On May 11, the City of Boston and Massachusetts College of Art and Design announced that they will be utilizing a $1.2 million grant from the Surdna Foundation to support artists of color through a three-year grant program called Radical Imagination for Racial Justice (RIRJ).
“This new program and partnership with the City of Boston centers the role of artists as catalysts in imagining — and creating — a racially just Boston.”
MassArt and the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture will distribute the funds in tandem to artists who are looking to advance racial justice through creative community-oriented projects.
Leading the charge on the RIRJ program are Ceci Méndez-Ortiz, executive director of the Center for Art and Community Partnerships (CACP) at MassArt, Chandra Méndez-Ortiz, executive director of youth pathways and programs and director of Artward Bound at MassArt, and Kara Elliott-Ortega, chief of arts and culture for the city of Boston.
The grant and RIRJ program represent an important opportunity for up to 260 artists of color in the Boston arts community to create radical, community-oriented art on a large scale.
