Creative Minds Out Loud

Episode 95: The Arts Sector in the Age of Climate Change

Vijay Mathew, Cultural Strategist and Co-Founder of HowlRound Theater Commons, discusses the impact of climate change on the field of arts and culture, and what a transition to a post-carbon arts sector may entail.

Vijay Mathew (he/him/his) is the Cultural Strategist and a co-founder of HowlRound Theatre Commons, based at Emerson College, Boston, USA. He is privileged to assist a talented team by leading HowlRound’s development of commons-based online knowledge sharing platforms and the organization’s notions of cultural innovation. Prior to his current position, he was the Coordinator for the National Endowment for the Arts (USA) New Play Development Program, as well as a Theater Communication Group (USA) New Generations Future Leader grant recipient in new work at Arena Stage in Washington, DC.

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Episode 94: Look at Art. Get Paid.

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Through “Look at Art. Get Paid,” artists Maia Chao and Josephine Devanbu pay people who have never been to an art museum to visit one as guest critics. Having both studied social science in addition to art, Chao and Devanbu crave a candid conversation about the structural inequalities of art, critique, and its institutions.

Maia Chao and Josephine Devanbu Maia Chao is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores play and absurdity as subversive and emancipatory tools for collaboration and collective imagining. Chao holds a BA from Brown University and an MFA from RISD. She is the recipient of a Fulbright Grant (2014), Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship (2017), and Van Lier Fellowship (2018), and is currently artist in residence at Pioneer Works (2019). She is based in Brooklyn, NY.

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Episode 93: Creating Public Space for Community Health

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Matthew Mazzotta is an artist and activist. His work utilizes – and fuels – community dialogue. Through the creation of public artwork and space, he aims to leave people with an experience that expands their view of where they live.

Matthew Mazzotta works at the intersection of art, activism, and urbanism, focusing on the power of the built environment to shape our relationships and experiences. He is as much as an inventor as he is an activist using artistic sensibilities to bring real world issues into the social discourse and lead collective public imagining. His community-specific public projects integrate new forms of civic participation and social engagement into the built environment and reveal how the spaces we travel through and spend our time living within have the potential to become distinct sites for intimate, radical, and meaningful exchanges.

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Episode 92: Youth Voice Transforms a Neighborhood

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Celina Miranda, Executive Director of Hyde Square Task Force (HSTF), discusses the integral role of young people in the creation of Boston’s Latin Quarter Cultural District. She says that HSTF youth were compelled to speak up about the importance of having a place to call home and a place that recognizes their strengths and assets. The voices of these young people were powerful and central in the transformation of their neighborhood.

Celina Miranda is Executive Director of Hyde Square Task Force (HSTF), a youth development organization located in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston. Before joining HSTF in August of 2016, she was senior program officer at the Richard and Susan Smith Family Foundation, where she managed grants in education and economic mobility.

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Episode 91: Igniting Community in Central Mass

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Heather Cook founded Three Match Creations with an aim to spark community in Central Massachusetts through creativity, innovation, and education. Their Co-Lab offers a center for connection between whoever is looking for a support system – artists, makers, creatives, and/or growers.

Raised in the backwoods of Montana, completely off-grid, Heather Cook learned at an early age the necessary skills to keep herself alive and how to make her own heat. Because of this, she grew up understanding the crucial need for community, creativity, and innovation for the betterment of life. In 2018, Three Match Creations was formed.

As a child in rural Montana, Heather was endlessly motivated by things that challenged her endurance and would often take just three matches into the woods and see how long she could survive. She found that even with limited resources, she was able to develop life-sustaining support. Heather has carried this analogy with her in her professional life for the past 16 years. Through her humanitarian work and massive life challenges (her own and within her community), she thrives on survival.

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