The Indigenous Peoples’ Medicine Fire, taking place from dawn to dusk on Saturday, November 28, 2020, is a healing fire that is open to all people who are in need of prayer or who need to pray for others. We recognize that these are difficult times and many people have lost loved ones. This is a time set aside for reflection and to offer your prayers to the fire. Anyone may speak, but all are asked to be mindful that this is a time set aside for reflection and spiritual support. Individulas are not welcome to voice grievances.

The event will happen rain or shine. No photography or video capturing is allowed.

Visitors are asked to not bring anything. Bottled water and packaged snacks will be on hand only for those with special needs.

All participant must wear a mask and comply with posted social distancing protocols. There will be no contact, hugging, kissing, or handshaking between participants. People who are sick or who have symptoms such as cough, fever, or loss of taste should not attend. Please register for a ticketed time slot so we can ensure the gathering does not exceed 25 people at a time to align with public health guidelines.

• Walking: Walk a half mile to the top of Scarboro Hill, in Franklin Park. Follow the signs from the picnic area and tennis courts to the Medicine Fire.
• Driving: From I-93, take exit 11 Granite Avenue, continue through, and take a left at the fourth light onto Neponset Avenue. Neponset Avenue becomes Morton Street. At the rotary, take the last exit onto Circuit Drive. Take the first right into Franklin Park. Do not turn into Lemuel Shattuck Hospital driveway. There is limited parking available.
• Public Transit: Accessible via the Forest Hills T Stop.

The Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture invites you to a virtual artist talk and poetry reading for the Roxbury Branch Library Clerestory Project on Thursday, November, 5th, 2020, from 5:30 PM- 6:30 PM.

The Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture is hosting this virtual talk to share information about the project, which is the first of two public art projects that will complement the renovation of the Roxbury Branch of the Boston Public Library. There will be a short presentation and poetry reading, followed by a question and answer session.

To participate in the event, join the Zoom meeting. If you are unable to connect to audio or you do not have internet, you can call into the meeting by dialing +1-646-558-8656 US and entering Meeting Meeting ID: 867 3810 0889#. This event will also be live-streamed on the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture Facebook page.

Nakia Hill was named a Boston Artist-in-Residence in 2018 by Mayor Walsh. She is a writer, journalist, and educator who focuses on empowering women to use writing as a tool for healing and resistance. Hill is the author of two books: "Water Carrier" and "I Still Did It". Learn more about Nakia or purchase her books on her website.

Asiyah is a poet, activist, and 826 Boston’s Youth Literary Advisory Board’s Teaching Artist. She was a finalist for the City of Boston’s Youth Poet Laureate residency.

City of Boston Artist-In-Residence Golden and Feminine Empowerment Movement Slam (FEMS) Founding Director Zenaida Peterson will co-host a virtual Town Hall on October 7 from 4 - 6 p.m., in partnership with the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture. The event will discuss the representation of transgender and nonbinary individuals in the City of Boston’s policies and processes, with a focus on naming ways the City can better support transgender and nonbinary Bostonians.

This town hall will collect written and oral testimony specifically from trans, nonbinary, genderqueer, and gender-expansive individuals currently living in the Greater Boston area.

Submit testimony

Through the Boston Artists-in-Residence (AIR) program, artists work with a parallel cohort of City partners to explore, critique, and re-imagine City initiatives at the intersection of civil service, social justice, and artistic practice.

Golden (they/them) is a black gender-nonconforming trans-femme photographer and poet raised in Hampton, VA, currently residing in Boston, MA. Golden is the recipient of a Pink Door Fellowship (2017/2019), an Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Luminaries Fellowship (2019), the Frontier Award for New Poets (2019), and a Pushcart Nomination (wildness, 2019). Their work has been featured on/at the Shade Journal, the Offing, wildness, Button Poetry, Buzzfeed, i-D, Interview Magazine, & elsewhere. Golden holds a BFA in Photography from New York University and is currently a City of Boston Artist-in-Residence. Instagram | Twitter | Golden's website

Zenaida Peterson, author of “Breakfast for Dinner and Other Blasphemous Things” published by Pizza Pi Press is a mystic, an organizer, a house plant gardener and a Black non-binary poet from the south currently thriving in Boston, Massachusetts. They are the founding director of Feminine Empowerment Movement Slam (FEMS), an all ages radical poetry slam centering marginalized people and celebrating the feminine. Zenaida are easing the impacts of 2020 by learning to make plant medicine, engaging in restorative justice, mutual aid and farming. They are the Equity and Empowerment Director of Quaker Voluntary Service. Their current project is spending each month of 2020 conquering a different fear of theirs.

The session will be held virtually on September 9, 2020, at 6 p.m. ET. Interested artists can participate by visiting our Zoom meeting. You can submit a question in advance through our online form.

The deadline to apply for the public art project is September 16, 2020, at 5 p.m. ET.

The session will be held virtually on September 2, 2020, at 6 p.m. ET. Questions can be submitted in advance using our online form.

This is the second of two public art projects that will complement the renovation of the Roxbury Branch of the Boston Public Library. The deadline to apply for the project is September 9, 2020, at 5 p.m. ET. Learn more about the project.

Interested artists can join the meeting using this link, or by dialing 646-558-8656 and entering Meeting ID 853 0361 6603#.

During this virtual panel series, Indigenous leaders and artists will speak about their work in the public realm, and address how symbols perpetuating colonial myths affect the lives of Indigenous people in the City and contribute to the public health emergency of racism.



The first event in this series will be held on Tuesday, July 21, at 6 p.m. The second event will be on Tuesday, July 28, at 6 p.m., and the third event will take place on August 4, at 6 p.m. The events will be livestreamed to the Mayor's Office of Arts & Culture Boston Facebook page.



The speakers for the first event include:

• Mahtowin Munro, Lakota, Co-leader of United American Indians of New England and lead organizer for IndigenousPeoplesDayMA.org, will speak about the “Dismantle Now! BIPOC Solidarity Against White Supremacy: March + Art Action” that took place at Faneuil Hall Square on July 8, as well as her work calling for the removal of the Columbus statue and other colonial monuments and symbols in Boston.
• Lilly E. Manycolors, mixed Choctaw, interdisciplinary artist and scholar, will discuss her work “MISKODOODISWAN Red Sweat Lodge: Witnessing/Healing of Missing and Murdered Women,” now installed on Boston Common. 
• Jean-Luc Pierite, Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana, President of the Board, North American Indian Center of Boston, will talk about his work advocating for the protection of sacred sites around Boston. 

The speakers for the second event will be announced soon.

The Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture is hosting a public meeting on July 16 to share information about the City’s public art commissioning process and hear your thoughts about permanent public art for the new Northern Avenue Bridge. There will be a short presentation followed by a question and answer session. 

For the safety of the project team and meeting attendees, this meeting will be hosted online, using Zoom. The meeting will be recorded and posted online for those who cannot attend. Join the Zoom meeting link or dial 301-715-8592 and enter Meeting I.D. 817 8531 6085 #.

Additionally, the presentation will be posted on the Arts and Culture website in advance of the meeting to give people who can only attend by phone an opportunity to review the presentation.  

The Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture will accept comments before and after the meeting at bac@boston.com. Please include “Northern Avenue Bridge” in the subject line. Comment period ends on July 30, 2020. 

Juneteenth 2020 coincides with a pandemic within a pandemic: the challenge of COVID-19 and America’s reckoning with its history of racism. Black Lives Matter.

Beyond the renewal of an iconic monument, we partners seek to educate, inform, and convene community conversations and special programs exploring history, race, and social justice. We hope these dialogues will lead to greater understanding — and ultimately social change which is long overdue. 

Register for the event

Visit the website for more information about the Restoration of the Shaw 54th Regiment Memorial on Boston Common.