Join us under the Civic Pavilion lights for a night of truth-telling, healing, and radical creativity!⁠

Featuring powerhouse spoken word poets:⁠

• Rebecca Dupas⁠
• Abigail Jean-Baptiste⁠
• Josiehanna⁠

This is more than an open mic—it’s a cultural movement. A space where BIPOC, LGBTQ+ creatives, youth, elders, and everyone in between are seen, heard, and held.⁠

Come to be moved. Stay to be transformed.⁠

🎟️ Admission is free and all are welcome.⁠

Featured Artist, August 2025: Tenille Ja’Nae

Founded in 2009, the "if you can Feel it, you can Speak it" (FISI) open mic prides itself on being the only monthly open mic in the greater Boston area dedicated to voices of the LGBTQIA2+ communities of color and our accomplices. Anyone is welcome to step up to the mic! This is a non-discriminating platform for one and all to express themselves.

Never been on the mic before? More reason to come! Don't consider yourself an Artists/Performer? That shouldn't stop you from expressing yourself! All forms and levels of talent and expression are welcome. FISI has long been regarded as one of the best spaces to try something for the first time and/or test out new material. 

In the mic's 15 year history, it has hosted events at various venues across the city, and began as the opening event for the legendary Lezbns N' Power Entertainment Thursday night parties. The Milky Way/Bella Luna in Jamaica Plain was FISI's home for over a decade, and in 2024 they were invited to host a year-long series of events at the Civic Pavilion on Boston City Hall Plaza. FISI returns to City Hall Plaza in 2025 with a new series of open mics for all to enjoy!

The Addiction Performance Project presents dramatic readings of Act Three of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night as a catalyst for guided audience discussions about substance abuse and addiction as they affect individuals, families, caregivers, and communities. O’Neill’s play depicts the struggles of Mary Tyrone, a woman who abuses prescription painkillers and relapses into full-blown morphine addiction, and the impact this has on her family. This unique participatory event is intended to break down the stigma associated with addiction and promote healthy dialogue among diverse communities - public and professional - fostering compassion, cooperation, understanding, and positive action.

Featuring performances by Maryann Plunkett (Little Women, The Squid and the Whale), Peter Frances James (The Rosa Parks Story, Godfather of Harlem), Michael Braugher (The Gilded Age, To Kill a Mockingbird), and Marjolaine Goldsmith (Dress).

Co-presented by Theater of War Productions, Bloomberg American Health Initiative at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Boston Public Health Commission, Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, and Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture.

Adapted, directed, and facilitated by Bryan Doerries.

Join us at Hibernian Hall for a night of gathering and live storytelling around the campfire. "Me & Roxbury" will be an exciting spin on the popular storied format of “Roxbury Roots”! Our storytelling Friends will consist of Edmund Barry Gaither, Jumaada Abdal-Khallaq Henry Smith, L’Merchie Frazier, Paul Goodnight, Byron Rushing and more!

Allow the night to take you through a great range of human experience filled with laughter, tears, and truth. Each of stories will be unique and each voice is authentic. The linkage being that each storyteller has been near dear not only to the Roxbury community at large but to the National Center of Afro-American Artists. Through these invigorating stories, our Friends will have the opportunity to lay bare their hopes for this community that we share. Instrumental figures in their fields, we are excited to go through each journey, and together hear and share our vision for the future Roxbury.

Stick around for food, refreshments, and more vision sharing of the future of Roxbury.

"Roxbury Roots" was created by Haris Lefteri, Creative Director of Hibernian Hall and Leslie Stafford, Health Equity & Wellness Coordinator, who wanted to give a platform to the adventurers and the storytellers. It opened in August 2022 and after popular demand, we are back for more.

*This collaborative version of "Roxbury Roots" is part of the National Center of Afro-American Artists' new project, FINDING OURSELVES IN PUBLIC SPACES: An Un-monument Project, and it is funded by The Mayor's Office of Arts & Culture's Un-monument Initiative, supported by a grant from The Mellon Foundation.

Photo courtesy by National Center of Afro-American Artists

Join us for a public conversation about Roxbury Rhapsody, a major commission by now well-known Boston artist, Napoleon Jones-Henderson in the Bolling Building.

A reception will follow where you as a community member can be interviewed and asked to share your story about the past, present and future of Roxbury.

All are welcome to this free and public event!

*This public conversation is part of the National Center of Afro-American Artists' new project, FINDING OURSELVES IN PUBLIC SPACES: An UnMonument Project, and it is funded by The Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture's Un-monument Initiative, supported by a grant from The Mellon Foundation.

Photo courtesy by National Center of Afro-American Artists

Join us for a public conversation and celebration at Roxbury's YMCA about one of the original murals from the early "Black Boston's Murals Movement".

All are welcome to this free and public event!

*This public conversation is part of the National Center of Afro-American Artists' new project, FINDING OURSELVES IN PUBLIC SPACES: An UnMonument Project, and it is funded by The Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture's Un-monument Initiative, supported by a grant from The Mellon Foundation.

Photo courtesy by National Center of Afro-American Artists

Join us for a prolific mural tour featuring works by Problak and GoFive at Boston’s Madison Park Technical Vocational High School.

Featured works will be: Breathe Life by Problak and Mel King by GoFive and TakeOne.

All are welcome to this free and public event!

*This public conversation is part of the National Center of Afro-American Artists' new project, FINDING OURSELVES IN PUBLIC SPACES: An UnMonument Project, and it is funded by The Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture's Un-monument Initiative, supported by a grant from The Mellon Foundation.

Photo courtesy by National Center of Afro-American Artists

Join us for a public conversation at Ramsay Park about Airfoil/Captain David Ramsay Memorial by Reginald Jackson and Valerie Maynard

All are welcome to this free and public event!

*This public conversation is part of the National Center of Afro-American Artists' new project, FINDING OURSELVES IN PUBLIC SPACES: An UnMonument Project, and it is funded by The Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture's Un-monument Initiative, supported by a grant from The Mellon Foundation.

Photo courtesy by National Center of Afro-American Artists