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Nourishing Change: Arts, Culture & Community in the Fight for Food and Housing Justice

In partnership with:
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Date and time
Thursday, September 11, 2025
6:30pm - 8:00pm
In-person:
Your ticket does not guarantee admission to this free event. Seating is on a first come, first served basis. Please plan to arrive early to guarantee your seat. Please note that this event will take place on the stage of the Robert J. Orchard. A lift is available to the side of the stage for any guests who require an accessible path. Staff members will be available on site for assistance, and please email access@artsemerson.org with any additional questions.
Location
Robert J. Orchard Stage, Emerson Paramont Center
559 Washington St.
Boston, Massachusetts 02111
In-person
Free
Register

How can creativity help us survive—and reimagine—systems that fail to meet our most basic needs?

Inspired by "Kristina Wong: Food Bank Influencer", this dynamic panel discussion moderated by Director of Artistic Programming and Interim Executive Director of Emerson’s Office of the Arts, Ronee Penoi, explores how artists, cultural organizers, and communities are responding to the intertwined food and housing crises with ingenuity and solidarity. From pandemic-era mutual aid kitchens to grassroots rent parties that kept the lights on and the music playing, we’ll examine how cultural expression has long been a lifeline in times of precarity.

Panelists will discuss the radical potential of the arts to foster collective care, build community resilience, and galvanize action around economic justice. Together, we’ll reflect on how performance, storytelling, and creative organizing can disrupt narratives of scarcity and shame—and instead amplify voices, strategies, and solutions rooted in abundance and mutual support.

Join ArtsEmerson for a timely conversation that lives at the intersection of art and activism.

 

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Ngoc-Tran Vu (she/her) is a 1.5-generation Vietnamese-American multimedia artist and cultural organizer whose socially engaged practice spans photography, painting, sculpture, and installation. Grounded in her experience as the daughter of refugees, her work explores themes of migration, displacement, and collective memory while fostering intergenerational dialogue. She partners with communities to create public art projects that advance social justice, cultural advocacy, and healing, including 1975: A Vietnamese Diaspora Memorial.
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Boston-born and raised Salvadoran Honduran narrative shifter, cultural worker, and community organizer whose work centers on housing justice and immigration liberation. Her practice spans humanitarian documentary work with asylum seekers at the San Diego-Tijuana border, teaching photography in Mexico and Cuba, facilitating media workshops that include photography, zine making, and podcasting with Boston youth whose families have resisted eviction, and most recently, supporting a statewide campaign to put rent control on the 2026 Massachusetts ballot.
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Aja Burrell Wood is the managing director for Berklee’s Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice. Wood oversees the day-to-day operations of the institute and collaborates with founder and artistic director Terri Lyne Carrington on developing curriculum, programs, and initiatives in addition to teaching courses related to gender and justice in jazz, and curating events, among other duties.
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