The Bronx Council on the Arts (BCA) acts as a connector, resource, and advocate through programs that connect communities to the arts, provide resources to artists and arts organizations to continue their work, and advocate for Bronx arts and culture. BCA's most recent programs include Artists Engage Talks and Convenings; the Bronx Artist Registry; the Cultural Assets Map (CAM); and the Cultural History Map (CHM). Our soon to be launched membership program will allow members to connect with each other and the arts through a unique set of offerings.
Connector Programs
Masterfully written instructional tool on how to write a memoir. First clarifying what a memoir is NOT, Smith captivates you by artistically weaving in her own story, which is a beautiful and subtle teaching tool on how to write your own. Writing memoir does require including accurate facts, but writing good memoir requires more than that, and it begins with paying a particular sort of attention. William Maxwell, the fiction editor of the New Yorker for more than forty years—he edited John Updike and John O’Hara and John Cheever—was a marvelous fiction and nonfiction. Over the summer, aided by tips she recorded for the project’s website, memoirs poured in. Some people wrote by hand and had their children type up the script. Some worried they didn’t have enough. From Marion Roach Smith's 'The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing and Life.'
The Bronx Council on the Arts (BCA) serves as a connector between Bronx arts and culture and the community. Our flagship program, the Longwood Arts Project, and other BCA public programs, such as the Bronx Memoir Project, provide Bronx residents with opportunities to engage directly with the arts. BCA Artist Residency and community programs bring the arts directly into underserved communities throughout the borough.
Resource Programs
For over 60 years, BCA has been a premier resource for Bronx artists and cultural organizations from every zip code in The Bronx. Through our regranting programs, the largest in the borough, we provide funding to support the work of artists and arts organizations and help bring the arts to the community. BCA's Bronx Recognizes Its Own (BRIO) awards foster artistic excellence through monetary awards for artists. Our professional development Artist Sustainability Workshop Series (ASWS), offers artists the tools to further develop their careers, and arts organizations the knowledge necessary to strengthen their practices.
Advocate Programs
The Bronx Council on the Arts advocates for cultural equity and inclusion, and envisions a world in which all people have creative agency, and knowledge of and access to the arts. BCA partners with other organizations, and engages in advocacy campaigns with partners to advance increased support for the arts at the borough, city, state and federal levels.
Upcoming Programs
There are no upcoming events at this time
The Memoir Project was a decade-long project that touched all Boston neighborhoods, and we're proud to have been a part of it.
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Having lived through most of the decades of the twentieth century, seniors have seen and participated in sweeping changes in history, technology, culture, communities and the arts, and are in a unique and powerful position to offer their memories and interpretations of those changes. GrubStreet seeks to honor the voices of these seniors and help refine them so that current and future generations can learn from them.
The Memoir Project leads writing workshops for seniors and provides training to a corps of instructors and coaches, who share their expertise with participants. The program has three main goals: to teach students the basics of effective storytelling and help them shape lived experiences into vivid and memorable prose, to document their lives and preserve their insights for future generations and their families, and to give seniors a meaningful artistic experience that adds value and purpose to their lives.
Launched in 2006 in collaboration with the City of Boston, the Memoir Project has reached hundreds of seniors in the Boston area and the history-rich island of Nantucket as well. GrubStreet is proud to be teaching seniors the craft of writing and to help them create narratives with lasting value. By collecting and preserving the stories of elderly citizens, we intend to document the living history of Boston and, by doing so, provide a greater understanding of the city's past and present for all its residents. The Memoir Project has published five anthologies, Born Before Plastic, My Legacy Is Simply This,Sometimes They Sang With Us,Little Grey Island, and Streets of
About our Memoir Project Partner, the City of Boston Elderly Commission
The mission of the Commission on Affairs of the Elderly is to enhance the quality of life for Boston's senior citizens through planning, coordinating, and monitoring the delivery of services to the elderly in an efficient and effective manner. These activities are provided in conjunction with various federal, state, and city agencies, along with neighborhood service providers and senior citizen groups. The Commission, as Boston's Area Agency on Aging and Council On Aging, promotes the active involvement of seniors in the life and health of their neighborhoods.
The Feminist Memoir Project
Acknowledgements
The Memoir Project
GrubStreet and the City of Boston express our deep gratitude to the Calderwood Foundation and the