our strategy to build belonging through arts and culture

Arts and culture uplift and inspire. They are also a driving force for just and equitable communities. They bridge differences, create new ways of understanding one another, and foster a sense of shared purpose and belonging.

CCF is investing in arts and culture because it measurably fosters social cohesion, one of the core pillars of our strategic plan. Along with economic mobility, social cohesion advances our vision for a Cambridge where all residents have opportunities to thrive.

Culture Connects Cambridge is a $1.4 million, three-year, multi-phased initiative developed in partnership with local arts and culture nonprofits, artists, cultural workers, and community members. Through Culture Connects Cambridge, we’ll help more people connect, create, and take part in the culture that makes our city come alive. Learn more below.

Watch our video on the power of Cambridge arts and culture.

Why it’s vital to invest in the arts now

Our strategic investment recognizes that arts and culture hold great power and are essential to Cambridge’s vibrancy. Yet cultural organizations are at great risk. 2025 federal funding rollbacks are bringing even more drastic budget cuts to arts and culture nonprofits that are perennially under-funded.

Artists rely on Cambridge for their livelihoods, shaping the look and feel of neighborhoods through public art and performances, and local schools and educational organizations use arts learning to inspire generations of young creative thinkers. Cambridge’s creative ecosystem also fuels the city’s economic vitality—drawing spectators to local theaters, festivals, and galleries, and supporting a thriving network of small businesses, restaurants, and cultural institutions.

Our initiative zeroes in on the problems facing our creative community that we can solve.

Culture Connects Cambridge is a hyperlocal initiative guided by research, conversations with local artists and arts leaders, and an analysis of Cambridge’s cultural sector. Through this process, we identified three key barriers facing artists, cultural workers, and organizations—especially those from marginalized communities:

  • cultural and economic displacement;
  • inequitable access to resources and capital;
  • and a lack of a centralized decision-making body for public funding.

Read more here about the learnings that shaped our strategy.

CCF has been a longstanding funder of arts and culture. Last year alone, 29 percent of our annual community grantmaking went to arts and culture. In 2020, CCF established the Cultural Capital Fund to preserve cultural vibrancy in Cambridge in the present and future. When the pandemic hit, the Fund met urgent needs in the local arts and culture sector. The Foundation also created the Cambridge Artist Relief Fund to support artists who lost their livelihoods due to COVID-19’s impacts. In 2023, CCF joined the Barr Foundation’s Creative Commonwealth Initiative (CCW), a project engaging community foundations across Massachusetts and providing resources and support to build and strengthen arts and culture strategies within their local context. With CCW support and drawing from discussions with local arts organizations and practitioners, CCF is developing strategies to harness the power of arts as a building block of social cohesion.

Culture Connects Cambridge is made possible through significant support from Barr Foundation’s Creative Commonwealth Initiative.

Culture Connects Cambridge is also supported by the collective giving of many. To join in supporting this effort, please donate here.

Launching a $1.4 million initiative, October 2025

Cambridge Jazz Fest

In October 2025, CCF awarded general operating grants to 14 local organizations building belonging by offering arts and creative expression programming (jump to list). These are hub organizations with budgets greater than $250K and grass-roots organizations with budgets under $250K that cultivate under-supported or emerging artists and creatives, as well as those providing affordable space to artists and cultural groups. All grant recipients are building agency, self-determination, and power among historically excluded communities in Cambridge. They include longstanding hubs of creativity in Cambridge; safe, empowering spaces for youth and historically marginalized artists and communities; and organizations that foster connection across differences and generations. Learn more about the first investments of Culture Connects Cambridge.

CCF’s strategic investment will ensure critical dollars flow to organizations that play an important role in building a more vibrant, connected Cambridge. The initiative focuses on four key areas identified through our collaborative design process: sustaining organizations, expanding access to space, fostering collaboration, and strengthening advocacy.

In Phase One: Sustain & 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 organizations deepen and extend programs that use arts to 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.

Phase Two: Connect & Grow, launching in 2026, will expand our investment in arts and cultural organizations in Cambridge, and deepen the connections across the sector, expanding collaboration among arts organizations and across sectors, building on the groundwork laid in the first phase, and fostering greater collaboration among funders who are passionate about the arts, equity, and community-driven change.

For more information about the Culture Connects Cambridge initiative, please contact Christina Turner, vice president of programs and grantmaking, at [email protected].

Nonprofit partners in Culture Connects Cambridge

Cultural Passport to Cambridge, Spring 2026

Experience the beauty and power of Cambridge’s diverse arts and culture institutions this season. We’ve curated a list of events hosted by our Culture Connects Cambridge nonprofit partners and invite you to support these organizations.

Click the icons below to visit our partners’ event pages and get all the details. We look forward to seeing you in the community!

Our co-investors

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.

Learn more about our plan for the city you love. #