This year, 221 Boston arts organizations and projects have been awarded Boston Cultural Council organizational grants, totaling $486,645. These funds support innovative arts, humanities, and interpretive sciences programming. The goal is to enhance the quality of life in our City.

The event will take place on March 18, 2019 from 6 - 8 p.m. at MassArt's Pozen Center.

Join the City of Boston and Emerson College on March 12, 2019, for a celebratory gathering in honor of the City's new Poet Laureate, Porsha Olayiwola. There will be a public reading featuring Porsha Olayiwola, former Poet Laureate Danielle Legros Georges, and other local artists in the Jackie Liebergott Black Box Theater at 7 p.m. 

A Jamaica Plain resident, Porsha Olayiwola is the Artistic Director at MassLEAP, a literary nonprofit organization in Massachusetts serving youth artists. She also co-founded The House Slam, a poetry slam venue at the Haley House Bakery Café in Roxbury that offers a free poetry slam and open mic events twice a month. Porsha is the 2014 Individual World Poetry Slam Champion and 2015 National Poetry Slam Champion. In 2018, she was named by GK100 as one of Boston’s Most Influential People of Color. She is also an MFA Candidate at Emerson College and has a full-length collection of poetry forthcoming in 2019 with Button Poetry.

Sponsored by BCYF Girls Initiative, Boston P.A.L., Lingzi Foundation, and the Condon Community Center Council.

This year's reception, "Who We Art and What We Bring to Boston," will showcase 30 works of art by Haitian artists that are on display in the third floor Scollay Square Gallery.

The event will commemorate the January 12, 2010, Haiti earthquake. There will also be a book signing for the new version of "Migrating Colors: Haitian Art in New England."

The event is free to the public.

Sara Porkalob is an award-winning arts activist based in Seattle. She’s featured in Seattle Magazine’s Most Influential People of 2018, City Art’s 2017 Futures List, and served as Intiman Theatre's 2017 Co-Curator. She is a co-founder of DeConstruct, an online journal of intersectional performance critique. Her first full length play, "Dragon Lady," is the recipient of three 2018 Gregory Awards for:

• Outstanding Sound/Music Design
• Outstanding Actress in a Musical, and
• Outstanding Musical Production.

The play has also garnered a Seattle Times Footlight Award and a Broadway World Award for “Best New Play."

In March 2019, American Repertory Theatre will produce "Dragon Lady" and "Dragon Mama," the first two plays in her family trilogy, "The Dragon Cycle." Next year, she is collaborating with the City of Seattle and their new Creative Strategies Initiative (CSI), a new City effort that uses arts- and culture-based approaches to build racial equity in non-arts policy areas like the environment, housing, workforce, and community development. Nordo’s Culinarium will produce her new play, "7th and Jackson," a historical fiction with music inspired by Seattle’s International District.

The group will read from works in progress set outside of Boston, and will participate in an interactive panel discussion moderated by AGNI’s Senior Editor, Bill Pierce.

Come learn about the relationship between the writer's work and the experience of being an artist in the City of Boston. How do these things intersect? How do they influence each other? What are the challenges and advantages of writing about a place where you no longer live? What can these writers bring to the city? How can writers and readers in Boston think of literature as a global experience?

The Back Porch Collective is a group comprised of mostly international writers from diverse backgrounds:

• Dariel Suarez (Cuba)
• Stacy Mattingly (Atlanta)
• Shubha Sunder (India)
• Jonathan Escoffery (Miami/Jamaica)
• Ani Gjika (Albania)
• and Colwill Brown (United Kingdom)

Through the Artist Fellowship, the City of Boston offered five awards of $10,000 each in 2017 to Boston-based artists across disciplines. More than 300 applications were reviewed by a panel of jurors made up of local arts leaders and Boston Cultural Council members. Fellows were asked to work with the City on one public event showcasing their work. The 2017 fellows included Dariel Suarez, Mary-Jane Dohery, Marilyn Arsem, Jason Palmer, and Michelle Fornabai.

For the past year, seven artists have dedicated themselves to the exploration of City of Boston policies, processes, and practices through a lens of resilience and racial equity. As members of the Boston AIR cohort, artists developed multidisciplinary projects addressing civic concerns, such as:

• environmental racism in climate change response
• community activism led by older Bostonians, and
• gaps in historic narratives in City archives and memorials.

Some have worked alongside City subject matter experts and co-designed a program, while others have worked with community centers and other partners to understand municipal policy impact on a personal level. Through Boston AIR, the City of Boston is providing support and structure for artists as engaged citizens, leading thinkers, and change-makers in our community with the belief and trust that artists can and do influence and shape our City.

Refreshments will be served, and the event is free to the public. All ages are welcome!