By Dan Murphy
Ahead of its Community Fest 2024, scheduled for Sunday, Sept. 28, in Chester Square Park, the Mass Ave Coalition has launched its newly overhauled website.
The coalition now comprises several area nonprofits, including Chester Square Neighbors, the Claremont Neighborhood Association, the St. Botolph Neighborhood Association, the Worcester Square Area Neighborhood Association, and the partnership’s latest addition, the Hurley Blocks Neighborhood Association.
The Community Fest 2024 will be the coalition’s biggest annual undertaking, replacing the former Mass Ave Coalition Festival, which was held successfully first in 2022 and again last year in Chester Square Park.
Like these past events, the upcoming Community Fest, set for Sunday, Sept. 28, from 1 to 4 p.m. in Chester Square Park, will again be free to attend for guests, with food offerings including freshly popped popcorn from the on-site popcorn wagon, along with a selection of pizza provided by several neighborhood pizzerias.
This year’s live music will include performances from musicians from the Boston Jazz Foundation and the New England Conservatory as part of the Jazz Square dedication scheduled for noon at the corner of Mass and Columbus avenues. (Read this publication in the coming weeks for more information on detailed plans for the Jazz Square dedication.)
Another returning activity for children, again offered by Margaret Gardner, the children’s librarian for the South End Branch Library, will allow kids to create their own ‘Dream Street’ mural in an activity inspired by Roxbury author Tricia Elam Walker’s book of the same name.
“Margaret plans to have a background already painted and invite a collage approach, so kids can choose something and put it up there,” said Carol Blair, president of Chester Square Neighbors.
New this year will be the ‘Let’s Go Travel!’ – an interactive game, which will charge participants with navigating their way around the neighborhood in a quest for raffle tickets that offer a chance to win prizes provided by local businesses.
Festival attendees will also be able to upload their own personal recollections using a phone app, said Blair, to add “their own piece of history [to an online space for] our many stories, woven together as different people and groups of people made their homes here.”
Blair said: “We want everybody to contribute their own perspective. We have a really rich Jazz history, and Victorian architecture, and the American Revolution, but there were people here before the European colonies. There was redlining and urban renewal.”
The coalition has partnered with Prof. Carlos Sandoval Olascoaga and his team at Northeastern University to create a webspace, as well as a smartphone app, said Blair, to compile this “collective history,” which includes data, images, and even links to videos that can be filtered by street address and time.
“We will do well to understand our heritage so that we can act together for our best future,” added Blair.
From a wider view, the newly designed website provides an overview of much of the coalition’s work to date. “I have been surprised to see all we have done,” said Blair.
Meanwhile, John Biske, a St. Botolph Neighborhood Association member and longtime resident of that neighborhood, drew on his extensive tech background in redesigning the coalition’s website. Among his top goals for this pro bono project was to create a website that would allow users to easily browse its content and delve deeper into particular areas of interest.
“We’ve brought it to the level where you can easily navigate the website and then dig deeper if you’re interested in something in particular,” said Biske.
Like the website, the scope of the Mass Ave Coalition itself continues to evolve and grow.
“It really keeps expanding,” said Bob Barney, president of the Claremont Neighborhood Association. “[The coalition] is really focused not just on Mass Ave but also on the surrounding streets. We’ve already developed a strong collaboration among five neighborhood associations, as well as with nonprofits. We feel this collaboration can lead to wonderful things, such as bringing both sides of Mass Ave together to develop community.”
Visit the Mass Ave Coalition’s website at https://massavecoalition.wixstudio.io/home.