Announcing Culture Connects Cambridge, a $1.4 million strategic investment to build belonging through the arts and creative life
October 15, 2025 | Cambridge, MA – The Cambridge Community Foundation (CCF) announces the launch of Culture Connects Cambridge, a $1.4 million, multi-year initiative to build community belonging through investments in diverse arts and culture organizations across the city.
These investments come at a time when arts organizations nationwide are facing federal budget cuts and are struggling for support in uncertain economic times. CCF is ensuring critical dollars flow to local arts and culture organizations that play an important role in building a more vibrant, connected Cambridge.
Culture Connects Cambridge marks the second major strategic initiative launched under CCF’s five-year strategic plan, following its Food Access and Security Initiative work begun in 2023. The plan aims to strengthen social cohesion and economic mobility, fundamentals to advancing the vision of a Cambridge where all residents have the opportunities to thrive.
CCF is investing in arts because they measurably build social cohesion. About half of adults in the United States report experiencing loneliness, and research shows participatory arts create spaces of belonging and reciprocity that counter that feeling of isolation. In turn, they support better civic participation and community resilience — outcomes central to CCF’s strategic plan.
In the initiative’s first phase, CCF has awarded general operating grants to 14 organizations offering arts and creative expression programming in Cambridge (go to list). The grantees include community hubs and longstanding institutions as well as newer organizations filling gaps in representation in the arts sector. They are organizations with budgets greater than $250,000 and grass-roots organizations with budgets under $250,000 that cultivate under-supported or emerging artists and creatives, as well as those strengthening the ecosystem by providing affordable space to artists and cultural groups. All grant recipients are building agency, self-determination, and power among historically excluded communities in Cambridge.
“These organizations remind us that arts and culture are linked to everything we do. They are essential to building the Cambridge we want — one that is welcoming, resilient, and connected,” said Geeta Pradhan, president of the Cambridge Community Foundation. “Artists have always been the tellers of truth, cultivators of belonging, and drivers of imagination. When we invest in them, we invest in our shared future. When we stop and engage with local artists’ work, it makes the soul of a community come together – and that’s really important.”
In Cambridge, we estimate that arts and cultural organizations make up 22 percent of the nonprofit ecosystem.
“Art is not just about buying a ticket, dressing up, and sitting down to see a performance. Art can happen anywhere—it can happen in the basement of a church, in an after-school program, in a school gym, in any public space,” said Claudia Zarazua, arts and cultural planning director with the City of Cambridge. “In Cambridge we have organizations whose main focus may not be arts and culture but they still value arts and culture and embed it into their programs. We need to support our arts organizations, our artists, and these organizations and activities as well.”
Guided by extensive research and conversations with local artists, cultural workers, and organizations, Culture Connects Cambridge is designed to address the most pressing needs of Cambridge’s arts and culture sector.
“We had many conversations and meetings with local artists and cultural organizations to understand the pressures they were feeling. What rose to the top were sustainability, access to space, and the need for more collaboration and stronger advocacy for the sector,” said Christina Turner, vice president of programs and grantmaking. “We’re incredibly grateful to each and every partner who contributed to helping to shape the strategy and to community members who reviewed the grant proposals. This deeply collaborative process allowed us to land on a strategy where CCF can leverage its resources and unique role in the city to bolster our arts and culture community in meaningful, measurable ways.”
The initiative focuses on four key areas identified through this collaborative design process: sustaining organizations, expanding access to space, fostering collaboration, and strengthening advocacy.
In Phase One: Sustain and Seed, the initiative is making a three-year investment to strengthen the foundation of the city’s arts and culture sector:
- Culture and Belonging: Multi-year general operating grants to help arts organizations deepen and extend programs that foster belonging.
- Culture and Space: Grants to improve access to affordable, equitable spaces for creation, performance, and cultural gathering.
- Culture and Advocacy: A pilot fellowship and organizing efforts that amplify the voices of artists and cultural groups in shaping public life.
In Phase Two: Connect and Grow, launching in 2026, the initiative will expand collaboration among arts organizations and across sectors, building on the groundwork laid in the first phase.
This strategy builds on CCF’s work as a steadfast funder of arts and culture organizations in Cambridge and its role as arts and culture leader in partnership with the Barr Foundation’s Creative Commonwealth Initiative, which positioned community foundations across Massachusetts as champions for equitable, thriving cultural ecosystems.
“Arts and culture have this very special power to be a conduit between past and future,” said Kris Manjapra, director of Black History in Action for Cambridgeport and professor of history and global studies at Northeastern University. “They create pathways and openings. Especially now in the moment when one of our greatest fears is getting stuck here. The arts are proof that change is happening. That transformation is happening. They are our sanctuary.”
“When artists share their work, they build bridges,” said Adria Katz, managing director of the Multicultural Arts Center. “They tell stories across differences. The power of the arts is that they are less didactic and more fluid. They are conversational. That’s how common ground is found. That’s how connection happens.”
Like all of CCF’s work, Culture Connects Cambridge is supported through the collective giving of many. CCF extends its deepest thanks to the Barr Foundation for its transformative support through the Creative Commonwealth Initiative; our generous co-investors in this work: Bartle Boghossian Family Fund, Beth and Marty Milkovits Fund, the Calvin Innerarity Memorial Fund, Cosulich Family Charitable Fund, Daniel Raizen, Llewellyn Foundation, Upland Gardens Fund, Viney Wallach DAF, and Wendy Weiss and Stephen Shay; and the collective giving of many to CCF’s Cultural Capital Fund.
The initiative is the first step under the social cohesion pillar of CCF’s five-year strategic plan, which was announced in October 2023.
Cambridge Community Foundation has been a longstanding funder of arts and culture. Last year alone, 29 percent of CCF’s annual community grantmaking went to arts and culture.
To learn more about Culture Connects Cambridge, CCF’s work to advance arts, culture, and belonging in Cambridge, visit https://cambridgecf.org/culture-connects-cambridge.
Culture Connects Cambridge grantees
Community impact organizations receiving $50,000 per year for three years:
- Community Art Center, through creative expression and a deep commitment to social justice, fosters an inclusive space where everyone can share their stories, dismantling barriers to arts access and building power through cultural expression.
- Cambridge Community Center works to advance equity and access through programs that center joy, belonging, and creativity, particularly for historically excluded communities in Cambridge. Their flagship program, The Hip Hop Transformation, offers free, year-round music production and performance training for teens, building confidence, leadership, and agency.
- Maria L. Baldwin Community Center’s mission is to build community through creativity: nurturing relationships, celebrating cultural expression, and expanding access to the arts for people of all ages. At the heart of their work is a deep belief that belonging is built when people are seen, supported, and empowered to shape the spaces they share.
- Multicultural Arts Center serves as a creative home for historically marginalized artists and communities, serving as both a launchpad and safe haven for artists of color, disabled and LGBTQ+ creatives, and community members whose stories have too often and for too long been systemically sidelined. MAC’s work is grounded in the belief that access to the arts is fundamental to a just, vibrant, and resilient society.
Grassroots organizations receiving up to $25,000 per year for three years:
- Black History in Action is revitalizing the historic St. Augustine’s African Orthodox Church in Cambridgeport as a hub for Black arts, culture, and connection, countering displacement and the loss of gathering spaces for the area’s historic Black/Caribbean population.
- Boston Poetry Slam hosts inclusive weekly open mics, sliding-scale workshops, and regional festivals that welcome poets of all backgrounds. Rooted in accessibility, safety, and artistic excellence, they create spaces where marginalized voices—especially trans leadership—can thrive.
- Cambridge Carnival International celebrates Afro-Caribbean heritage through a free annual festival and year-round programming led “by the people, for the people.” Cambridge Carnival center local artists, youth, and cultural entrepreneurs by offering paid opportunities, subsidized vendor spaces, and leadership roles.
- Cambridge Jazz Foundation honors jazz as a cultural legacy rooted in African American history and shaped by global influences. Their free annual festival, student showcases, and accessible programs uplift BIPOC, women, LGBTQ+, and emerging musicians while fostering intergenerational connection.
- MIDDAY Movement Series addresses inequities in the Greater Boston dance sector—especially for contemporary dance artists of color—by providing affordable professional classes, mentorship, choreographic development, and BIPOC-centered community spaces. Cambridge-based programs build leadership pipelines, peer networks, and collective advocacy.
- Soca Fusion, a Black-led dance organization, centers Black, Caribbean, and immigrant communities in Cambridge through culturally rooted programming that fosters joy, connection, and wellness.
- The Flavor Continues builds belonging for Cambridge’s street and club dance communities by providing accessible space for BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and other historically excluded artists to practice, perform, and lead.
- Tunefoolery brings live music to people often excluded from such experiences, including psychiatric patients, elders, and individuals in shelters. Our musicians—all with lived experience of mental health recovery and some with homelessness—offer artistic excellence and empathy, fostering trust and connection.
Ecosystem organizations receiving $25,000 per year for three years:
- The Dance Complex is a hub for dance and movement at the heart of Central Square, Cambridge, fostering inclusion and artistic agency through affordable, diverse programming, targeted outreach to historically excluded communities, and initiatives like Friday Night Lights, Walking the Talk, and its Curatorial Advisory Committee.
- The Foundry brings people together, especially those from underrepresented communities, by creating an accessible, dynamic space where creativity, technology, education, and entrepreneurship connect.
The Foundation of and for all of Cambridge, CCF harnesses the power of collective action to ensure a vibrant, just, and equitable city for everyone. CCF is a strategic grantmaker, philanthropic partner, and data-informed civic leader tackling the city’s most intractable problems in deep partnership with nonprofits, local changemakers, and donors. Last year, CCF invested more than $4.4 million in grants to community nonprofits in human services, workforce training, housing, hunger, homelessness, elder services, youth and early childhood services, education, and the arts.
Media Contacts:
Lauren Marshall: CCF Vice President of Marketing
[email protected] | 617-865-4789
Stephanie Janes PR
[email protected] | 617-419-0445
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