Community Curators
for the UnCommon Stage
Agora Cultural Architects
Ágora Cultural Architects is a women-owned cultural business, founded in March 2019 to be the partner of Latinx arts and culture. We create, empower, and promote the sustainability of the makers of Latin American culture in the US and Puerto Rico. We do that by optimizing tools for creators and organizations to fulfill their goals, namely: audience building; events, audiovisual and literary production; funding; and professional development. Ágora was founded in March 2019 by: Beba Rivera, a communications and production manager, and Elsa Mosquera-Sterenberg, a bridge-building cultural jedi, Beba and Elsa joined forces to accelerate the creative ways in which Latinx culture can be seen and enjoyed. Together, they have assembled a dynamic team of rebels and insurgents that enjoy creative challenges.
Amanda Shea
Amanda Shea is a renowned spoken word and multidisciplinary artist, educator, performer, artivist, publicist, and mother. She’s hosted BAMSFest and countless poetry events; she facilitates youth workshops for spoken word poetry, visual arts, and public speaking; she is a publicist for hip hop artist Brandie Blaze; she has managed and supported countless other artists in Boston.
In 2021, she was named among WBUR The ARTery’s 25 artists of color transforming the cultural landscape. Shea co-founded and curated six iterations of Activating ARTivism, a community festival to amplify POC through art, activism, and resistance. This event has featured artists from Boston, Brockton, Chicago, Virginia, D.C., and more. Importantly, it has raised awareness and provided support for local nonprofits like Mission Safe, The New England Innocence Project, Trans Resistance MA, The Simple Good (Chicago), and the LDB Peace Institute.
In December 2022, Shea won the inaugural category for Spoken Word Artist of the Year at the Boston Music Awards. Shea was featured in January on GBH News for the “Embrace; Boston” unveiling ceremony. Shea is the curator of GBH’s “Outspoken Saturdays” a platform for poets across New England, where 8 poets perform each month while recording live at the Copley Library, NewsCafe. Shea was a featured artist for 2022 Thought Artist for SOLSTICE: Reflections on Winter Light at Mount Auburn Cemetery. Her work can be found in the Museum of Fine Arts, The Boston Globe, TEDX, TEDXRoxbury, Netflix, Prime Video, BBC News, and much more. Shea will be releasing her first EP, titled “GOD, Again in November 2023.
Shea will release her first book, “Pieces of Shea” in the Winter of 2024. Amanda’s work examines her personal life experiences, social justice issues, and healing through trauma utilizing art as the tool.
BAMS Fest
Boston Art, Music, and Soul Fest is a cultural movement led by Greater Boston Black and Brown artists, culture makers and creative entrepreneurs who are on the front lines of racial equity, spatial justice, and economic empowerment.
BAMS Fest is a nonprofit organization that breaks down racial and social barriers to arts, music, and culture across Greater Boston. Through edutainment (education + entertainment), strategic partnerships and cultural programming, we celebrate and support both artists and audiences, with an emphasis on Black and Brown voices, perspectives, and artistry.
Departure Arts
OUR MISSION: Departure Arts builds community through facilitating creative collaborations, amplifying historically underrepresented artistic voices, and supporting artistic risk-taking for Boston area artists, organizations, and audiences.
OUR VISION: Departure Arts believes in the unifying power of the performing and visual arts to connect our community – both audiences and artists. For our audiences, we look to increase access to the arts by presenting in non-traditional venues, hosting local artists, and building collaborations across art forms and disciplines. For our artists, we provide space for artists to take artistic risks, not often afforded to creatives, that support the development and expansion of their career, network, and art.
OUR COMMUNITY: Departure Arts is proud to participate in the Mass Cultural Council’s Card to Culture Program, where all of our events are pay-what-you-can. The Card to Culture program is a collaboration between Mass Cultural Council and the Department of Transitional Assistance, the Massachusetts Health Connector, and the Women, Infants & Children (WIC) Nutrition Program by extending free admission to our events for all cardholders.
HipStory
HipStory LLC. is a digital media agency & incubator creating, curating, and highlighting unique, innovative, and inspiring art. We are redefining the future history of media by creating products that cultivate stories through digital media and event curation. Our work is rooted in fostering a creative environment where people can explore their vision freely, safely, and fully.
First as an album title for Boston bred hip hop crew Valid-Dictorians, HipStory became a collective of musicians committed to the culture. Beginning in 2012 HipStory through music performances and production, film, and event creation and curation,developed relationships and sought to create opportunities with the Boston community that they knew: Black, Brown, First nation, immigrant, LGBTQIA creatives. As HipStory The collective’s vision clarified as the need of the community became more clear- the Boston creatives in their circle voices were often used, rarely recognized, and largely unpaid. We became focused on creating spaces that would change this narrative. To highlight the stories of historically erased peoples, giving space to our voices, our experiences, our celebration, our fears, we began to shift to a digital media agency and incubator highlighting the rich culture, artistry, and economic potential of the Greater Boston area. In 2022 we officially became HipStory LLC – a digital media agency and incubator highlighting the rich culture, artistry, and economic potential of the Greater Boston area. We serve a mixture of businesses, nonprofits, brands, and creatives to amplify the voices of the BIPOC community through music and film production, audio and visual services, and event curation.
Jazz Urbane Cafe
The Jazz Urbane is a contemporary recording/performing collective which embraces and is infused with great R&B song-writing, melodies, band grooves and style. Not really a “New Movement”, just a new configuration of mindset/artistry. It is a “Collaborative Of Artists”, a music that crosses several bridges. This is music that has grown from urban places and thrives because of creative musicians who are tapped into the people, and into progressive, music- art that is urbane, hip and non-categorical. The Jazz Urbane represents too, the rise of frustration among musicians with “non-musical culture” dominating mainstream radio, music, media.
Musically, the past lifeline of Jazz progression has always been its reach to younger creative impulses. In that collaborative exchange comes “new voices”, an inspiring charged collective, movements of style, aesthetics, a sound, approach. These never severed themselves from the “Blues-Afro-Collective-Spiritual-Pulse”, and never dislocated from common-folks’ “Dance And Move” in the world. Such progressive movements were always led by practicing musicians. Market promoters don’t determine nor define art, only artists say where the music is coming from and where the music is, will be and the reasons where and why it should go.
Over 30 years ago The Bill Banfield Band, that seminal group, began in Boston in 1981 and included young Boston performers Najee, Rachel Z, Billy Kilson, Carla Cook, And Regina Carter. Its B Magic Music ASCAP affiliation for the publishing company came In 1985. The company and band’s first release was listed in Billboard Magazine the same year.
Maria Hendricks
Maria Hendricks (Assonet & Mashpee Wampanoag; She, Her/s; EMC) is a proud polyglot, afroindigenous artist and activist. You may have seen her as Dr. Van Helsing in Dracula at the Umbrella Center for the Arts in the fall of 2022. She was also nominated for an Elliot Norton Award for her portrayal of Mother in the Musical Passing Strange. As an actor/singer, she has performed on stages throughout New England, the East Coast and South Dakota. She has also done TV, Film & Voiceover. Most recently she has been an active part of the BIPOC cohort for Cultural Competency in audio description; working extensively at A.R.T this season. She has also spent the last 2 seasons at New Repertory Theatre in the role of Resident Artistic Advisor as part of a new co-lateral model of artistic direction where her community focus and work to provide platforms to underrepresented voices/groups has greatly improved access and agency for many, including a slowly growing team of Native Creatives and working with Watertown residents in the process of unerasure of their local indigenous history.
Office of the Arts
The UnCommon Stage is produced by Emerson College’s Office of the Arts. The Office of the Arts exists to serve Emerson College students, faculty and staff, the Greater Boston community, and the field of performance practice through:
ArtsEmerson: Our professional presenting and producing program, presenting the world on stage and screen.
HowlRound: A communication platform that connects the Office of the Arts to the national (and international) efforts to develop a commons-based approach to performance practice.
Stewardship of our Spaces: supporting activities that connect the facilities of the Office of the Arts to both college and community events not produced or presented by other components of our Office.
We see our work in service of the college, the public, and the arts—prioritizing community engagement with our Boston neighbors, national dialogue, shared field-wide learning, and curricular engagement that connect students with our work. We operate from the assumption that the arts belong to everyone. Every decision we make, every new programming choice and operational strategy, emerges from that conviction.