How Culture and Creativity Build Power in Communities of Color

Amid Boston’s development boom, communities of color are grappling with maintaining and amplifying their identity. Questions of who belongs to places — and to whom places belong — will determine the future of the city. Facing rapid change, community leaders are leveraging culture and creativity as strategies for placekeeping, and for sharing belonging, wellness, and joy.

Join the Boston University Initiative on Cities, BU Arts Initiative, and BU City Planning & Urban Affairs Program for a discussion with Boston’s community leaders to explore the impact that culture and creativity make in places:

— Tania Fernandes Anderson, Boston City Councilor, District 7; former Executive Director, Bowdoin Geneva Main Streets

— Michael Monestime, Business Strategy and Development, Morningside Real Estate Group, Founding partner of Starlight Square

— Anita Morson-Matra, Creative Entrepreneur and Founder, Baldwin in the Park & Nubian Nights

Moderated by F. Philip Barash, City Planning and Urban Affairs Program, Boston University

This event was part of a series on Race, Place, and Space, co-hosted by the IOC, the BU Arts Initiative, and BU Diversity & Inclusion (D&I). The series explores the ways in which racial and ethnic groups access, inhabit, occupy, shape, and are memorialized in urban contexts—as well as the ways their contemporary and historical contributions have been made invisible, disregarded, or denigrated.

Boston University strives to be accessible, inclusive and diverse in our facilities, programming and academic offerings. Your experience in this event is important to us. If you have a disability (including but not limited to learning or attention, mental health, concussion, vision, mobility, hearing, physical or other health related), require communication access services for the deaf or hard of hearing, or believe that you require a reasonable accommodation for another reason please contact event organizer David Gross at davgross@bu.edu at least three weeks prior the event to discuss your needs. If you are seeing this message closer to the event, please still reach out to us and we will try our best to fulfill the request or offer an alternative.