This is a hybrid event. FREE for MHS Members. $10 per person fee (in person). No charge for virtual attendees or Card to Culture participants (EBT, WIC, and ConnectorCare).

 

Join us for a new play by the Dorchester Weather Theatre Collective!

Produced and devised in collaboration with a community of local neighborhood artists and activists, The Lot Next Door explores issues and dynamics at the intersection of community development, environmental justice, and social resilience through the retelling of a true story in which residents fight a proposed development lot on the corner of Woodrow Ave and Norfolk St in Dorchester.

Join us for Boston Chinatown: Stories on Our Streets produced by CHUANG Stage in partnership with Company One Theatre.

Based on the community engagement and oral history work done by C1’s artists, PlayLab alumni, and frequent collaborators of the 2021 Boston Chinatown Musical, this new musical uplifts Chinatown’s history, vibrancy, and perseverance in the face of gentrification and racial violence.

We Were Here Too by Roberto Mighty, in partnership with the Freedom Trail® Foundation and Old North Illuminated, revives the memory of Boston’s colonial African-Americans, many of whom lived and worked in what is today’s North End. The project can be experienced worldwide via an online multimedia website, and locally via augmented reality in Copp’s Hill Burying Ground

The project launches Wednesday May 21, 2025 at 1:00pm at Copps Hill Burying Ground with a dedication and a guided historical tour by the artist. An artist talk will be held on Wednesday May 28, 2025 at 5:30pm at the historic Old North Church, hosted by Old North Illuminated. Events are free, but accommodations are limited, so please sign up as soon as possible with the links above. Light refreshments will be provided. This project is funded by the City of Boston Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture’s Un-Monument Initiative and The Mellon Foundation. 

This innovative project honors the lives of colonial-era African Americans in Boston’s North End—many of whom were interred, or are believed to have been buried, at Copp’s Hill Burying Ground, established in 1659 and recognized as Boston’s largest colonial cemetery.

This project honors historical figures, including Phillis Wheatley Peters, in 1773 the first African-American woman to publish a book of poetry; Prince Hall, an abolitionist who fought in the Revolutionary War and founded Prince Hall Masonry; and Onesimus, an African who was instrumental in bringing knowledge of smallpox inoculation to America.

Blending history with technology, We Were Here Too invites the public to engage with a layered storytelling experience. The project features augmented reality, video interviews with historians and community voices, digital illustrations, archival images, voice performances, and historical content drawn from museum collections and archives around the world.

Roberto says, “I hope folks will experience this exhibit and learn that African Americans – free and enslaved – were living and working in Boston at the same time as Paul Revere, Abigail Adams and John Hancock. We were here, too.”

Funded by the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture through a grant from the Mellon Foundation, “We Were Here Too” is presented in partnership with the Boston Parks and Recreation Department, The Historic Burying Grounds Initiative, the Freedom Trail® Foundation and Old North Illuminated.

Indigenous peoples, histories, stories, and culture have been erased from the City of Boston and Massachusetts. You rarely see the mention of our peoples across the City and if you do, it’s rarely from an Indigenous perspective. Due to the history of erasure in Massachusetts, you don’t see many events or convenings centering Indigenous knowledge. Our history in this city and state needs to reckon with that exclusion and erasure.

In partnership with the North American Indian Center of Boston and Northeastern University, we are hosting our second annual Indigenous symposium. These annual events will be led by Indigenous peoples, centering and platforming Indigenous knowledge. This year we’d like to focus on land and the work that Indigenous communities are doing to protect land and restore land. This will be a one day event, two panel discussions, and exhibition of art.

Proposed Schedule:

Panel Discussion

• Land Back + Conservation + Environmental Justice
• Cultural Preservation

Artist show + Artist Share Out

Our symposium is sponsored by: City of Boston, City of Boston Equity and Inclusion, North American Indian Center of Boston, and Mills College at Northeastern.

Accessibility, Health and Safety:

• Our online event will include automated captions.

Register