NOTE: All adult classes have been suspended until further notice.
Find a Class
Join us throughout the year for artisans’ talks, hands-on family workshops, faculty exhibitions, and more.
Eliot School Salon Series
Talking to Kids About Race, Justice, and Their Power Using Art
Wednesday, March 24, 2021, 7pm
Join the Eliot School Salon Series for a compelling and nuanced conversation about “Talking to Kids About Race, Justice, and Their Power Using Art” with Tanya Nixon-Silberg, Founder of Little Uprisings and co-founder of Wee the People, as well as Zahirah Nur Truth, ZNT ARTS Teaching Artist and Arts Education Consultant. The conversation will be moderated by Alison Croney Moses, Program Director, The Eliot School of Fine & Applied Arts. Finally, respondent Innosanto Nagara, activist, graphic designer, author and founder of Design Action Collective, will then set the scene for an open audience Q&A.
In this moment, locally and across the globe, people have awakened to racial injustice and the damage it’s doing to our society, especially following the violence in our nation’s capital. Parents, teachers, and others invested in shaping our children’s futures—all are looking for resources, answers, and direction for how we support our kids as they navigate this world. What do kids need? What do adults need in this moment? And for the people who are actively doing this work to dismantle systems of oppression, where can they find joy in their work? How do they/we cultivate a culture of celebration and rejuvenation in the process?
Our conversation amplifies the voices of two educators who are actively engaging with young people and the adults who help mold them. How do we get folks to think about preparing our young people while helping to transform the culture and the systems that they participate in to be more nurturing and affirming? Young people are talking, they're sharing their experiences about their identities, about their interpretation of what's happening around them. How do we as adults really listen?
“Talking to Kids About Race, Justice, and Their Power Using Art” is hosted by the Eliot School of Fine & Applied Arts, in Partnership with Aspire Institute-Boston University and Wheelock College.
The Eliot School Salon Series is sponsored by Melony Swasey with Unlimited Sotheby’s International Realty.
Join the conversation!
This event is FREE but you must register to attend.
"Bold BOOM Universe" Artist Talk
Wednesday, April 28, 7pm
Jerel Dye • LJ-Baptiste • Zahirah Nur Truth • Cagen Luse
Three escape artists bring us closer to reality with an exhibition of bold works on paper, through diverse representative storytelling, concept art, comics, and illustration. Jerel Dye, LJ-Baptiste, and Zahirah Nur Truth create alternate universes that overlap with our own. “Bold BOOM Universe” highlights the vision and voices of Boston artists who are also faculty for the Eliot School of Fine & Applied Arts. The three art educators bring the craft of comics and self-expression to curious minds, children and adults, with passion and purpose. The exhibition runs from April 2 through May 2 at Galatea Fine Art, in Boston’s SOWA District. On Wednesday, April 28, 7 pm, as part of Boston Design Week, moderator Cagen Luse will moderate an artist talk as part of the Eliot School Salon Series.
The confines of COVID have caused most of us long to expand our limited spaces. Experience three artists who habitually explore new worlds. Think intricately imagined, biomorphic machines floating above speculative landscapes; or the everyday adventures of a precocious black preteen living in a fictional Massachusetts town; or zombies and monsters inspired by the macabre “Lovecraft Country.” With fast, furious, expressive lines and action, their works draw upon the excitement children take in populating alternative worlds with half-human creatures and spaceships—evoking the sound effects: Wow! Oooo! Boom!
Join the conversation! Bold BOOM Universe graphic image by LJ-Baptiste.
The "Bold BOOM Universe" Artist Talk is an Eliot School Salon. It is hosted by the Eliot School of Fine & Applied Arts, generously sponsored by Melony Swasey with Unlimited Sotheby's International Reality and presented in collaboration with Boston Design Week.
Past Events, Exhibitions & Talks
Eliot School Salon Series: A Conversation with Executive Director Abigail Norman and Director Alison Croney Moses
Wednesday, January 27, 2021, 7pm
Join Eliot School Executive Director Abigail Norman and School and Community Partnerships Director Alison Croney-Moses for another executive discussion in our Salon Series. Abigail and Alison will give another update on what we are up to now. They will share exciting news about our programs and give some behind the scenes insight into our future plans. This event is FREE but you must register to attend.
InterGeneration AIR 2020 Showcase
Thursday, December 3, 7pm
Join us for a preview of InterGeneration, the documentary-in-progress that began in our 2020 Artist In Residence Teen Bridge Program with artist/filmmaker, Carolyn Shadid Lewis. Beginning with an ancient Wampanoag myth that accounts for our Boston landscape, a group of Boston teens and elders take the viewer on a personal journey through the city’s colonial past and inequitable present. From the perspective of mostly indigenous, immigrant, and black community leaders, artists, activists, educators and public health workers, InterGeneration processes our current moment through storytelling, letter writing and animation. Armed with their home devices, the teens create magical worlds from the elders’ stories with drawing, paper cut-outs, found objects, and their own bodies revealing universal experiences of anxiety, loss, and hope during a global pandemic and a national struggle for racial justice.
InterGeneration was generously supported by the Joe Kalt & Judy Gans Family Foundation, Linde Family Foundation, Maureen and David Moses Family, National Endowment for the Arts, New World Foundation, Plymouth Rock Foundation and general support from Mass Cultural Council.
This project is also supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. To find out more about how National Endowment for the Arts grants impact individuals and communities, visit www.arts.gov
Meanwhile, if you missed Teen Bridge's end-of-year celebration this past June, you can watch the recording here.
Eliot School Salon Series: A Conversation with Executive Director Abigail Norman
Wednesday, September 16, 2020, 7pm
Join Eliot School Executive Director Abigail Norman for the first discussion in our new salon series. Abigail will give an update on what’s been going on at the school since the pandemic and what we are up to now. She’ll share exciting news about our programs and give some behind the scenes insight into our future plans. This event is FREE but you must register to attend.
ARTISTS’ TALK:
Whose Standards? Racial Equity In Craft & Design, Part 1 & 2
Part 1: Thursday, October 8, 7pm
Alison Croney Moses • Matthew Shenoda
Namita Gupta Wiggers • Michelle Millar Fisher • Paul Sacaridiz
Part 2: Wednesday, October 14, 7pm
Anthony Romero • Jabari Peddie • Polly Carpenter • Alison Croney Moses • Steph Foster • Isaac Madera-Cepeda
Leaders in craft & design joined us for a robust conversation about moving our field toward racial equity. As white society wakes up to racial injustice, leaders in craft and design struggle with their own racial reckoning. We must pause and ask ourselves: Whose standards are we working within and towards? How must they be disrupted and dismantled to truly move forward racial equity? How can we be honest about the historic exclusion of people of color, and specifically black people, from all aspects of the field? What do we need to embrace, give up, and change, in order to gain true anti-racist transformation within craft and design?
The "Whose Standards? Racial Equity in Craft and Design" series is an Eliot School Salon. It is hosted by the Eliot School of Fine & Applied Arts, generously supported by Haystack Mountain School of Crafts and presented in collaboration with Boston Design Week.
Jazz LIVE in the Schoolyard
Friedland & Friends Jazz Series
Sunday, October 25, 2020, 4pm
Jazz pianist Brian Friedland misses making music with his friends and playing for audiences, so he created a series to address both those holes in his life. He hopes you will enjoy the beautiful composed and improvised music he will make with some of the musicians he greatly admires and is excited to play with again. Tickets are free, but Friedland encourages you to make a donation to the Eliot School and support this cherished neighborhood arts center in these most difficult times.
It probably goes without saying, but please bring and wear your mask and keep your distance from other concert goers. Bring chairs if you don't want to sit on the ground.
Hands-on Events
Yoga & Taekwando in the Schoolyard
At Eliot Schoolyard, 24 Eliot Street, Jamaica Plain
While the weather is warm, our schoolyard is hosting classes for adults with JP Centre Yoga and for children with JP Taekwando. You can sign up for yoga here and taekwando here. Advance registration is required.