton gave
you without all of you.
Today, we have representatives
and working artists
from over 235 distinct arts
and cultural institutions
from across the state.
Isn't that amazing?
(audience cheering)
The broad set of folks.
From North Adams, right?
(audience cheering)
Down to the Cape, all across the state.
We're incredibly grateful for all of you,
working with so many counted partners
who share our vision of a Commonwealth
in which creativity connects people.
And it's that phrase, Creativity Connects,
which you're gonna hear a lot about today.
It's not just a slogan,
it's not just the title
of this event, but it's
a statement of truth.
When we have a creative experience,
see a provocative play, or
visit a compelling exhibit,
we're able to connect to our world
and to stand in other people's shoes
to experience the world in
a new and different way.
When we express our creativity
to connect with others
who are singing, acting, dancing,
and drawing alongside us.
When we participate in local art walks,
festivals, concerts, and
many of the community events
organized by local cultural councils,
working artists, and
cultural institutions,
we feel more connected with
the special people around us,
our friends, our family,
and our neighbors.
And we know that cities and towns
with cultural districts
and arts institutions
that have been supported by
a local and state government
find that residents are more
connected across racial,
ethnic, and class divides
thanks to the additional
opportunities to connect through
community-based cultural events.
Well, none of this should
be surprising to all of you.
You are creating these
opportunities for connection.
It's never been more
important than it is today.
We are really living in divisive times.
More of us, myself included, feel isolated
and divided by politics, by technology,
and by the growing gaps
in income and wealth.
Technology can isolate us.
We can now do all of our
shopping, all of our work,
all of our banking, get all of our news
all by ourselves in front of our computer
without taking a step outside.
Our political leaders now see the benefit
of developing platforms
and delivering narratives
that divide us rather
than build community.
The historic social forces
that have disadvantaged
people color, women,
immigrants, LGBTQ people,
people with disabilities
and other repressed groups
feel just as alive today
as they have ever been.
And wealth disparity
exacerbates all of this
and continues to grow in the U.S.,
creating deeper divisions
and chasms in our society.
We all need, and we all crave
connections to live happily,
healthy, and fulfilling lives,
yet our society, and by extension,
our broader democracy is becoming
increasingly isolated and disengaged.
So, that's where we come in.
Our work creates connections.
We are the change makers of today.
We're healers, we're
educators, we're place makers,
we're place keepers, we're
entrepreneurs and storytellers.
Emerging research shows something
we've long believed to be true;
opportunities for creative expression
are just as important to our
well-being as adequate food,
housing, income, and the
pursuit of meaningful work.
Sharing creative experiences
and expressing creativities
build powerful connections with the people
we're closest to, our community
and the world around us.
But we have a lot of work to do,
as President Pelton talked about.
We have a lot of work to do
with our political leaders
to help them embed the
work that we're doing,
arts and creativity as a vital asset
to addressing these issues
here in the Commonwealth.
Today at the Statehouse, you'll hear about
what we're gonna talk to our legislators,
and what our priorities are.
We'll be focusing on building
support for public art,
for increasing the Commonwealth's
investment in the arts
and creative community through
the Mass Cultural Council's budget,
and the importance of arts
education for our kids.
But there's gonna be more
over the course of the year.
Working with you and our partners,
we're gonna be working with all of you
and our partners to develop
a long-term campaign
to significantly increase
investments in the art
through a dedicated and
robust revenue stream
at the state level.
(audience cheering)
We're gonna work with a
broad coalition of groups
to ensure that all of us are counted
through the 2020 census,
by working with you
all on a statewide Get
Out the Count Campaign,
and make sure that every
single one of us is counted,
and that we matter here
in the Commonwealth.
And we're gonna be assisting a group of
energetic and passionate
high school students
here in Boston who are
demanding real access
to arts education here in
the Boston high schools.
So, I wanna thank you
all for taking the day
to come to Boston along with all of us.
The 350 or so of you who are here today,
and for the time you
take each and every day
to play such an important
role in advocating
to make our Commonwealth a better place.
I had the chance to meet a
number of you over breakfast,
and I look forward to
meeting all of you here,
on the march, at the statehouse,
and for a cold beer at Democracy Brewing.
So, thank you for coming,
and I now wanna introduce
Anita Walker, who for more than 11 years
has been the executive director
of the Mass Cultural Council.
She is working with her
staff to strategically invest
the steadily growing
resources that the state
is giving to the arts community
across the Commonwealth
to the creative sector.
So, please welcome Anita Walker.
(audience cheering)
Good morning, everyone.
Are you psyched for today?
It's Arts Advocacy Day!
(audience cheering)
First of all, thank you, Matt,
thanks MASSCreative, thanks for all of you
for being here today.
I want you to do something
right now in the dark.
I know it might be a little bit difficult.
But I want you to turn
to the person next to you
and look them in the eye...
And smile.
(audience laughing)
Thank you.
Oh, little lights up, good.
This is a thing we call eye contact.
Let's never forget about it.
You know, I just read a book that says,
its contention, it's theory is that is
the bright side is not getting
the attention it deserves.
Well, I want you to know there
is plenty of bright side,
and this room is full of it.
You are the bright side, and
you prove it every single day
when you go to work, and
even when you're not at work,
when you're at play.
You know, let's think about it.
Let's think about how we transitioned
from the manufacturing, industrial economy
into this wrenching change
of the information age
and the creative economy.
Who was there to pave the way?
Who was there to make it right?
You were.
When company towns folded up,
the companies packed up and
left thousands of families
without their sole source of income,
it was you, the artist entrepreneur,
who came in and filled up
those empty storefronts,
and filled up those mill buildings.
When we were trying to understand
how we were gonna take innovation
and replace manual labor,
it was the artist teachers in the schools
who nurtured those creative minds
and critical thinking
skills so they'd be prepared
for this creative economy.
When we were all trying to understand
what is this big
technological corporate world
where move fast and break things,
rigor and risk walk hand-in-hand?
The idea is the economy.
Well you know what?
Artists have known this
since the beginning of time.
You are not only the basis,
the foundation of the creative economy,
you're the one to make it sing.
(audience applauding)
But, let's not forget what our own
Robert Kennedy reminded us decades ago.
The health of our society
is not measured solely
by the gross national product.
It doesn't measure the things
that make life worthwhile,
the beauty of a poem,
the intelligence of our public discourse,
the integrity of our public officials.
And I think he'd let me add,
our sense of well-being,
our collective wellness.
These are the things that
are under threat today,
the things that are the
best of being human.
You know, you can feel it in the air.
There's a, sort of a
permeating ever present
sense of anxiety, let's
call it what it is,
anger, uncertainty, rage.
You know, it's like a virus that spreads
through social media,
through our obsessions,
focus on screens, but it's a virus
that's not spread by human contact.
On the contrary, human
contact is the cure.
(audience applauding)
That is your superpower.
Our historians that
connect us with the past
so we can understand the present,
our scientists that give us
a telescope into the future,
and our artists who speak with empathy,
connecting all of us.
That's what you do so well.
So, you can imagine my
shock on Sunday morning
as I sat down, as I always do,
to read the New York Times,
and here is the headline that says,
"Human contact is becoming a luxury."
A luxury because
technology's gotten so cheap.
It can replace human contact.
So, here's the story
in the New York Times.
It's about a guy by the
name of Bill Langlois
from Lowell, Massachusetts.
He's a retiree.
He spends a lot of his time
at home with no one around.
His wife is out and about, and...
He had nobody to talk to.
So he tears up when he tells the story
of the day when he got a companion,
a cat that he named Sox,
After the Red Sox, of course.
But this cat is not a regular cat.
This cat is an avatar, this
cat is a computer program.
This is an animated cat
on a computer screen
that speaks to him from operators
thousands of miles away in the Philippines
with a voice that sounds like Siri.
And you know what Bill says?
"Having this cat with me makes me feel
"like there's someone around who cares."
Now, you know, Bill is not unlike
literally thousands of senior citizens
who are isolated and alone.
Isolation that leads to depression.
You might be surprised
that many of these seniors
take themselves to
hospital emergency rooms
for the social interaction.
So, Humana, the giant
insurance corporation,
sees seniors going to emergency rooms,
racking up medical bills
come and they're thinking,
why don't we just give everybody
one of these computer cats?
They've calculated that they
can save as much as $90,000
per patient with a robotic cat.
I think we can do better than that.
I think you do better than that.
And I know that we are all
doing better than that.
So, let's take a little trip
across the pond to England,
where this year doctors officially began
what's called social prescribing.
They prescribe the arts.
It's an intervention for depression.
It's an antidote to isolation.
They say to their patients,
they literally write a script,
go to the theater, go
contemplate a work of art.
Write your way through your trauma.
The arts leads to wellness,
and people with low levels
of wellness are sicker,
and have a lower life expectancy.
People who participate in the arts
are 60% healthier than people who don't.
So, the Brits have
figured out that not only
are the arts good for people,
they're cost-effective.
Do you know what they have discovered
is the number one cost
of expensive medical care
for senior citizens over the age of 75?
Falling down.
So they prescribe ballet for
strengthening and balance.
Now, you are all here today
to get yourself revved up
to go to the Statehouse,
and you're gonna be
talking to your legislators.
And you're gonna be
talking to your legislators
about investing more in
the arts and culture.
And do you know what
they're gonna say to you?
I'm gonna tell you this,
and email me if I'm wrong.
They're gonna say to you, oh,
we appreciate what you do,
we know how important your work is,
but you have to understand,
the budget is so tight.
It's just so difficult to find new money,
and they're gonna say, do you realize
what the budget buster
is in state revenue?
The cost of, wait for it...
Health care.
It takes up 37% of the state budget.
We can't afford to do anything else.
Well, you might say, you know what?
You can't afford not to.
Because the work of our museums,
and our theaters, and our artists,
and our teaching artists,
they're not providing an animated robot
with a disembodied voice
thousands of miles away to people.
They're looking in their eyes,
they're having a conversation,
they're improving wellness,
and they're lowering
the cost of healthcare.
That's what you do.
(audience cheering)
So, now I'm thinkin' about Bill in Lowell.
And I'd like to meet Bill,
I haven't met Bill yet.
But I'm thinking that if I meet him,
I'd say, Bill, I'm not
gonna take your cat away.
I know you already have a
relationship with your cat.
But I would like to introduce
you to a teaching artist.
Maybe one who can give you, and your wife,
a dose of dance and human contact,
and a bit of the bright side.
Thank you so much for all you do
and for your advocacy today.
(audience cheering)
Now, you know that we have
great champions on Beacon Hill.
And actually, Massachusetts
is the only state
that has its own committee on tourism,
arts, and cultural development.
This year, we have new
leadership on our committees,
and I am so honored and privileged
to be able to introduce the
Senate leader of our committee,
who happens to be from Lowell,
so maybe he can help me find
Bill, Senator Ed Kennedy.
(audience cheering)
Thank you very much.
Good morning to everybody,
and thank you for having me here today
and allowing me to speak.
I was excited to find out
that I had been chosen
the Senate Chair on the
Committee of Tourism, Arts,
and Cultural Development in Massachusetts,
because I thought it meant
that I could probably spend
sessions holding hearings in Nantucket
and Martha's Vineyard this summer.
(audience laughing)
I'm not sure that would fly.
But in all seriousness,
I'm aware that tourism,
arts, culture is big
business in Massachusetts.
With the tourism industry
bringing in $20 billion
in direct spending into the state
and employing 150,000 people
across the Commonwealth.
And the arts and culture sector
contributing a stunning one billion
into the local economy annually,
supporting more than 73,000 jobs.
(audience applauding)
Despite the robust nature
of these industries
and the vibrance, and
increased quality of life
they bring to our communities,
dedicated funding sources remain scarce.
While California spends
120 million annually
on destination marketing efforts,
Massachusetts allocates only 10 million,
less than half the national average.
This is an area where you need
to spend money to make money,
and I believe we are missing out
on significant revenue streams.
My hometown of Lowell
began marketing itself
as a home to artists several decades ago.
Arts and culture have been
a key to the city's rebirth.
And hundreds of artists and creators
who have moved to Lowell
from the Boston area
and other parts of the state, and nation,
since the time, and that
they have brought color,
fun, insight, and awareness to Lowell.
Their presence and work
has been an economic engine
and marketing hook for the city.
Their enthusiasm and
willingness to get involved
in civic life and local causes
has increased the quality
of life for all Lowellians.
I see the difference grant funding
from the Massachusetts Cultural Council
makes in Lowell every day.
This year, the Lowell
Cultural Council granted
$75,000 in grants to 28 artists,
nonprofit organizations,
events, and institutions.
The Lowell Cultural Council has made
a variety of programs possible this year,
including Salsa in the Park,
which provides free salsa dancing lessons
in Lowell's North Common,
bringing life to a public park
in the heart of the city's
lowest income neighborhood,
providing entertainment
and building community,
the Lowell Kinetic Sculpture Race,
which brings stem activities to life
for children and adults of all ages,
as well as spectators and participants
from around the region
and across the country.
Bringing poetry and arts programming
to Lowell public school students,
programs which are often the
first victims of budget cuts.
Funding Cambodian and
African cultural programs,
bringing these groups to
celebrate their heritage
and keep it alive while introducing
their customs and culture to those of us
from other backgrounds.
And even funding the interpretation
of cultural programming
throughout the city
in American sign language.
All of these programs
and the dozens of others
funded through the
Cultural Council help make
Lowell a vibrant city, attracting visitors
with money to spend, and
boosting the quality of life
for residents of the city.
Statewide grant funding provides
to local Cultural Council's
by the Mass Cultural Council
provides support to
more than 6,000 artists,
community groups, and
organizations annually,
many of whom would not be able
to secure funding otherwise.
Lowell has been greatly transformed
by this installation of public art,
including many works by
the prolific sculptor,
the late Mico Kaufman.
These works are just as
important to the aesthetic
of our downtown and historic
architecture in Lowell.
They make it a more inviting
and interesting place
to draw people to spaces that
otherwise would be underutilized.
Drawing people to public spaces
fills community and pride
in the neighborhood as
well as reduces crime.
As the Senate chair of tourism,
arts, and cultural development,
I look forward to helping
MASSCreative advocate
for their policy platform this session,
including allocating
$18 million in funding
for the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
(audience cheering)
And establishing the
Massachusetts Public arts program.
Thank you very much.
(audience cheering)
So, now I am delighted
to have the opportunity
to introduce our house chair,
who've I've known as
long as I've been here
in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
He is truly truly
passionately and authentically
a supporter of the arts
since he actually is involved
in his spare time, running
an actual movie theater.
It's my pleasure to introduce
Representative Paul McMurtry.
(audience cheering)
Good morning.
Thank you very much, Anita.
How about a nice round of
applause for Anita Walker.
(audience cheering)
Well-deserved, she is a great leader
and advocate on behalf
of the arts community,
and after all, we are here in a theater,
and applause comes secondhand.
And again for my colleague in the Senate,
how about a nice round of
applause for Senator Kennedy.
(audience applauding)
I look forward to working with him
in my new role as the chairman
of tourism, arts, and culture,
and I'm excited about the support
that has been given to the arts community
in the past, and look forward
to working this session,
and moving, and advancing the items
that are important to you.
And I want to let you
know, make no mistake,
it cannot be done with legislators alone
or with executive
directors as Anita Walker.
It's done in major part
through the advocacy
and the work of each and every one of you.
So, today's an important
day as you come up
to Beacon Hill and advocate
to your reps and senators
and their staff for
emphasizing the importance,
and the significance
that arts have to you,
and to the community.
MASSCreative also, and it
does an incredible job,
so I appreciate that you are all connected
and working on their behalf,
of providing equal
access, as you all know,
with cultural engagement, education,
and creative expression.
Equal access is really the
key phrase, and the main goal.
And we unfortunately live
in a time, as we all know,
of limited resources, and
where the administrations
and us in the legislature have
to make difficult decisions.
Typically the arts programs
are the first ones to be cut,
so we have to let legislators
and my colleagues know
at the Statehouse that
we need to make sure
that we can continue funding.
We don't wanna have
students and the community
suffer any longer as we cut individuals
and our cities and towns off
from that rich cultural history
that the Commonwealth has to offer
and the rich quality of
life that exposing them
to arts and the art experience.
We all know that the arts build
bridges across communities,
classes, and ethnicities,
and it's an equalizer
that definitely enhances
the cities and towns
we live in, and it provides
countless opportunities
for young people throughout
the Commonwealth,
and for this reason, and many others,
I'm certainly proud to
serve on the committee
and continue the work that MASSCreative
and the mass Cultural
Council and other important
organizations continue to do.
I served many years ago
as the house vice chair
of the committee, and
now certainly am thrilled
to be in the chairmanship position,
where I'm able to continue
to prioritize bills.
One of the bills in particular
that I know you're all familiar
with, is House Bill 2941,
which was filed by my
colleague, Representative Keith,
who chairs the Cultural
Caucus at the Statehouse.
It's the Massachusetts Public Arts Program
requesting $2 million in the creations
and preservation of
public art installation
on state owned property.
So, we've seen the
success of these projects
throughout the Commonwealth,
and we wanna continue to advocate
for those throughout on
these state-owned lands.
We know that these enhance communities,
and tourists, and residents
of the Commonwealth,
and we've seen 90 public
art projects installed
along six major lines of the MBTA,
so we wanna continue to engage
the Mass Transportation Authority
to bring some public art into
their facilities and stations.
These projects not only add color and life
to our public spaces,
but they add authenticity
to our sometimes drab
transportation system.
So, as I mentioned, I'm proud
to be a sponsor of them,
and I look forward as a chair.
As Anita mentioned, in my other life,
or maybe previous life, and the reason why
I got into public service,
I have similar art experience
with owning an art house movie theater.
And when I was running for
office some 12 years ago,
people said to me, "We'll vote for you
"as long as you keep that theater open."
So, that was my pledge back then.
I continued to support the
arts and art initiatives
across the Commonwealth, and
I look forward to working
with each and every
one of you this session
as we make sure that we emphasize
to both our colleagues in the legislature
and to the administration
and the partnership
we have with the
Lieutenant Governor Polito,
and Governor Baker the
importance of bringing arts
not only to our classrooms,
but to our communities,
and continue to make a difference
and deliver back the
incredible quality of life
we have here in the Commonwealth.
And again, make no mistake,
that's all in part to your efforts,
and I'm proud to work with you.
I'll see you back at the
Statehouse this afternoon.
Thank you for your advocacy,
and enjoy the rest of the morning.
(audience cheering)
Great.
How's everybody doing?
Yes, good, good.
Join me in thanking our speakers.
We had present Pelton,
Matt Wilson, and his team.
Thank you for all that you
do on behalf of our sector,
as well as Anita Walker and her team,
tireless advocates for
the work that we're doing,
and it's also special
thanks to Senator Kennedy
and Representative McMurtry
for their leadership in the Statehouse.
It's great to have them
here with us today,
and to have such wonderful leaders
working on our behalf down the street.
(audience applauding)
So, this morning we wanna
give you some information,
as I mentioned earlier, on the trainings,
and some training for successful meetings.
First we'll introduce
you to MASSCreative's
policy platform and
share two specific asks
that we'll suggest that you make
when you meet with your legislator.
Then we'll share some
storytelling techniques,
and then finally, we'll have
Representative Mary Keefe,
and advocates from Worcester,
put everything together,
and show us what a successful
meeting looks like.
They'll cover sort of, the four Cs,
and I won't spend a lot of
time going through those now,
because they'll demonstrate
that a little bit later,
but the four Cs are connect, context,
commitment, and catapult.
Connect meaning, make
a personal connection
with your legislator,
then get some context,
share the impact of the
arts and culture community
in your city or town.
Commitment, ask them to do something,
support two of the asks
that I'm gonna suggest,
that's the mass Cultural Council budget,
and the Mass Public Art Program bill.
And then finally, catapult,
make a plan to follow up
with your legislator on the commitments
and sustaining a longterm
relationship with the legislature.
So, we've got that coming
in just a little while.
But before we move there,
we're fortunate as arts people
to have some wonderful
artists in our midst.
And so, now it's my pleasure
to introduce Delano Morrison,
Sidney Grant, and Juan Arivalo
from Central Square
Theater's Youth Underground.
(audience cheering)
Hello.
Thank you.
Move over a little, move over a little.
Move over a little.
So, Act Up and Vote is a new work
of investigative theater exploring voting,
civic engagement for young
people, and here's a sample.
My brother and I shared a room,
and it was on the second floor,
so every day, multiple times a day,
I had to go up and down a staircase
to get between our room and
the kitchen or the bathroom,
or anything else downstairs.
And on that staircase
were a ton of antiwar
posters that my dad brought
back from El Salvador,
and there's one that I will never forget.
It's pink.
There's a woman on it.
She's a mother with a child on her back
and a rifle in her hand.
I would see these posters,
and they're beautiful.
They're artwork.
I always found it crazy
thinking about my dad
fighting in a war at 14,
fighting for the betterment
of his family, for his people.
I grew up seeing these posters,
and I grew up knowing
that my dad was fighting
in a war as a child that
he didn't wanna be in.
And then he came here to this
country to do antiwar work.
I believe that that fight is a part of me,
and has been my whole life.
I mean, I was that kid in the stroller
going to protests with
not only my parents,
but with a community committed
to the belief that they can make a change,
by taking over the streets,
and believing that their voices
and their bodies can influence others.
There's no other thing that I would do.
I work with my heart, and
activism is in my blood.
(audience applauding)
So, I'm in fashion school,
and I spent my junior year in Paris.
While I was there, I had an acute episode,
which can happen because of
my diagnosis with sickle cell,
and I had to be hospitalized
in Paris for two weeks.
Unfortunately, a similar
health crisis occurred
a few years back when I was
studying in New York City.
Even though I had some insurance,
the outstanding balance was $14,000.
I was hounded day and night
by collection agencies to pay that amount.
I mean, as if.
So, you could imagine my stress
about what this
hospitalization was gonna cost.
But no worries, my care was
free, completely covered.
So, now I'm on a mission, okay?
Check it out.
It's a picture of a sickle cell,
and its unusual crescent
shape and blood red form.
And now it's gonna be a design
motif on all of my clothing.
So, I will not only be using fashion
as a vehicle for self-expression,
but also as a way to bring
attention to people like me,
people who have pre-existing conditions
and are now at risk of
being denied insurance.
What is so messed up about America
that we don't have a
universal health care system
like other developed nations?
(audience cheering)
Thank you.
'Cause y'all, when you're hurting,
politics becomes personal
real fast, you know?
So, is voting gonna solve my problem?
Really?
Sometimes I think of moving to Paris,
'cause probably nobody is ever
gonna wanna cover me here.
(audience cheering)
It was a protest against
the gentrification of our neighborhood.
You know, sometimes developers
come to community meetings
and say "We want to hear from you."
This building is going up,
and we would like your input
so we can make changes and know
what you would like to see,
and blah blah blah, and
blah blah blah blah blah.
But I've noticed, oh, I know I've noticed.
No one takes notes.
I mean, if you care and want to remember
what is being said, you take notes.
They don't really care, but I do,
because it's where I live,
it's where most of my
extended family lives,
it's where my friends live.
Our protest was to make sure
that our concerns were heard.
There was a vote before the city council
to raise the affordable
housing rate from 15% to 20%.
And we wanted to make sure
that it was going to pass.
(audience applauding)
Yes.
But.
But, but, it was also
about bringing attention
to the need for more affordable
housing in our neighborhood.
Take this note, okay?
We want affordable housing that looks like
it fits in our neighborhood.
We don't just want to
high-rise apartment buildings
where 20% of the people who
can't afford the high rent
get to live there but aren't really
welcomed by the other residents.
Take this note, in all caps,
we want a world in which we can be
comfortable in our own home.
We want a world where
we can imagine a future.
We're young, and we want to
be able to afford to live
here when we are older, like 30, you know?
(audience laughing)
And even raise our
families where we grew up.
And this note to my friends, I see you.
Don't just sit on your couch
and do nothing but wait.
It's your time.
Claim your space.
Act up and vote.
(audience cheering)
Do you wanna step?
Thank you.
Okay, we can go.
Good morning!
(audience cheering)
My name is Emily Ruddock,
and I am the director of policy
and government affairs at MASSCreative.
And it is a true thrill to
be standing on this stage,
because in 2015, Matt
Wilson asked a newly hired
Lynn Downtown Cultural District director
to speak at the first Arts Advocacy Day,
and now to see this
room packed with people,
to see us all excited about this work
and to be part of it is truly thrilling.
So, thank you for
indulging me for a moment.
(audience cheering)
So, my charge at MASSCreative is taking
and thinking about all the stories,
all the things we do
well, and all the things
that we need to do better, and
to work with our community,
with our leaders, with our partners,
to think about what are the policies
and what are the changes that we need
to make to make a difference?
So, I am really pleased
to unveil the 2019,
2020 policy platform.
(audience cheering)
Pretty fancy animated slide.
We worked with our board,
our policy committee,
our leadership council, with
artists across the Commonwealth
to think about how we can arrange our work
to think through five realms of impact,
both in terms of what we can bring
to the Commonwealth and
what we need to do better.
The first one is happy and healthy people.
Opportunities for cultural engagement
and creative expression
are just as integral
as social well-being, as adequate food,
housing, income, and the opportunity
to pursue meaningful activities.
The second, equal access
and opportunities for participation.
Everyone in Massachusetts has the right
to experience creativity and culture,
express themselves creatively,
and see their culture reflected
in artistic expression.
Connected communities.
Community-based art programs build bridges
across ethnic and class divides,
connect people throughout
their communities.
Access to a well-rounded education
for all students and young people.
Arts education enhances
student achievement
across all subjects, it
cultivates the creative mindset
that leads to success in
the 21st century workplace,
but it also increases civic
engagement and leadership.
Respect and support for the
creative workforce and economy.
And this one, I think, is the one that
we really need to think about today.
Massachusetts creative and cultural sector
is a vital contribute to
the Commonwealth's economy.
And we need to pursue policies
that make sure we have the support
and the room to do our best work.
So, in the coming weeks and months,
you will see on MASSCreative's website
more information, more policy suggestions,
more connections with
other partner organizations
that we're working with
to drive our agenda,
and their agenda, forward.
But, I thought it might be useful
to hear from four individuals
who are working in these realms,
and can share a little bit about how they
impact their communities.
So, I would like to welcome to the stage
Carrie from Shelter Music who will talk
about health and wellness.
Thank you, Carrie.
(audience applauding)
Hey, everyone.
Super bright up here.
So, that's me, and I am an Emerson alum.
(audience cheering)
Thank you, thank you.
So, this is a really cool intersection
of my past and my present.
At shelter music Boston,
we believe that everyone
deserves access to the passion, dignity,
and creativity of classical music
whether or not they have a home.
So, if you can get behind
that idea, give a shout out.
(audience cheering)
Thank you.
That's why we're all here, right?
So, because of this belief,
our team of professional musicians
perform classical chamber
music concerts each month
in homeless shelters, recovery centers,
and an afterschool program
throughout greater Boston.
We bring full-length concerts
directly to people who
need the transformational
power of music the most.
Last year we performed nearly 90 concerts
for about 2,000 audience members.
Our innovative programming
spans the centuries,
a range of composers, different
styles of classical music,
all with the goal of evoking a range
of emotions for our audiences.
We even created a suite of new music
in collaboration with our
audiences, which was amazing.
And while the music is
critical to our mission,
the concerts really become a catalyst
for the respectful and
dignified human connections
that happen from start to
finish in our performances,
and that's something our audiences
don't get much of in their circumstances.
So, I'm sure many of you
know that there is a lot
of research out there that points to
the healing effects of music in treating
depression, anxiety,
insomnia, pain, dementia,
on and on, and we see this,
at Shelter Music Boston
time and time again in
the way our audiences
respond to our concerts.
We administer short surveys
after each of our concerts,
and I thought, what
better way to illustrate
the immediate and positive
impact of music and our model
than my sharing some of
those comments with you,
and we've collected hundreds
of comments in our history.
These comments are just a few
from February of this year,
actually, when we had a concert
that featured a violin and flute duo,
including a handmade Native American flute
that was wildly popular
with our audiences.
So, I wanna share a few of
these comments, like I said.
So, after one of the concerts,
a listener indicated feeling
that all my problems were gone,
and I could deal with them.
That's pretty remarkable.
Another listener felt stressed
before the concert, and hopeful After.
Another told us that
they felt very stressed,
anxiety, fear, before the concert,
and after felt relaxed,
at peace and happy.
I like this one, I like them
all, but I like this one.
Another listener shared
that before the concert,
they had a headache and
they were very tired,
and after, they were energized
and without the headache.
We've got tons of comments about people
who come in with pain before a concert
and leave without that pain,
which I think is incredible.
A couple of very simple
but poignant comments
were that a listener felt depressed
before the concert, and calm after.
Another felt sad and hurt before
the concert and better after.
Another listener wrote, honestly,
that before the concert,
he felt anxious, and
truly did not wanna sit
through classical music being played.
We get that.
(audience laughing)
We hear that.
Yet, after, he wrote that he felt amazing,
relaxed and very happy.
"A huge difference in how I felt.
"Truly was a gift.
"Thank you from the bottom of my heart."
Another listener said,
when asked what they
enjoyed the most about the concert wrote,
"Happy, brings back memories of school.
"You are awesome, continue
to do what you do."
Music is therapeutic, doctor recommended.
So, I'm thinking back to
what Anita told us earlier
about what they're doing in the U.K.,
about if doctors here would
just prescribed music,
arts, arts therapy, I think
we would be in better shape.
I don't know if this photo
has already come up, this is,
anyway, you may have seen it.
One of my favorite SMB photos
is our founder, Julie Levin,
talking with a young man
after a shelter concert.
And this actually
happened a few years ago,
so not from February.
But the picture, they're
kinda looking at his phone,
they're talking animatedly about music,
and I overheard him telling Julie
that he had been going through a detox,
and he hadn't been getting much sleep,
but because he had heard our concert,
and our music, he felt confident
that he was gonna sleep that night.
And that comment has really stuck with me,
and it has always felt very powerful
to me about the impact of our music,
and what our program does.
So, I could read comments to you all day,
but I hope I've given
you not only a flavor
for what Shelter Music Boston does,
but that I've made a compelling case,
and I know that I am preaching
to the converts here,
but that I've made a compelling case
that the arts are as necessary
to our overall wellbeing
as food, shelter,
clothing, income housing,
all the things that the happy
and healthy people platform suggests,
and that's why we need more support
for the creative community,
and that's why we're all here today,
and that's why I'm here today.
So, thanks for having me.
(audience cheering)
Thank you, Carrie.
I'd like to welcome Catherine
Morris to the stage.
(audience cheering)
Before I start, I'm gonna ask everyone
to turn to their neighbor
and say good morning.
Good morning, we're gonna do church today.
Okay.
My name's Catherine
Morris, I'm the founder
of Boston Art Music Soulfest.
(audience cheering)
Yeah.
For those that don't
know, we are a nonprofit
that strives to break down racial
and social barriers to arts,
music and culture for
marginalized communities
and artists of color
across greater Boston.
And about eight years ago, I had a dream.
And that dream was to
come back home to Boston
after going to school and start a festival
that represented and
celebrated the contributions
and impact and influence of
black artistry to the city.
Because there's been a history of neglect,
oversight, and undervaluing
what black artistry
has done for this city.
(audience cheering)
There is a quote that an
elder in the community
shared with me when I started my journey,
and it's a quote from Nina
Simone, so I'm gonna paraphrase.
But the line is, "It is
an artist's responsibility
"to reflect the times."
Part of that is as
consumers and as advocates,
we have a responsibility
to support the artist
to reflect the times that they live in.
And that comes from transparency,
funding, being there,
physically, mentally,
sending an email, a chat, a tweet,
checking in on artists, because
I know, as I've experienced,
their creativity can be a lonely process.
So, in 2014 I started a dance festival.
I wanted to activate Franklin Park,
because it's underutilized.
It's the largest green space that connects
six or more neighborhoods,
and I felt it just needed
a little bit of oomph.
And in this process, I learned
from many different artists
about the struggles of what it means
to be an entrepreneur in this city.
I can't do what artists
do, but I can advocate
and support their platform.
so I created my own.
And in that process of
listening to different artists,
I realized there are some things
that they needed, basic things.
There's a lot of artists in the room
that may have not received their degrees,
but they discovered they have a passion
and a talent and a gift,
and they need a little bit of help
to perfect it, to be better,
to be stable, to be healthy.
Now again, I'm not an artist,
but I'm pretty well
connected to crazy people.
(audience laughing)
And all I have to do is
open my mouth and say,
hey, you should connect to this person.
And what I started to learn
was a series of relationships
and a new ecosystem that I was creating
and I didn't even know it, just
from watching other artists.
So, to date, we work
with 180 artists of color
across Boston.
(audience cheering)
Yes.
We have mobilized over 5,000
people to all of our events.
We have partnered with 16 venues.
We have worked with over 60 organizations
and businesses to really help
perpetuate and push forward
the notion that all
artistry is our artistry,
and it is important today that when you go
to the Statehouse, please let them know
that the clothes that they wear,
the building that they walk
in, the car that they drive,
the color of house that they
chose were designed by artists.
So, I thank you all.
Have a good morning.
(audience cheering)
Thank you very much.
Priscilla Kane Hellwig,
will you please join us up?
Thanks.
(audience applauding)
Hi, everybody.
Wow.
I am delighted to be here today
to speak on behalf of arts and education.
Which has been in my heart and soul
for as long as I've lived.
We need equal access to a
well-rounded education for all.
My name is Priscilla Kane Hellwig,
I'm the executive director
of Enchanted Circle Theater.
We are based in Holyoke, Massachusetts.
(audience cheering)
Yeah.
And I'm here to say that arts in education
is alive and well in
Western Massachusetts.
Enchanted Circle is a
multiservice arts organization
that is dedicated to engaging, enhancing,
and inspiring learning through the arts.
We were founded in
1976, so a long time ago
for a small organization,
individually run to be
dedicated to community service.
We have been pioneers in the
fields of arts integration,
and creative youth development,
transforming the learning experience
for people of all ages and abilities.
The work we do is serious business.
We bring joy back into learning.
Enchanted circle uses
theater arts as a dynamic
teaching tool to engage
active and creative learning.
We work directly in the
public school classroom,
from preschool through high school,
bringing project-based
arts-integrated learning
into math and science and social studies
and English language arts.
We engage students in their
own creative learning process.
And surprise, surprise,
attendance records go up,
scores go up and behavior issues go down.
Education is the social justice issue.
We imagine what happens in the classroom
when arts-integrated math happens,
and students start physically embodying
isosceles triangles together,
when they become parallelograms, together.
Imagine in the living history program
where students are researching
and writing and ultimately performing
their own original plays
on the Trail of Tears,
on child labor in the industrial.
Imagine from stem to steam,
how the arts and creative expression
ignites students' ideas and enable them
to create solutions to
tomorrow's challenges.
These are never to be
forgotten experiences.
Our students want to come to school.
Enchanted Circle also
works in special education,
in residential and school-based programs
for youth with cognitive
and behavioral challenges.
Focusing on life skills, communication,
collaboration, creative problem-solving.
These are life skills through the arts
that prepare all of our children
for life beyond the classroom.
And we work in creative youth development,
in the juvenile justice system,
and with youth in foster care,
developing their capacity
to connect with others,
and giving them a platform
to have their voices heard,
and awakening them, that relationship,
and a sense of purpose and connecting
to the world around them.
We have a program called
Youth Truth, funded,
for many years, through
the Mass Cultural Council.
These are youth ages 14 to 24,
whose lives have been
impacted by foster care.
Destiny has been with
us now for five years.
She's lived in 24 homes in her 19 years.
Youth Truth has become her home,
her family, where she learned to trust,
where she learned to
imagine what could be,
where she learned to
communicate her hopes,
and her fears, and her dreams,
and to reach out to connect with others.
So, Destiny now is a freshman
at Holyoke Community College,
and she is a leader in Youth Truth,
and she is working to help us
re-envision foster care in America.
(audience cheering)
To Destiny. (laughing)
We are serving an
essential need in fostering
creative and critical thinking
for many of the most marginalized youth
and underserved children and
families in Massachusetts.
Enchanted Circle serves all four counties
in Western Massachusetts.
In 2018, we facilitated
32 unique programs,
and several of these are programs
that go from September through June.
Every Wednesday is Enchanted circle Day.
We are serving 4,400 students
and teachers and 102 classrooms.
We've worked with 1,600 youth and families
in creative youth development programs
and have inspired over
3,500 audience members
through our performance
and public art displays.
Enchanted Circle works
in close partnership
with 25 school districts,
developing programs with superintendents
and curriculum directors,
and teachers and students,
really instilling that sense
of internal leadership,
because it is relationship,
and it is all about
what we can do together.
This transformational that produce arts,
education, and social services.
We create equal access to
arts inspired learning,
providing meaningful, accessible,
and culturally relevant programs,
and bringing the joy back into learning.
Well, I'm very proud to say that as of,
the superintendent of schools in Holyoke
committed to a three
year arts plan process,
where he is working to
make arts learning the norm
in Holyoke public schools.
(audience cheering)
Absolutely.
It's a long time coming.
This plan as this task force
will be coming together,
will be coordinating arts
programs, arts education,
K to 12 throughout the district.
Actually pre-K to 12, because it's now
universal in pre-K in Holyoke.
It involves professional
development for teachers
to give them the capacity
to integrate the arts
in little and big ways
everyday in their classrooms,
and a comprehensive plan to
work with community partners,
because it does take a village
to raise our children and give them
equal access to the arts.
So, this afternoon, when we are in
speaking with our state
senators and representatives,
ask them where they
stand on arts education.
Let them know how passionate you are
about how the arts transform lives.
And ask them to help
us bring learning alive
for children and youth
all over Massachusetts.
Thank you, MASSCreative,
for helping us advocate
and organize, and thank
you Mass Cultural Council
for supporting and leading the way.
We are all in this together.
Thank you.
(audience cheering)
Thank you, Priscilla.
I am filling in for our next speaker
who couldn't join us today, Tracy,
who is a public artist
based in New Bedford.
And she was going to talk about the role
that public art plays
in stronger communities
and connected neighborhoods.
One of the things that we
are gonna ask you today
to talk about with your legislators
is the Massachusetts Public Art Program,
which is in your packets, in
this lovely shade of blue.
This bill, which has been
filed on the senate side
by Senator Adam Hinds, and house side
by Representative Mary Keefe,
would establish a fund to both maintain
and preserve our existing
public art in Massachusetts
but create more public
art created by artists
of Massachusetts, selected by a commission
of us, of Massachusetts residents.
We are the only state in New England
who doesn't have a public art program,
and we've already seen how
percent for art programs
like this one in Boston
have changed the amount
of public art and the amount of people
included in the process of public art.
So, I hope you will talk about this today
with your legislators and we
thank you for your advocacy.
And finally, I am going to welcome
Rebecca Wright from the
Fitchburg Art Museum
(audience applauding)
It is bright. (laughing)
Good morning.
It's great to see everyone here
in support of arts and
creativity in our communities.
I'm proud to represent
the Fitchburg Art Museum.
We are a catalyst for learning,
creativity, and community building.
Fitchburg Art Museum is
a midsized art museum
in Fitchburg, Mass, a city with a rich
industrial heritage that
has struggled economically
in recent years and is
starting to turn around
like Lowell, like New
Bedford, like so many others
with the help of the arts.
About six years ago, our
board hired Nick Capasso,
our director, with a mandate
for the museum to be relevant,
accessible, and of
service to the community
both locally and regionally.
One of the first things
Nick did was launch
our bilingual initiative to welcome
the large and growing
percentage of our city
that is made up of Spanish
speaking residents.
Banners on our building proclaim
FAM is for everyone, and Welcome,
in English and Spanish.
All exhibition labels and signage
are in English and Spanish,
changing every time
we open a new exhibition.
We partner with local immigrant services
organizations on programs.
We feature Latino art and
artists in our exhibitions
and we welcome visitors with
a bilingual receptionist,
and bilingual docents.
We have also made a commitment free
and reduce admission programs,
especially for groups who
may have felt excluded
in the past, including the
Mass Cultural Council's
EBT Card to Culture program.
More than 50% of our visitors benefit
from free or reduced admission
made possible by partnerships
and grant funding.
We have a community gallery
where any community group
can hold an exhibition at no charge,
first-come, first-serve.
This validates the creativity
pf everyday artists
from all walks of life, and has
introduced us to new groups.
Just recently, the No
Evil Project in Worcester,
and IG Central Mass,
grassroots organizations
with equity, and inclusion missions,
who we hope to work again in the future.
At the same time, we continue to present
an active program of exhibitions
of New England contemporary art,
incorporating local and regional artists
which we strive to keep
relevant to our audiences.
With our small entrepreneurial staff,
we are able to be nimble and respond
to changing circumstances
and opportunities.
Recently, we are reorienting
from our traditional art
classes to devote our time
and resources to programs that meet
newly identified needs in the community.
We've recently begun a partnership
with the Worcester County
Sheriff's Department
to provide therapeutic art programs
to people in recovery
from opioid addiction.
This spring we are launching.
(audience cheering)
Thank you.
This spring we are launching a partnership
with Headstart to provide early
childhood arts experiences
in the museum for preschoolers
from at risk communities.
We also offer programs for
people with Alzheimer's
and their caregivers among others.
We are very proud to
have the UP designation,
which stands for universal participation
through the Mass Cultural
Council in recognition
of our access programs.
UP recognizes and celebrates all efforts
to reduce barriers to access for audiences
who may not have felt welcome in the past.
The Mass Cultural Council recognizes
and also supports our
work in the community.
We received funding from
the Mass Cultural Council
through its CIP program,
through local cultural councils
that support our regional exhibition,
and through the Mass
Cultural Facilities Fund.
We also benefit from
state funding indirectly
through partnerships with
non-arts organizations,
who we work with on
creative economy initiatives
to help revitalize the city of Fitchburg.
We are fortunate to
have active and engaged
elected representatives who are friends,
who come to our events,
and recognize the value
of the arts and creativity
in our community
and in our everyday lives.
They bring that enthusiasm
and support to Beacon Hill,
and We are going to meet
with them this afternoon.
Our success in serving the
community is due to strong,
focused leadership with alignment
between board and staff
and community stakeholders
on our purpose and strategic goals.
Developing programs that are
responsive to the community
means the people of
diverse ages, abilities,
and ethnicities feel welcome
at the Fitchburg Art Museum.
This is who we are.
The leadership and support
of the Mass Cultural Council,
and other state agencies
creates an environment
where this work is
possible and encouraged.
When we all provide opportunities
for people to grow and learn,
express their natural creativity,
build relationships, and
create lasting memories,
that improves the quality
of life in our communities,
and impacts everyone in our communities.
Let's go raise up the support of the arts
and the Mass Cultural Council
with our legislators this afternoon.
Thank you.
(audience cheering)
Thank you all, thank you for your remarks.
I am always impressed with the stories
of how we, as a creative community
do so much with sometimes so little.
We know how to stretch a dollar
more than anyone or any sector.
But that's not enough, and we know that.
We know that right now there are artists
who are facing eviction, there
are groups that aren't able
to provide performance
space, or venue space.
We know there are young
people who are not receiving
arts education classes, arts classes,
in their classroom because
it's just not possible,
because of budget and
because of the money.
So, today's the day where we come together
and we walk to the Statehouse and share
just how important this issue is
with our elected officials.
But I wanna remind you that
obviously it's not just today.
Everyday we can be part
of the advocacy work
and tell our story about
why what we do matters,
and how it is transformational.
And I know no better
group to tell that story
than the group I'm about
to introduce onstage.
So, please welcome Maurice Parent,
executive director of Front
Porch Arts Collective,
and his team of storytellers.
(audience cheering)
Maurice Emmanuel Parent.
I am Liholita Nicarigua.
I am Caroline.
David.
Meg.
Rachel.
Katie.
Tracy.
Vicky.
Finn.
Audrey.
Harold.
I am happy to be with you
here today, this is awesome!
(audience cheering)
I am an actor, director, arts educator,
living in Roxbury, Massachusetts.
(audience cheering)
I am an everyday peace artist from Rwanda.
I am studying arts management,
and living in Ayer.
I am the executive director of
Contuit Center for the Arts on Cape Cod.
Museum educator, author,
and poet from Boston in North Hampton.
A sculptor and maker from
the Crossroads Cultural
District in Greenfield.
(audience cheering)
I am from the Creative Collective.
I'm a dancer and a community
organizer from Jamaica Plain.
I'm the associate
director of digital media
at Massachusetts College
of Art and Design!
(audience cheering)
A storyteller and organizer
with the Massachusetts Voter Table.
I lead the network for arts administrators
of color at Arts Boston.
The interim executive director
at the Theater Offensive
and Emerson College theater professor.
(audience cheering)
I am the co-founder of the
Front Porch Arts Collective
and a MASSCreative board member.
Before I found the arts, I was a shy,
insecure, gay kid, living
in a religious family,
being told that everything
I felt and believed
was wrong and damnable.
I hid my voice, I was
not living my true life.
(laughing) Afraid of being found out.
And I didn't feel at home or safe
in the one place where you're supposed
to feel home and safe, with your family.
I was alone.
CAROLINE: A shy and nervous kid.
Destined to live a life in the heartland
of the family farm, void
of music, art and culture.
I was lucky, I was raised with pens,
paint brushes, and puppets in my hands.
I honestly don't know
who I'd be without them.
I was suffering through a period
of dark depression and grief.
I was feeling unsure how I'd survive
financially with my
theater performance degree.
I had a lot of energy that I
didn't know what to do with.
(audience laughing)
My life was static and colorless.
I was a pre-med student struggling
to reconcile my immigrant
parent's dreams with my own.
I was questioning my
identity and my purpose.
I was unsure about my cultural identity.
I was starting at primary school
just a few months after the genocide
perpetrated to gas the Tutsi
in Rwanda, which I survived.
Most of the day school
I could be remembering
the voices of men and children
that I've seen being murdered.
Or, the voices of women
that I've seen being raped.
I always wanted justice for them.
Then I saw my first play.
It was a musical in my elementary school,
and I though, I could do that.
(audience laughing)
I auditioned, and I booked the gig,
and then began my life as
an artist and an actor.
Then I started a theater club,
and we started the process
of unity and reconciliation.
Then I met my third grade
public school music teacher.
I had a great music teacher, Mr. Jeckitt,
who told me that I could use
music to figure out who I was.
I met Vicky Washington,
my cultural mother,
and high school theater teacher.
MEG: I became a parent.
I bought an old department store
and turned it into an art gallery.
(audience cheering)
I met Salem local, creative
entrepreneur, John Andrews,
and now I get to work with hundreds
of creative entrepreneurs everyday.
I pursued what made me happiest.
I got a job at Mass Art.
I tried track and field,
I tried basketball,
and then I saw a poster for 12 Angry Men
on the wall outside my
cafeteria, and I found theater.
Then I met people with
stories like my own.
Now I am living my truth
and my passion everyday.
I found love and acceptance
from my found family,
and my given family, and I
am blessed to inspire others
to do the same everyday.
Now I use theater and storytelling
as the tools to prevent leading to
directional transmission of hate.
Now I look people in the eye.
Now I am immersed in music,
theater, and art everyday.
Now I am committed to giving my son
the same sense of self of home
and of happiness in a world full of art,
music, history, and imagination.
Now I feel alive and
spiritually awake everyday.
Now I spend my days
promoting artist's projects
and initiating collaborations.
Now I'm a community organizer.
An organizer who knits
together the stories
with the common thread of
the dreams of a better world.
Now I see firsthand how students use art
to create beauty and solve problems,
and how it saves them.
Now I'm a culture bearer.
Now I lead the life more interesting
than I ever could've imagined.
Now we are arts advocates.
We believe in art and creativity.
I believe arts give voice the voiceless,
home to those that feel they don't belong,
build community for
those that feel isolated,
teaches empathy and compassion for those
that can't see beyond their own struggles.
I believe art is the most perfect tool
to revive the empathy that is lost
in our everyday suffering.
(audience applauding)
I believe art gives voice to people
who are afraid to speak.
I believe creativity
gives children confidence.
I believe the arts will lead the way
to revitalize my small town.
I believe arts bring us
together across borders.
I believe the arts make us resilient.
Art tells stories of a
world just within reach.
In this divisive political moment,
we need to connect with our neighbors,
and hear the stories that
aren't being told in the media.
I believe art allows us
to reclaim our identity.
I believe arts change lives.
I believe arts are as
important as the air we breathe
and the food we eat.
We know creativity and
arts help our students,
neighborhoods, and our
Massachusetts to thrive.
Creativity connects us, arts matter.
Creativity connect us.
Arts matter.
Creativity connects us.
Arts matter.
Creativity connects us.
Arts matter.
Creativity connects us.
Arts matter!
Creativity connects us.
Arts matter.
Creativity connects us.
Arts matter.
(audience cheering)
That's why.
That's why today, that's why
we need more public support,
and it creates investment for the arts
and creative community.
Thank you!
(audience cheering)
One two, hallelujah.
All right.
(audience laughing)
Microphone check, one, two, three.
What we just did was model some
of the storytelling for you.
I invite you all now to pull
the green sheet out of your packet.
I can see about half of y'all,
and I see y'all doin' it.
Okay, oh, now I see you all.
Pull out the green sheet.
It says public narrative on it,
and it's at the top of
your storytelling section.
So, what we're gonna do now
is have you take a minute
to fill it out, then turn
to the person next to you
and practice telling your story.
All right?
In three minutes, and I'ma time you,
I got my cell phone, I'll
remind you to switch.
We all need practice at this,
so find a new friend, share your story,
and this is in preparation
for when you go to the Statehouse.
Let's share our stories
and create some change.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Jesus.
I wish I had some music
to play or something.
I feel like I'm proctoring
a final exam at university.
(audience laughing)
It's amazing.
Everyone's so studious and
into it, this is beautiful.
And as soon as you feel ready,
find a neighbor, someone you
don't know, and start sharing.
Or if it's someone you
do know, that's fine.
(audience chattering)
In about one minute I'll
invite you all to switch.
All right, and if you've been sharing,
maybe this is the time for the
other person to start sharing,
so switch once you've wrapped it up.
One more minute.
All right, if we can start
wrapping up the conversations.
Girl.
(muffled)
Okay.
All right, thank you.
Thank you all.
Give yourselves a round of applause.
(audience applauding)
So, I want you all to...
Breathe in the experience you just had
hearing other stories, sharing your own,
and breathe in the power that has.
The effects it made on you,
and those that were listening,
and remember that today when you go
speak to your representative.
The power of telling your story,
coming from an honest, true place,
exactly what art has meant to your life,
your constituents and
those you reach everyday.
Thank you all.
(audience cheering)
Okay, join me again in
thanking Maurice Parent
and the storytellers for
sharing their stories.
Each one of us has our own story to tell,
and you've practiced a little bit,
but now we're gonna use the next part
of our gathering today to talk about
how to transform those stories
into successful meetings.
You've been in these meetings where we go
on and on and on and on and on,
we tell the stories,
they story's going on,
and we never get to the ask, right?
And so, we wanna talk about how we wanna
structure that in a way, 'cause we have
a short amount of time
to use those stories
as a launching pad to the questions
that you wanna engages the legislators on.
And so, to do that, we
have a group of people
to demonstrate for us,
and I'd like for you
to join me in welcoming to the state
Representative Mary Keefe of Worcester,
and co-chair of the Cultural
Caucus, hold please.
Erin Williams, Che
Anderson, Lisa Drexhage,
Hank VonHellion, and Yaffa Fain to show us
how a successful meeting goes.
Now, please join me.
(audience applauding)
Rep. Keefe, great to see you.
Oh, hi, Erin.
Thanks for having us.
We've brought our Worcester
contingent in today.
Wow. (laughing)
We have Lisa Drexhage.
Hi.
MARY: Hi, Lisa.
Powwow Worcester artist, Che Anderson.
Che, good to see you.
Hank VonHellion and Yaffa Fain.
Hi, Yaffa, nice to see you.
Welcome to the Statehouse.
Thank you.
For some of us, this
is a first experience,
and it's such a gorgeous venue.
We've loved singing in here.
Sing, Che.
Don't tempt me.
(audience laughing)
Well, we're here as
part of Arts Matter Day,
MASSCreative has been advocating
and bringing all of the
creative community together
for a number of years, and you have been
one of our biggest champions,
so we just wanna give a shout out
for all the great work that you've done
with the Arts and Culture Caucus,
being one of the co-chairs on that,
and Rep. Keefe has also led the charge
for the Mass Cultural Council budget.
Let's give a shout out for that.
Yeah.
(audience cheering)
And most importantly, she is an artist,
and she'll tell us more
about that later, I'm sure.
Yeah, yeah.
But she has creativity in all her bones.
So, we wanted to come and share with you
a little today about some of
our own personal experiences.
Awesome.
In Worcester and greater Worcester area.
Yeah, well some of you I know,
but I know you on sort
of a superficial level,
so it's always great to go deeper,
and to figure out why you're here.
That's right.
Why this is important to you,
and for me to get to know you better.
So, go ahead.
So, we thought we'd do
a little storytelling.
Sure, sure.
And Lisa is gonna start us off,
and give us a little of her herstory.
My name is Lisa Drexhage, my
day job is a project manager
for the Worcester Business
Development Corporation,
and essentially, I work
in the physical realm
of infrastructure and
building development,
and how to improve places on that level.
But through my journey in that position,
I discovered that what makes
a community is the people,
and part of what makes a community vital
is the public art, and the art in general
that is within the various communities
throughout the city of Worcester.
So, I'm very thankful for your support
for the Massachusetts
Cultural Facilities Fund.
My company has benefited
from that program.
We received a couple of grants
to fit out the Worcester PopUp.
which is a community gallery run by
the Worcester Cultural Coalition,
as well as a Black Box Theater,
which are really important
projects to the downtown revitalization
for Worcester, Massachusetts.
In addition, I'm an organizer
from Powwow Worcester,
now in our fourth year,
and we're very excited
to keep adding to our art portfolio.
We have over 115 pieces of public art.
We also have over 50 of those pieces
on the Worcester Public School system.
We believe great public
art should be available
to any community in the city of Worcester.
And so, we're really grateful
for your past support
and we love your support to fund
the Massachusetts Cultural
Council to its fullest level,
$18 million, as well as
to propose and support
the Massachusetts Public Art Program,
that would basically help us create,
maintain, and preserve the beautiful
public art that exists throughout
the city of Worcester
and the Commonwealth.
Thank you.
Great, Lisa.
I just have to say, everything
that you talked about
is actually happening
mostly in my district.
So, if you think about the 15th Worcester,
it's most of downtown,
it goes across the city.
So, it's really exciting.
I feel like it's home, in terms of a lot
of what's bubbling up in
Worcester and creative excitement.
So, thanks for all you do,
and great to see it grow.
Hey there, Rep.
Great, Che.
Hey.
So, I know you pretty well, but again,
I'm Che Anderson, I work
for the city manager
in the city of Worcester, doing
special events permitting,
event programming, and
other duties as assigned,
I think, is what most of it is.
You folks know what that's like.
(audience laughing)
And I'm actually originally from
New York City, New York,
so I'm one of the many
college students that found their way
to Massachusetts and chose to
call Massachusetts home now.
Holy Cross, right?
Holy Cross, that's where I went.
And so, really excited to be here,
and honestly, arts and culture is one of
the reasons I stay here.
I found my passion about a year and a half
after graduating college in public art,
and finding an opportunity
to work with the city
through the Public Art Working Group,
and other exciting initiatives like that
led me to finding some folks like Lisa
and joining the Powwow Worcester team
to bring more public art to different
communities in Worcester,
not just downtown,
but throughout the city to
some underserved populations.
And because of the work that you folks
are able to do at the Statehouse,
here at City Hall, we look to
mimic some of those efforts,
and put more monies into
funding public art initiatives,
youth opportunities, youth education,
and really showing that Worcester,
though it's the heart of
central Massachusetts,
can be the heart and epicenter of a lot
of arts and culture as well.
So, thank you for your leadership,
and excited to be here.
Yeah, thanks, Che.
Thanks, and back to the city manager,
I just think he's done a great job,
in terms of seeing those opportunities.
Sometimes you really have to
pain the picture for people
and lead them down the path,
but our city manager seems to see art
as really central to everything
that's happening in Worcester.
So, thanks to you, as well
for being part of that.
So, great.
Probably should've done that sooner.
Probably.
Morning.
My name is Hank VonHellion.
I am the managing director
of the Worcester PopUp
that Lisa mentioned earlier.
I'm also an artist in Worcester.
I am also one of the organizers
for Powwow Worcester on a bunch of boards
and sort of, art related kind
of advocacy sort of things.
But...
For me, I think that the reason why
sort of, art matters,
the reason why the work
that we do, and everyone in
this room does, is important,
is because it empowers,
it creates opportunities
for artists, for entrepreneurs,
for people in the community
that really have a voice that don't have
necessarily a platform for that,
and we help provide that.
So, through the work that I
do at the Worcester PopUp,
we're about to celebrate
our one year anniversary,
April 13th, which is also my birthday.
There you go.
(laughing)
That's where I spent my
birthday last year, working.
How did that happen?
You know what?
Just happenstance.
But over the course of the last year,
we have helped to support
of 120 events at this point.
Local artists, entrepreneurs,
creative institutions,
cultural institutions,
educational institutions.
We've seen over, I think at this point,
over 2,500 people come through our doors
specifically to come and
participate in these events.
Between our social media and our website,
and our sort of, promotional efforts,
we've reached close to 20,000
people in this short time.
And so, the fact is,
that this kind of work,
the support that you,
and folks like yourselves
give us matters, and it
has a very quantifiable
positive impact on the
community and on city building.
So, I thank you.
You know what I love about the PopUp,
is it's so democratic.
It's really accessible to
anyone and everyone, you know?
And that's awesome, because
I think a lot of times
things emerge, and they
become only for a few people,
but this is something that's
really there and open,
and you really get that feelings.
It's exciting, it's exciting.
It was definitely one of the major points
that we wanna sort of, emphasize
when we opened the space,
is that this, while we do sort of,
have our doors open to everyone,
including organizations that
have been doing this forever,
we really wanted to target the folks
that were either brand new at this,
or still really learning
about the business of art,
how to promote yourself,
how to really build
your brand, you business,
your demographic.
And so, thank you.
I just committed on Facebook to an event
that's coming up in April,
Stone soup is having
a film festival on gentrification,
and that's something
artists have to think about,
because a lot of times when we
see our communities advance,
we see them outpricing
the people that really
made it a great place, so how
do we do some of that as well?
So, I was excited.
It's particularly important
in a city like Worcester,
where because we're going through
this crazy sort of, growth spurt,
these are issues that we have to address,
and the community is doing an amazing job
of addressing that, and really
making themselves heard.
So, they're great.
Thanks, Hank.
You're welcome.
Hi there, good morning.
I'm Yaffa Fain.
I'm with the city's Cultural
Development Division,
and to tell a little bit about my story,
I moved to Worcester to
attend Clark University,
and something that I appreciated
about that institution
is their social justice orientation.
And what I was fortunate enough to do,
is intern with the city in the
Cultural Development Division,
and that transitioned into
a full-time role for me.
So, as the one who's always been creative,
and invested in arts and
culture, and community,
having the opportunity to intern,
and the funding that was available
to participate in city governance
made it possible for me
to stay in Worcester,
and then work full-time.
So, I think that definitely
speaks to the importance
of making opportunities for there to be
young people who are
involved in the community,
and then develop their interests
and passion for creativity.
That's awesome.
Are you working together?
Are you together?
Yes, we're all creatives
embedded in City Hall.
Okay, okay great great great.
We try to go under the radar
and make a big splash.
Yeah.
In fact, we're celebrating Robert Goddard,
the first person to create the rocket,
and so, we are exploding this next year
with all kinds of a cultural activity.
Sounds like a blast.
There.
Yes.
(audience laughing)
All right, well I'm out.
(laughing)
So, we just wanna emphasize the fact
that with leadership like yours,
and in our municipality, and hopefully
all your municipalities,
people come to understand
that arts aren't just
nice, they're necessary.
Right, yeah.
(audience cheering)
I like to say, not extra,
but essential, right, yeah.
Exactly.
So, what does that mean?
That means all of us need
to be thinking broader,
and that's the MASSCreative platform,
in conjunction with the
Mass Cultural Council
and the local Cultural Council Program,
the most democratic
program in the country,
giving every community in town monies
to allocate out five to one return,
but we need to be thinking
about arts in our streetscapes,
in education, in public art,
in marketing our communities
and equity, equity for all.
That's really the most important thing
in our community today, and I
hope all of your communities
are looking at the lens of, well,
who are we as a community,
and what are we striving for?
We should always all be
reaching and learning more,
and you have set the precedent for that.
Would you mind telling a little bit
about your own story of reaching,
and how you got involved in your position?
Sure.
Well, I'm a graduate
of Mass College of Art.
(audience cheering)
Yeah.
And it's interesting how strong a thread
that has been in my life.
I don't think I knew it at the time
when I started at Mass Art.
I majored in printmaking.
I had a wonderful education there.
We had no gymnasium, no
cafeteria, nothing like that,
but our tuition was $250
a semester, you know?
And everybody commuted in, or
found a cheap place to live,
and things are a little
different in the city now,
for students especially, but
we need to think about that,
and how do we keep it affordable?
And not a risky thing to
do, but a great thing to do,
just to pursue the arts as a formal
piece of higher education.
But then it goes back
to incorporating that
into education as essential.
So, all of that.
And to go on later on in my life,
I was an educator in public schools,
and then I taught at the
Worcester Art Museum.
I had three children of my own,
and I hope they think that arts
are pretty important to them, too.
And I was able to keep my own hand in,
in terms of doing my own artwork,
but probably about 15 years ago,
I joined a group of
printmakers in Worcester
affiliated with the
Blackstone Printmaking Studio
that Nina Fletcher had
founded in Worcester,
and it's a great place, and
I'm able to do printmaking,
in a studio that we all share,
sort of as a cooperative.
Six years ago, I'm
elected to the Statehouse,
and that comes from an
organizing background,
which I'm so happy to see the arts
organizing around what we need,
because that really
doesn't happen by itself,
and we need to have a collective voice.
So, I'm at the Statehouse,
and I'm thinking,
you know, this is really good
representing 40,000
people back in Worcester,
and I was excited, but little did I know,
that the arts would become a real part
of the reason that I'm there.
And that had also to do
with a colleague of mine,
Representative Chris Walsh,
who's a graduate of RISD.
Chris died over a year ago,
but he really was a little bit before me,
and stepped out in a way that,
together, kinda being
surprised that both coming
from an art school background,
that we had a place at the Statehouse,
and a reason for being there.
So, that's pretty much it,
and I'm just really happy
to be working with all of you,
and to bring this forward.
We really need to look at where it's going
in terms of arts education.
I know that was one of the things
that I think you wanted to
talk about a little bit, right?
Arts education is top of mind for us.
We're involved, as you know,
in a cultural plan for the city.
Right, right.
And it's not an extra, it is embedded into
the city's new master
plan that's rolling out.
(audience applauding)
Fortunately, they haven't
completed the master plan,
but we've completed the cultural plan,
so that's gonna set the
tone for the whole city,
and what lens we're looking through.
Great.
But arts education, in the classroom,
but out of the classroom.
Lifelong learning, creative connections,
that's really what it's about.
Not the capital C of culture, capital A.
It's arts engagement for all.
So, that's our mantra in central Mass,
and that's really the
mantra of MASSCreative,
and I think you've helped
championing that over the years.
Yeah.
We still have work to do, though,
because we're in the
middle of every forum.
Many of you might've
heard, there's a big fight
for chapter 70 money, and increasing that,
and I think where I hear
the arts being talked about
is not especially in the classroom,
but in after school kind of, activities.
So, you know, okay, that sounds
like a little bit of extra.
We know it's essential, we'll embrace it,
but we do have a lot of work to do
to make sure that it's
really there throughout,
and it's part of what we need
to do now, right now, really.
Well, we're with you on that.
Yeah.
And if there's anything we can do for you,
something you wake up in
the middle of the night
and you say, oh, we
gotta have a dance party
on the common next week to celebrate
cultural equity for all,
just give us a ring.
Well, I just think including everyone,
and making sure that folks
know what's happening.
At the Statehouse, I'd say, we
just need to stand together.
I'm really excited about Paul McMurtry,
Rep. McMurtry, who is now the chair
of arts, culture, and tourism,
and I'm on that committee.
I'm really excited about working with him.
I'm excited about our Cultural Caucus,
and all of the members,
all of my colleagues
that came out and said,
"Yes, I really need to be
"more closely attuned to
what's happening culturally
"in my district, and I
don't know how to do that."
Or, "I don't know what's
culturally happening,
"can you help me understand it?"
So, there's a lot of work to be done,
and your being here today is just great.
Are you meeting with other
members of the delegation?
We are, and Che, did
you wanna say anything
about artists live work
space, and connecting artists
in the community there, how
important that is for us?
So, I think that one
of the things we found
in the city of Worcester specifically,
as you know, is that arts
has sort of permeated
throughout the entire community,
and it's been amazing to see how
organic that's happened over time.
A bunch of us do work in some capacity
with and for the city, or
city adjacent organizations,
but it really does start
from a grassroots level,
sorta, all the way up.
There're people in this,
and I'm gonna namedrop
a ton of people, so, audience, I'm sorry.
Or take notes, 'cause
a lot of great things
are happening in Worcester.
(audience laughing)
So, there're groups like
Art-Reach, or Main IDEA,
or the Creative Hub, that
are doing amazing things
with arts education,
getting our youth involved
and engaged in the arts very early on.
Some of them are working
during the school day,
and some of them are bring them
to after school activities,
so that's been amazing to see happen.
We're lucky enough to have so many
independent arts organizers in the city,
much like yourself, and other folks
who've done festivals,
like stART on the Street,
or like the Caribbean Carnival,
or the Latin Festival,
to understand that culture
isn't just something
that happens within the arts,
but also ethnic diversity
and equity as well.
So, that work's being doing in the city.
Large city culture, if
you will, organizations,
the Worcester Art Museum,
the Hanover Theater,
arts and science spaces like the EcoTarium
are finding new and exciting ways
to get the community involved,
not just on their
campus, but understanding
that by being in Worcester,
the city's their campus,
so getting them out and
about in the community,
providing free, accessible artwork.
And so, that's all been great
from a programming standpoint,
but we're also understanding
that as the city develops,
it really is the arts
that are jump starting
a lot of this development.
The idea that Worcester's undergoing
a renaissance is something
that starts with our creatives,
and so, we would be remissed not to have
a place for them to
work and play and live,
and so, that's really the next sort of,
essential step for us, is figuring out
how to not just let artists come in
and make our neighborhoods look beautiful,
but to live in those same
beautiful neighborhoods
at an affordable rate.
And not just to have one
other artist they know
in the neighborhood, but to
have a whole cohort of artists
being able to live in the space,
and feel like Worcester is home.
So, that's really the next
level for us in Worcester.
Awesome.
We hope that we have you there
with us to make it all happen.
Yeah, and I can think of other people
that would like to be
part of that conversation.
So, great, great.
Well, thank you for your time,
we know you're gonna see
a bunch of people today.
Good luck with the rest of your time here,
and see you back in Worcester, right?
Most definitely.
Could we take a little picture with you
to share with the community?
Oh, awesome, yeah, yeah, yeah.
We wanna post this on our Twitter
and use the hashtag #CreativityConnects,
if that's all right with you?
Great, great, great.
(audience applauding)
(group speaking over each other)
(laughing)
Turn around.
The first millennials
found out what a selfie is.
(laughing)
There we are.
There you go, nice.
(audience applauding)
See.
And that's how it's done.
Join me in thanking Representative Keefe,
Erin, Che, Lisa, Hank, and Yaffa.
(audience applauding)
Okay, so, now is the time where
we move around a little bit,
but I'm gonna give you
a series of instructions
before you move, so bear with me.
We want you to meet up with other folks
here from your district, so you can prep
for your meetings with your legislators.
We're going to do this in a
couple steps, so sit tight.
We'll spend about 20 minutes in the groups
when we move there, but I want everyone
to take a look at your name tag,
at the back of your name tag,
there should be a group
number that tells you
the senate group you're in.
Some of you have two group numbers,
one for where you live, and
perhaps one for where you work.
You should choose which
group you wanna go to,
but please note that for representatives
that are farther outside of Boston,
they have fewer folks, so you might wanna
sort of, spread the wealth there.
After you meet with your senate group,
find others in your group
with the same representative
and plan your meetings together.
Now, I want you to see
where your captains are,
and your captains are holding numbers.
So, when it's time to move,
you'll go to those numbers.
Now, all of our captains
should raise their flags,
or their banners high.
Not everyone has them.
And if you're in the
balcony and you can't see,
you should make your way down here.
There's 12, 11, 13, 31 on this side.
I see two and five and 18.
There's three in the middle.
And for those groups, if
you'll just bear with me
for one more second, those
groups in three and four,
those will meet on the
stage afterwards, okay?
And the curtain will
rise, curtain will rise.
All groups at this moment,
if you've identified your group number,
you should find your way
there pretty quickly,
and we'll spend about 20 minutes,
I'll give you a 10 minute warning,
and if you would kindly take
all your belongings with you,
because we will dismiss to
the march from our groups.
(audience chattering)
Is everybody clear?
Yes.
(audience cheering)
