JULY 2025 ARTIVIST TOWN HALL
In this month's Artivist Town Hall, we hosted a conversation with Ami Bennitt from the #ARTSTAYSHERE Coalition, Annis Sengupta from Metropolitan Area Planning Council, and Jim Grace from Arts & Business Council of Greater Boston about the artist displacement crisis in Massachusetts and what sector leaders are doing to protect and expand creative maker spaces.
We also shared updates about the July 15th legislative oversight hearing on the impacts of federal funding cuts to arts and cultural organizations in Massachusetts and updates on our Create the Vote efforts.
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:
-
Ami Bennitt is the co-founder of #ARTSTAYSHERE, a volunteer nonprofit committed to preserving and creating more affordable artist work and live/work spaces across Massachusetts. She serves as co-founder of The Shout Syndicate, a volunteer nonprofit committed to granting proven nonprofit Creative Youth Development organizations in Greater Boston to provide arts programs to teenagers, after school. Her marketing and PR outfit Motor Media & Marketing has run custom campaigns for dozens of arts, music and culture entities including First Night Boston, Boston Book Festival, ArtsEmerson, Handel and Haydn Society, Punk Rock Aerobics, ZUMIX, New Repertory Theater, Wheelock Family Theatre, Girls Rock Campaign Boston, Boston Poet Laureate Danielle Legros Georges, Julie Kramer Studios, Robert Maloney, Hefenreffer Restoration Project, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Rehearsal for Life, New England Foundation for the Arts' Creative City, Ryan H. Walsh, Boston Emissions' Rock & Roll Rumble, MassConcerts and others. She studied Arts & Entertainment Management at The University of Massachusetts Amherst and resides in Dorchester.
-
Annis Whitlow Sengupta, Director of Arts and Culture, leads the arts and culture planning practice at the agency. In this role, Dr. Sengupta ensures that MAPC offers quality arts and culture planning support to municipalities, builds internal and external capacity to integrate arts and culture into planning as well as to advance equity, and expand inclusion and belonging throughout the region. She also develops partnerships between MAPC and the arts and culture sector and oversees efforts to improve the data available to strengthen the policy and planning conditions that can help arts and culture to thrive. Dr. Sengupta joined MAPC in 2017 with the launch of the Arts & Culture Department and helped build all areas of the department’s work prior to becoming Department Director in 2021.
Dr. Sengupta has lived, worked, and studied in the region for twenty years. Prior to joining MAPC, she worked for over eight years for Community Partners Consultants, a locally based consultancy where she was a Senior Planner. Her clients at Community Partners included municipalities and arts organizations. Her cultural planning expertise includes managing an innovative arts district master planning process in Beverly, Massachusetts, and a study of non-profit facilities of public accommodation along the Boston waterfront. In addition, she has worked in the campus planning practice of Sasaki Associates and as a lecturer in the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning, on teaching teams for community growth and land use planning, urban design, and Main Streets planning.
Dr. Sengupta is a graduate of Yale University where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in an Architecture major. She also holds a Master of City Planning degree and PhD in urban and regional studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research explores the connections between place, culture, and identity in the context of racial politics and the immigrant experience. Her dissertation reconstructed the history of ethnic parades in Chicago, Illinois, and examined how cultural events in public space can build community identity, increase political access, spur design interventions, and promote economic development.
Dr. Sengupta represents MAPC as a member of the MASSCreative Policy Committee. She is a member of the American Planning Association and currently serves as Vice Chair of the Arts and Planning Division. She was a member of the board that secured the approval of the Arts & Planning Interest Group as a full division of the APA. -
For the past 26 years, Jim Grace has been a leader in the movement to support artists and arts organizations. Jim serves as the Executive Director of the Arts & Business Council of Greater Boston and previously served as the Executive Director of the Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts of Massachusetts. Jim is the founder of the A&BC’s innovative Cultural Land Trust initiative which employs a systems approach to preserving safe, affordable, permanent and more equitable spaces where art is made, rehearsed and shared. Jim is a local and national speaker, leader and educator in working with artists and arts organizations in the areas of public art and social practice art projects, copyright, estate / legacy planning for artists, nonprofit incorporation and mergers, and nonprofit boards. Jim was an adjunct professor for Boston University’s Masters in Arts Administration Program focusing on legal and business issues in arts administration. Jim currently serves on the board of the AIR Institute, a national arts service organization. He was a founding board member of the Arts Services Coalition and the Fort Point Cultural Coalition (the developer of Midway Studios, 89 units of artist live/work space in downtown Boston). He previously served on the boards of Philanthropy Massachusetts, the Private Sector Council of Americans for the Arts, the Brookline Community Foundation and the Friends of The Record Co.
WATCH THE RECORDING:
