Artist Residencies
Through its Artist in Residence (AiR) program, Urbano provides an exhibition, socialization, and dissemination platform to emerging and mid-career artists locally, nationally, and internationally renowned for their socially engaged practice. Our AiR program has stabilized into a format and model for involving contemporary artists and youth in participatory public art, gaining increasing attention for both the artists and the organization.
AiRs use their projects as teaching tools for the Youth Artist Projects and the greater community, bringing social justice issues to the fore through art. Through our work with culturally-diverse AiR, we have expanded our audience to reach communities that might not typically attend our arts venues.
Search by theme, medium or year:
THE CROSSROADS
2024-2025
Crossroads present choices and transitions that we face both in our personal lives, and in the world at large. We are looking for artists to help us untangle the ethics of contemporary life, by digging into the grays, pauses, and in-between's — the crossroads — that offer us tools, materials, and wisdom for building more empowered futures.
2024-25 AiR’s to be announced…
HABITAT
2023-2024
Inspired by the principles and practices of Dan Buettner’s “Blue Zones” — regions of the world that Buettner identifies as being inhabited by some of the healthiest, longest-lived populations — our curatorial theme, Habitat, invited Artists-in-Residences to reflect with youth and community members on how our situational surroundings impact us. The projects they co-created with youth and community members proposed ways to improve our environments, and to foster longevity and health, in addition to feelings of connection and belonging.
Summer 2024 Artist-in-Residence
Youth Art Project:
Home is Here.
Fall 2023/Spring2024
Artist-in-Residence
Youth Art Project:
Empowered Earth & Connection to Place
OUR PLANET, OURSELVES
2022-2023
Our Planet, Ourselves sought to explore the idea of an interconnectedness between our planet, our bodies, and ourselves through the practices of placemaking, performance, and creative justice. A particular importance being the role of our bodies within environmental activism movements and notions of the self, which not only includes human bodies but more-than-human beings (water, plants, fungi, etc.). How do we think about environmental justice activism, and how may art function as a platform to advance notions of care and co-evolution?
Summer 2022 Artist-in-Residence
Youth Artist Project:
Making Oasis
Summer 2022 Artist-in-Residence
Youth Artist Project:
Through Our Eyes: Reflections on Climate Justice
Winter 2022-23 Artist-in-Residence
Artist Workshop:
Myths for the 22nd Century
DEMOCRACY
2021-2022
“As we continue to contend with ongoing social, political, and economic injustices unveiled throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, how can art help us move towards a more inclusive and equitable society? How can art encourage social action to develop and nurture a democracy that benefits and empowers us all?”
Through the lens of Democracy, 2021 and 2022’s Artists-in-Residence (AiR) exemplified practices in community organizing, placemaking, public art, activism, social practice, institutional critique, and participatory art-making. Their projects explored individual, collective, and intersectional interpretations of democracy, with topics including representation, inclusion, participation, collaboration, accessibility, human rights advocacy, mutual aid, capitalism, and other social systems and civic dialogues.
Fall 2021 Artist-in-Residence
Youth Artist Project:
Remember, Reflect, Reimagine:
Illustration for Spatial Justice
Winter 2022 Artist-in-Residence
Community Art Project:
Calling Home
Spring 2022 Artist-in-Residence
Youth Artist Project:
Message From a Sidewalk
RADICAL CARE
2020-2021
“How do we share practices that foster community care and participation and make this line of human-centered work public through art?” Through the lens of Radical Care, 2020-2021’s Artists-in-Residence framed the process of making as a process of caring. Crafting and exploring forms of care for themselves and their communities through reimagined sites for connecting (virtually and non-virtually); resulting in hybrid meetings, maker-spaces, and community events.
Summer 2020 Artist-in-Residence
Youth Art Project:
CoVictory Gardens
Winter 2021 Artist-in-Residence
Youth Art Project:
Reading the Public Space
Spring 2021 Artist-in-Residence
Youth Art Project:
When We See Each Other
CREATIVE CONDITIONS
2019-2020
2019-20’s theme, Creative Conditions, sought to explore what toolkits are artists creating to change the conditions we live in. What conditions do artists need to create? Artists-in-Residence worked closely with youth artists to explore this theme by means of storytelling, scriptwriting, journaling, research, and production.
2019-2020 Artist-in-Residence
Youth Art Project:
Airplay
2019-2020 Artist-in-Residence
Youth Art Project:
Stories of the Land
Solo Exhibition:
Okoŋwaŋžidaŋ
Spring 2020 Artist-in-Residence
Youth Art Project:
Scriptwriting and Production
RESILIENCE AND SUSTAINABILITY
2017-2018, 2018-2019
By addressing physical, social, and economic challenges, Urbano joined a city-wide initiative to build a more resilient Boston for two of its programmatic years (2017-2018, & 2018-2019). Artists-in-Residence worked closely with community partners and youth artists to explore the theme of Resilience and Sustainability through intersectionally-led dialogues on racial identity, socio-economic identity, gender identity, sexual identity, and environmentally-situated identity.
2017-2018 Artist-in-Residence
Youth Art Project:
Still We Rise
Solo Exhibition:
Alone Together, Together Alone
2017-2018 Artist-in-Residence
Youth Art Project:
Nomadic Civic Sculpture
2017-2018 Artists-in-Residence
Youth Art Project:
Artivism in Egleston: Part II
2017-2018 Teaching Artists
Summer Workshops:
Film Making & Music Production
2018-2019 Artist-in-Residence
Youth Art Project:
Map This: Sustainable Fashion
2018-2019 Artist-in-Residence
Youth Art Project:
The Promise of Tomorrow
2018-2019 Artist-in-Residence
Youth Art Project:
Wandering in the Land of Oblivion
THE COMMONS | THE OTHER
2016-2017
Throughout The Commons | The Other, artists, staff, project facilitators, and youth worked closely with community partners in the Egleston Square neighborhood to explore issues of racial, ethnic, cultural, and urban identity and representation embedded within the social synergies of spatial distribution. Through Urbano’s place-making approach, Artists-in-Residence developed social laboratories for creativity to increase inter-group understanding, tolerance, and civic culture.
THE COMMONS: SPACE, PLACE & PUBLIC
2015-2016
“What are the commons of Egleston/Jackson Squares? Who authors, activates or owns those spaces? What potential might the commons hold for both transformation and preservation?”
Throughout The Commons: Space, Place & Public, Urbano explored gentrification, environmental justice, and cultural and economic equity through acts of grassroots-led creative placemaking. Assembling knowledge, understanding, as well as a comprehensive network of bilingual participants — from youth leaders and teaching artists, to small business owners and community organizers — who worked at stewarding the common spaces, as well as the spaces that characterize the Egleston/Jackson Square areas.
2015-16 Teaching Artists
Youth Artist Project:
Square-Specific Theater
2015-16 Teaching Artist
Youth Artist Project:
City Journalist
2015-16 Teaching Artist
Youth Artist Project:
Searching Lines
2015-16 Teaching Artists
Youth Artist Project:
Public Art Take Back! (Part 1 & Part 2)
2015-16 Teaching Artists
Youth Artist Project:
The Flip
THE LAND OF THE FREE: GIFTS AND GIVING AS ARTISTIC INTERVENTION
2014-2015
Drawing upon discourse from art making and civic innovation practice, Land of the Free, led AiR’s and students in exploring how acts of generosity and giving at individual, collective, and civic levels, can catalyze both creativity and social change. Prompting participants to workshop the relationship that can be had between creative practice, and philanthropic practice.
2014-15 Teaching Artist
Youth Artist Project:
Listen Up!
2014-15 Teaching Artist
Youth Artist Project:
The Time Capsule II: Looking inside Jamaica Plain
2014-15 Teaching Artist
Youth Artist Project:
The Portrait Gift II: Identity and Exchange
2014-15 Teaching Artist
Youth Artist Project:
Sunbar
THE EMANCIPATED CITY: RE-IMAGINING BOSTON
2013-2014
Throughout The Emancipated City, students and AiR’s workshopped visions of a new Boston: a home founded upon the principles of collaboration, risk-taking, and border-crossing that defines the work of Urbano, but simultaneously, a microcosm that continues to hold an honest invitation towards confronting some of the most critical social justice issues of our time.
By encouraging participants to cull the city’s history into pairings with utopian imaginings, 2013-2014’s programmatic year, prompted artists to craft a portrait of a new Boston. One that may be beautiful but dangerous; confounding but inspiring. One that ultimately shelters freedom at its core — an emancipated city.
2013-14 Teaching Artist
Youth Artist Project:
Square Roots of Boston
2013-14 Teaching Artist
Youth Artist Project:
#FreeBoston
2013-14 Teaching Artists
Youth Artist Project:
Remixing Boston
2013-14 Teaching Artists
Youth Artist Project:
Harvesting Walls
2013-14 Teaching Artist
Youth Artist Project:
Urban Myths
2013-14 Teaching Artist
Youth Artist Project:
Conversations in Motion
2013-14 Teaching Artist
Youth Artist Project:
The Dream Machine
2013-14 Teaching Artist
Youth Artist Project:
The New Literary City
2013-14 Teaching Artist
Youth Artist Project:
The Portrait Gift: Affirming identity through Word, Image and Action
2013-14 Teaching Artists
Youth Artist Project:
The Time Capsule: Jamaica Plain
NARRATIVES OF EXCLUSION: RACIAL AND CULTURAL BOUNDARIES IN THE URBAN LANDSCAPE
2012-2013
2012-2013’s curatorial theme, Narratives of Exclusion, was inspired by the text, The Arsenal of Exclusion & Inclusion: an encyclopedic digest of 202 tools — or "weapons" — architects, planners, policy-makers, developers, real estate brokers, activists, and other urban actors in the United States use to either restrict or increase access to urban space. Written by Interboro Partners — a firm of architects and urban designers led by Urbano Board member Dan D’Oca — The Arsenal served as source material for our AiR’s and their programming. Programming aimed at investigating their own identities and considering what they — as artists and performers — can do to break down geographic and racial boundaries in Boston.
2012-2013 Teaching Artists
Youth Art Project:
Crossing Urban Boundaries
2012-2013 Teaching Artists
Youth Art Project:
Raise Your Hand If You're Not Here
2012-2013 Teaching Artists
Youth Art Project:
Cages Re-Scripted
2012-2013 Teaching Artist
Youth Art Project:
Attendant
DISOBEDIENCE: CIVIL, POLITICAL, PUBLIC, PERSONAL, AND PRIVATE
2011-2012
Disobedience asked teaching artists and teens to consider whether disobedience can become a tool for self-discovery and social change. Encouraging participants to think about and engage with the role — and history — of disobedience as a creative instrument: a modality through which we can question the status quo, reclaim public resources, and transform relationships.
2011-2012 Teaching Artists
Youth Art Project:
Speak Out. Act Up. Move Forward.
2011-2012 Teaching Artists
Youth Art Project:
Mapping The Senses
Urbano’s Public Art for Social Change Collective:
Palas Por Pistolas (Shovels For Guns)
2011-2012 Teaching Artist
Youth Art Project:
The Freedom Trail on Trial
Summer 2022 Artist-in-Residence
Community Art Project:
Performance: History/Ritual/Identity