City to Host 'ALRIGHT' Poetry Event with Poet Laureate Porsha Olayiwola

Mayor Michelle Wu and the Mayor’s Office of Arts & Culture, in collaboration with Boston Poet Laureate Porsha Olayiwola, today announced the City will host ALRIGHT on Thursday, December 1, 2022, from 7:30-9:30 p.m. at the Boston Center for the Arts Black Box Plaza (539 Tremont St, Boston, MA 02116). This event is part of a broader celebration of Boston as Host City of The Earthshot Prize, a global initiative designed to find and grow the solutions that will repair our planet this decade. 

“The arts must play a crucial role in bringing our communities together for the scale and creativity of actions needed to tackle climate change,” said Mayor Michelle Wu. “I look forward to this event and am grateful to Porsha for creating this space to inspire what’s possible for climate action.”

ALRIGHT, led by Poet Laureate Porsha Olayiwola and artist and curator Cierra Peters, is an interactive arts experience and show that engages a conversation around the Black Diaspora and climate change. Inspired by Kendrick Lamar’s lyrics, “We gone be alright,” this art experience uses an Afro-futurist pedagogy to frame the role Black individuals have in writing and claiming a future we want to and can live in by their own design. 

“ALRIGHT pairs optimism with action to move through what feels like dystopian space,” said Poet Laureate Porsha Olayiwola. “It’s interactive in that the audience in ALRIGHT are both players and actors, as we all have a hand to play in shaping the future we wish to live in.”

The event will feature music from DJ Real P, dance vignettes choreographed by Kaleisha Chance at 4Star Dance Studio, poetry from Crystal Valentine, a live performance from Fanta Vibez, and more. Audience members will be spirited through the evening via forest god/dess Dzidzor Azaglo of Black Cotton Club.

“This is an exciting opportunity for the City to explore the intersection between arts and the environment, and to center Black voices,” said Chief of Arts & Culture Kara Elliott-Ortega. “We look forward to inviting the entire city to join us in imagining a better future for everyone through dance, poetry, and song.”

The ALRIGHT event is free and open to all, and attendees are encouraged to dress in the theme of “enchanted garden” and to consider the environment in their dress choices by wearing existing items or shopping sustainably. Free tickets can be reserved here.

Founded by Prince William and The Royal Foundation in 2020, The Earthshot Prize is a global environmental prize to discover, accelerate and scale ground-breaking eco-solutions to repair and regenerate the planet. Inspired by President John F. Kennedy’s Moonshot, which united millions of people around the goal of reaching the moon, The Earthshot Prize aims to catalyze an Earthshot challenge to urgently encourage and scale innovative solutions that can help put the world firmly on a trajectory towards a stable climate, where communities, oceans and biodiversity thrive in harmony by 2030. The five challenges are: Protect and Restore Nature; Clean our Air; Revive our Oceans; Build a Waste-free World; and Fix our Climate.

The Prize aims to turn the current pessimism surrounding environmental issues into optimism but championing inspiring leadership and helping to scale incredible cutting-edge solutions. It will discover 50 winners over 10 years with the power to repair the planet. More than a prize, The Earthshot Prize works in partnership with a Global Alliance of Partners to support the scaling of the solutions discovered and selected each year.