The Brookline Commission for the Arts has awarded 25 grants aimed at bringing joy and creativity to the town in 2025, from visual and performing arts to community programs.
Recipients received anywhere from $150 to $1,800 in funding, which came from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
The BCA is honoring its 2025 grantees at a reception Thursday at 6:30 p.m. at the Brookline Village Library. The event will highlight the grantees’ projects and feature performances from four of the artists — the Brookline Community Band, Dance Caliente, Retro Polatin Duo and Opera on Tap Boston.
“What we’re looking to do is to bring more joy and wonder into the town,” said BCA Chair Andy Dean. “This is a great celebration of that, and we’re happy to have people come out to see what we’ve been doing.”
Here are some of the BCA’s 2025 grantees:
Brookline Community Band
The Brookline Community Band is a wind ensemble consisting of musicians of all ages and experience levels that rehearses and performs in the Boston area. The band, which has more than 60 members, puts on four seasonal concerts per year at the Florida Ruffin Ridley School in Brookline.
John Dickinson, board member and grant coordinator for the band, said the grant went toward printing program books and purchasing music, which allows it to expand its repertoire and create themed concerts such as their October show, “Echoes of the Ocean,” which took place on Wednesday night.
“The BCA really allows the conductor the flexibility to create these exciting programs, and without it we would have to scale back those productions,” Dickinson said.
The band’s flute ensemble will perform at the BCA reception Thursday. Dickinson said the performance will serve as a “thank you” to the BCA and an opportunity to showcase the band’s talent.
Studios Without Walls
Studios Without Walls is a Brookline-based collective of artists who produce sculptures and conceptual artworks for outdoor and public settings. The group puts on an outdoor exhibition that displays every summer in Riverway Park, and it features an interactive treasure hunt that allows visitors to engage with the art and each other, said founder and artist Bette Ann Libby.
Libby said town grants, coupled with Studio Without Walls’ fundraising efforts, primarily go toward paying artists, which she said is vital in valuing artists for their “time, commitment, energy and intellectual creativity.”
She said public art is an important way to relieve people from “the anxiety of the world” without having to visit a gallery or museum.
“There’s no barriers at all,” Libby said. “I think that’s a really beautiful thing to give to the community.”
The Metropolitan Chorale
Over 100 members make up the Metropolitan Chorale , which rehearses in Brookline and performs around Greater Boston.
The group’s grant supported a production of Johannes Brahms’ “Ein deutsches Requiem” in concert with the Brookline Symphony Orchestra in March. Metropolitan Chorale Board President Michelle Doyle said the show saw over 760 audience members over its three concert days.
“For all of us that are involved in the arts, it is our home,” Doyle said. “To be able to give a little joy, a little emotion, a little bit back to the community is really important to all of us.”
Brookline Pollinator Pathway
The Brookline Pollinator Pathway garden at the intersection of Walnut Street, Chestnut Street and Kennard Road, which features a mural by artist and teacher Basha Goldstein-Weiss that was commissioned using Pollinator Pathway’s grant from the Brookline Commission for the Arts. Photo by Lauren Albano
Brookline Pollinator Pathway was started by a group of residents — many members of the Garden Club of Brookline and climate action group Mothers Out Front — to plant pollinator-friendly gardens in public spaces throughout the town.
Pollinator Pathway used its grant to commission a mural for one of its gardens, at the intersection of Walnut Street, Chestnut Street and Kennard Road. Artist and teacher Basha Goldstein-Weiss worked with children at the nearby Lincoln School to paint a monarch butterfly perched on a flower over an electrical box in the garden.
“It’s just beautiful, and marrying art with nature,” said founding Pollinator Pathway member Deane Coady. “Artists get so much inspiration from nature, and children get so much inspiration from nature, and it was a way of celebrating that relationship.”
Dance Caliente
Eileen Herman-Haase and Raul Nieves lead Dance Caliente , giving interactive performances and teaching classes in Latin and ballroom dance to audiences of all ages. The two have secured over 100 grants from the MCC for their work, and this year’s BCA grant supported a series of three line dance workshops at the Brookline Senior Center.
“We try to make that personal connection no matter who we’re working with, from children all the way up to seniors,” Herman-Haase said.
Herman-Haase and Nieves will perform an interactive, “Saturday Night Fever”-themed line dance at the BCA reception Thursday. Nieves said they hope to get the audience out of their seats and take them back to their early memories of dance, from college parties to the disco days.
“It’s a way of reaching out so that people can experience, in their memory, the good times they had,” he said.
Opera on Tap Boston
Opera on Tap Boston is an artist-led organization that brings immersive events involving opera to nontraditional venues in the community, said Kathryn McKellar, the group’s executive and artistic director.
The organization’s grant supported its annual pop-up concert “Flowers and Opera” that started during the pandemic in partnership with Simons Shoes, where opera singers perform outside with a backdrop of donated flowers, and the audience is welcome to take home the flowers after the show. Opera on Tap Boston has since partnered with the Brookline Food Pantry for the event, so attendees can see the concert in exchange for food donations.
McKellar and other Opera on Tap Boston performers will sing at the BCA reception. The group will end with its rendition of “Over the Rainbow,” which McKellar said feels meaningful amid recent federal funding cuts to the arts .
However, she noted support from the BCA and MCC has been critical.
“Our arts leaders [are] really advocating for funding for the arts and housing for artists and support for those working in the gig economy,” McKellar said. “The support, for us, has been integral to us continuing our programming.”
Dean said the BCA looks forward to giving its 2025 grantees public recognition for their work.
“What’s really cool is to see how even a small amount of money can really make a huge difference in making these kinds of projects happen,” Dean said. “[The grantees] should be honored because they are helping bring beautiful, inspirational creativity to our town.”
The full list of 2025 BCA grantees:
- Bettagere Nagendra Prasad, Pranav Swaroop $900
- Boston Comic Arts Foundation, Limited $500
- Brookline Arts Center, Inc. $1,800
- Brookline Community Band $1,400
- Brookline Music School $900
- Brookline Pollinator Pathway Utility Box Mural $750
- Brookline Symphony Orchestra, Inc. $1,800
- Brooklinedotnews, Corporation $1,700
- Coolidge Corner Community Chorus, Inc. $1,800
- David Polatin $500
- Eileen Herman-Haase, Dance Caliente $1,100
- Fernadina Chan $1,400
- Friends of Fairsted $1,400
- Hudson Chen $900
- Jonathan Zoll $710
- Joseph McKendry $900
- Juventas Music, Inc. $900
- Non-Event, Inc. $1,400
- Opera on Tap Boston $1,800
- Rehearsal for Life, Inc. $600
- Studios Without Walls $1,800
- The Boston Cecilia, Inc. $1,800
- The Boston New Music Initiative, Inc. $150
- The Brookline Chorus, Inc.: The Metropolitan Chorale $1,800
- Voices Boston, Inc. $1,800
Editor’s note and disclosure: Brookline.News was one of the recipients of the BCA grants.
This article is part of a partnership between Brookline.News and the Boston University Department of Journalism.
This article was originally published on October 23, 2025.