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Welcoming Week and Immigrant Advancement Forum

Welcoming Week is an annual campaign celebrating the work in communities to become welcoming places for all, including immigrants. 

September 12 - September 19, 2025
2025-09-12T10:00:07 - 2025-09-19T17:00:07

Launched in 2012 by Welcoming America and its members, Welcoming Week provides individuals and organizations with the opportunity to showcase their values through events and initiatives that foster connections and collaboration between immigrants and non-immigrants, as well as belonging for all.

Welcoming Week 2025 takes place from September 12 to 21. Every year, communities around the globe celebrate Welcoming Week by hosting local events that foster deeper understanding and connection among neighbors. This week-long campaign builds the awareness and energy that’s needed to sustain year-long welcoming efforts.

For the first time ever, MOIA is proud to host Welcoming Week in Boston! Join one of its activations and share your story as part of the “Stories We Share” theme: 

  • Market on a Mission at Boston Public Market - September 12 
  • The Embrace Massó "¡Con Salsa!”, International Music Festival - September 13 
  • Open Streets Dorchester - September 14 
  • City Hall Plaza Gallery - September 15 and 16 
  • Immigrant Advancement Forum - September 19
September 12 - September 19, 2025
2025-09-12T10:00:07 - 2025-09-19T17:00:07
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PlanTable Opening Reception

The Un-monument | Re-monument | De-monument: Transforming Boston Programming

August 15, 2025
2025-08-15T16:30:20 - 2025-08-15T18:30:20



 

Ecosistema Urbano, Pao Arts Center, and the Greenway invite you to the opening celebration of PlanTable at Chin Park.  Bring the whole family to explore this unique installation that provides both a refuge from the heat for people, as well as pollinators also threatened by rising temperatures.  Enjoy climate and plant related interactive activities for all ages and meet the creators and partners of this project. 

Read more about PlanTable

Rain Date: Saturday, August 16 | 1:00 - 3:00 p.m.

August 15, 2025
2025-08-15T16:30:20 - 2025-08-15T18:30:20
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More Than Stone: How Monuments Speak to and About Us

The Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture and The Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University welcome you back to The Embrace for another season of public conversations on democracy, justice, memory, and values.

September 24, 2025
2025-09-24T17:15:20 - 2025-09-24T21:00:20



Join us for a public conversation followed by a free public dinner.

In this upcoming discussion, Clint Smith and Juliet Hooker will explore the complex relationship between monuments and civic life, examining how these structures shape collective memory and identity. Together, they will navigate the tensions of commemoration and critique, questioning the role of monuments in promoting a more inclusive democracy. The conversation will encourage participants to reflect on the impact of public art in shaping societal values and the ongoing efforts to redefine civic spaces in ways that honor diverse histories and experiences.

Brandon M. Terry, the John Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University will introduce the event.

Clint Smith is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the Hillman Prize for Book Journalism, the Stowe Prize, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and selected by the New York Times as one of the 10 Best Books of 2021. He is also the author of two books of poetry, the New York Times bestselling collection Above Ground as well as Counting Descent. Both poetry collections were winners of the Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and both were finalists for NAACP Image Awards. He is a staff writer at The Atlantic.

Clint has received fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, New America, the Emerson Collective, the Art For Justice Fund, Cave Canem, and the National Science Foundation. His essays, poems, and scholarly writing have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, the Harvard Educational Review, and elsewhere. He is a former National Poetry Slam champion and a recipient of the Jerome J. Shestack Prize from the American Poetry Review.

Juliet Hooker is Royce Family Professor of Teaching Excellence in Political Science. She is a political theorist specializing in racial justice, Black political thought, Latin American political thought, democratic theory, and contemporary political theory. She has also written on racism and Afro-descendant and indigenous politics in Latin America. Before coming to Brown, she was a faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of several books, including: Black Grief/White Grievance: The Politics of Loss (Princeton University Press, 2023), Theorizing Race in the Americas: Douglass, Sarmiento, Du Bois, and Vasconcelos (Oxford, 2017), Race and the Politics of Solidarity (Oxford, 2009), and editor of Black and Indigenous Resistance in the Americas: From Multiculturalism to Racist Backlash, (Lexington Books, 2020). She has also published articles in a wide variety of journals, including: American Political Science Review, Political Theory, Theory & Event, Contemporary Political Theory, South Atlantic Quarterly, Politics, Groups, and Identities, Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society, Latin American Research Review and Journal of Latin American Studies.

Seating will be provided but please feel free to bring blankets in case the chairs fill.

September 24, 2025
2025-09-24T17:15:20 - 2025-09-24T21:00:20
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Constitutional Crossroads: Is the Constitution Broken?

The Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture and The Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University welcome you back to The Embrace for another season of public conversations on democracy, justice, memory, and values.

September 10, 2025
2025-09-10T17:15:20 - 2025-09-10T21:00:20

Join us for a free public conversation.

The Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture and The Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University welcome you back to The Embrace for another season of public conversations on democracy, justice, memory, and values.

The series kicks off on Wednesday, September 10, 2025, at 5:15 p.m. and will be followed by a free public dinner and reception. 



Distinguished legal scholars Aziz Rana and Noah Feldman will engage in a critical dialogue examining whether the Constitution can sustain democratic life amid today's challenges. They will explore how the document's promises contend with its historical compromises and limitations. This conversation confronts a fundamental question: does democratic renewal require reimagining our founding compact? Their contrasting perspectives offer important insights on the meaning of our constitution in our current crisis and beyond.

Brandon M. Terry, the John Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University will introduce the event.

Aziz Rana is the J. Donald Monan, S.J., University Professor of Law and Government. He joins Boston College from Cornell Law School, where he was the Richard and Lois Cole Professor of Law. His research and teaching center on American constitutional law and political development. In particular, Rana’s work focuses on how shifting notions of race, citizenship, and empire have shaped legal and political identity since the founding of the country.

His first book, The Two Faces of American Freedom (Harvard University Press) situates the American experience within the global history of colonialism, examining the intertwined relationship in American constitutional practice between internal accounts of freedom and external projects of power and expansion. His latest book, The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document that Fails Them (University of Chicago Press, 2024), explores the modern emergence of constitutional veneration in the twentieth century -- especially against the backdrop of growing American global authority -- and how veneration has influenced the boundaries of popular politics.

Noah Feldman is Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Chair of the Society of Fellows, and founding director of the Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law, all at Harvard University. He specializes in constitutional studies, with particular emphasis on power and ethics, design of innovative governance solutions, law and religion, and the history of legal ideas.

A policy & public affairs columnist for Bloomberg Opinion, Feldman also writes for The New York Review of Books and was a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine for nearly a decade. He hosts the Deep Background podcast, an interview show that explores the historical, scientific, legal and cultural context behind the biggest stories in the news.

Through his consultancy, Ethical Compass, Feldman advises clients like Facebook & eBay on how to improve ethical decision-making by creating and implementing new governance solutions. In this capacity, he conceived and architected the Facebook Oversight Board, and continues to advise the company on ethics and governance issues.

Feldman is the author of 10 books, including his latest, The Broken Constitution. Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America.

Seating will be provided but please feel free to bring blankets in case the chairs fill

September 10, 2025
2025-09-10T17:15:20 - 2025-09-10T21:00:20
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New Edition Street Renaming

Celebrate the hometown legends New Edition, who put Boston on the musical map.

August 30, 2025
  • 10:00am - 12:00pm
  • 2 Dearborn St.
    Roxbury, MA. 02119
  • Contact:
    OFFICE OF TOURISM, SPORTS, AND ENTERTAINMENT
  • Price:
    FREE
  • Neighborhood:
    Roxbury
  • Posted:
2025-08-30T10:00:00 - 2025-08-30T12:00:00

On Saturday, August 30, 2025, the City of Boston and Mayor Michelle Wu will host a special celebration at the intersection of Dearborn and Albany Streets in Roxbury to honor New Edition, the legendary R&B group founded here in 1978. Starting at 10 a.m., this free public event will pay tribute to the group’s lasting influence on both Boston’s cultural identity and the music industry worldwide. Join us as we unveil New Edition Way and celebrate the hometown icons whose sound continues to inspire generations.

August 30, 2025
  • 10:00am - 12:00pm
  • 2 Dearborn St.
    Roxbury, MA. 02119
  • Contact:
    OFFICE OF TOURISM, SPORTS, AND ENTERTAINMENT
  • Price:
    FREE
  • Neighborhood:
    Roxbury
  • Posted:
2025-08-30T10:00:00 - 2025-08-30T12:00:00
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Truth Matters: Disagreement in an Age of Division

The Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture and The Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University welcome you back to The Embrace for another season of public conversations on democracy, justice, memory, and values.

August 20, 2025
2025-08-20T17:15:20 - 2025-08-20T21:00:20



Join us for a public conversation followed by a free public dinner.

This conversation will bring together Robert P. George and Cornel West, who represent divergent intellectual traditions, to explore the possibilities of meaningful discourse amid political fragmentation. Their friendship demonstrates a practice of democratic engagement that addresses disagreement without falling into simplistic political categories. Through their conversation, they will show how engagement across differences can illuminate our complex moral and political landscape. As polarization increases, George and West will offer a model of intellectual exchange that respects principled disagreement while maintaining a commitment to truth, a practice important for democratic vitality in challenging times.

Brandon M. Terry, the John Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University will introduce the event.

Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He has frequently been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. In addition to his academic service, Professor George has served as Chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. He has also served on the President’s Council on Bioethics, as a presidential appointee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and as the U.S. member of UNESCO’s World Commission on the Ethics of Science and Technology. He currently chairs the New Jersey Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He is a former Judicial Fellow at the Supreme Court of the United States, where he received the Justice Tom C. Clark Award. Professor

George is author of Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality (Oxford U. Press), In Defense of Natural Law (Oxford U. Press), The Clash of Orthodoxies (ISI) and Conscience and Its Enemies (ISI). His most recent book, written with Cornel West, Truth Matters: A Dialogue on Fruitful Disagreement in an Age of Division (Post Hill Press). His book Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth: Law and Morality in Our Cultural Moment will be published later this year by Encounter Books.

Dr. Cornel West is the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary. West teaches on the works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as well as courses in Philosophy of  Religion, African American Critical Thought, and a wide range of subjects — including but by no means limited to, the classics, philosophy, politics, cultural theory, literature, and music. 

Dr. West is the former Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard  University and Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. Cornel West graduated  Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in  Philosophy at Princeton. He has written 20 books and has edited 13. He is best known for his classics, Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and for his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud. His most recent book, Black Prophetic Fire, offers an unflinching look at  nineteenth and twentieth-century African American leaders and their visionary legacies. 

Dr. West is a frequent guest on the Bill Maher Show, CNN, C-Span and Democracy Now. He has a passion to communicate to a vast variety of publics in order to keep alive the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. – a legacy of telling the truth and bearing witness to love and justice.

Seating will be provided but please feel free to bring blankets in case the chairs fill.

August 20, 2025
2025-08-20T17:15:20 - 2025-08-20T21:00:20
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Free Verse

A monthly series of open mic events including youth showcases, spoken word, poetry, DJ sets, musical performances, and standup comedy.

August 28, 2025
2025-08-28T18:00:12 - 2025-08-28T21:00:12

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.⁠

Free Verse flyer

August 28, 2025
2025-08-28T18:00:12 - 2025-08-28T21:00:12
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"if you can Feel it, you can Speak it"

An open mic series dedicated to the voices and experiences of LGBTQIA2+ communities of color and allies. 

August 10, 2025
2025-08-10T17:30:52 - 2025-08-10T21:00:52

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!

Flyer for Feel it Speak it August Mic

August 10, 2025
2025-08-10T17:30:52 - 2025-08-10T21:00:52
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Addiction Performance Project

A dramatic reading of Act Three of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night to frame a guided audience discussion about addiction.

August 5, 2025
2025-08-05T15:00:43 - 2025-08-05T17:00:43

A banner with the title "Addiction Performance Project" in white text on a black background, featuring the headshots of four participating performers.

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.

August 5, 2025
2025-08-05T15:00:43 - 2025-08-05T17:00:43
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Slam Theatre 2025

Slam Theatre is a Great American Variety Show featuring spoken word, short play performances, live music and dance.

July 24, 2025
2025-07-24T18:00:36 - 2025-07-24T20:30:36

Come experience a multidisciplinary theatrical performance* featuring several 10-minute play performances written by up-and-coming Boston playwrights, a 10-minute multi-media dance performance, spoken word and stories, and live improvisational jazz. Themes of the evening will touch upon love, friendship, what it means to be American, and more. You will not want to miss a second of this experimental multidisciplinary art event!

Program:

  • Happy Thanksgiving by Monica Jimenez and performed by Constance Cifelli as Daughter Turkey, Olivia Giroux-Galpin as Mother Turkey, Jamaal Eversley as Father Turkey and Aurora Lee as Annabelline
  • Where is Faith? by Faith Verrill and performed by Darline Harris as Charity, Jamila Batts Capitman as Hope, and Heath Verrill as Christian
  • Kindness by BeAirDrum Seabrooks and performed by Alex Leondedis as Warton, Vincent Siders as Angel and Kym Darby as A.I. 911 Dispatcher
  • THR3DS by Jamie Lin, kathy lebron and Alexandria Nunweiler and performed and produced by Company One
  • 10 minute multimedia dance performance by Flor Delgadillo.
  • Spoken Word performed by Massachusetts' Poet Laureate Regie Gibson, Boston’s Poet Laureate Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah, and more!
  • Stand Up Comedy by Madhuri Raju
  • Live interactive art piece by SKRIBBLES
  • Live improv musical scoring by The Blake Newman Group
  • Dance tunes and cast party spun by DJ Juelz
  • Hosted by Uncle Jam

*Some poems and plays will have STRONG LANGUAGE. Parental Advisory is recommended for Slam Theatre.

July 24, 2025
2025-07-24T18:00:36 - 2025-07-24T20:30:36
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