Marjorie Saintil-Belizaire aimed to reshape the Mattahunt Community Center (MCC) as an arts and cultural space to convene, engage and to better reflect and celebrate community, local arts, culture, heritage, entrepreneurship, while also honoring BCYF’s ACES (Arts, Community and Civic Engagements, Education and Sports) framework.

People thought why don’t we have an art gallery? And that’s when I thought about this place [The Mattahunt], creative placemaking. Well, we don’t have a gallery but we can turn this place into a gallery. That’s when we did the community art festival. We hung up all the artwork, we had dancers and students, and all of these people were from the community. We have the Mattahunt, and we can use it do all of these things.

Marjorie held a series of art workshops and classes, and coordinated art centered cultural events for the Haitian community in Mattapan. In this way, her investigation of the Mattahunt has acted as pilot and a model for systematic change within the BCYF.