What did N+T, Charlestown, and all of our partners, collaborators, and community members accomplish this year at Lot Lab? As the inaugural program comes to a close this November, let’s look back at the last few months and welcome this time of transition with a celebration of the people and programs that made Lot Lab 2023 a space for art and community.

Between June and September this summer, a total of 10 free public programs welcomed over 1,200 participants. Over 13,000 visitors were counted by our Public Art Ambassadors (PAA)...and that’s only counting Lot Lab visitors during PAA hours on Wednesdays & Saturdays! Lot Lab’s vibrant programming was made possible through partnerships in Charlestown and with local businesses and creative leaders from around Greater Boston.

We kicked off the season at our June opening celebration by sharing popsicles from Jamaica Plain’s own Wild Pops, dancing to tunes by Oyade Onifade aka OyadeTheDJ, and participating in a spoken word, dance, and healing ceremony led by 2022 Boston Music Awards Spoken Word Artist of the Year Amanda Shea with collaborator Chrystian Dennis. Youth Program Manager Mswati Hanks and teens from the Charlestown Coalition’s Turn it Around program joined us that day to raise the first set of flags for Signaling, a community-made art installation led by Kyle Browne. Since then, around 50 flags have been created and shown at Lot Lab through workshops with youth from Turn it Around and the Charlestown Boys & Girls Club. (You can learn more about the workshops and flag inspirations in this blog post by Poppy Livingstone, who worked with N+T as a PAA and Curatorial Programs & Community Engagement Intern this summer).

In July, we also invited young visitors to make their own nautical-inspired artworks with Charlestown-based artist and educator Sophia Moon, Chief JoyMaker at Essem Art Studio and member of the Charlestown Mother’s Association. N+T Partnership and Engagement Fellow Rebecca Lipsitch helped bring bike and body tune-ups to Lot Lab through partnerships with Landry’s Bicycles, yoga practitioner Gabriele Preston, and a mindfulness session with Dr. Agne Kazakeviciute de Velazquez. Recently, JPP Stroller Bootcamp, a mommy pilates group from the historical side of Charlestown across the Tobin bridge, has been using Lot Lab as a meet-up for their fall classes.

Musical instrument petting zoo, hosted by Boston Music Project

August was a bustling month at Lot Lab, full of movement, dance, theatre, and performance. Our friends at Zumix and Boston Music Project set up a musical instrument petting zoo and invited us to jam out with a guest performance from Company One Theatre’s production of The Boy Who Kissed the Sky. When we weren’t playing instruments, we were moving our bodies at an all-ladies freestyle dance session organized by A Trike Called Funk. And if music and movement weren’t enough for your senses, we also celebrated the opening of Sam Fields’ six-story nautical rope sculpture, Stay, with beautiful projection mapped animations by Illuminus and a tender open-mic session led by Julissa Emile.

True to our mission, Lot Lab was also a site for public art education and creative experimentation. We offered free curator tours for the public, an intimate art walk with Ghada Amer, and welcomed students from Boston University, MassArt, and Emerson for behind-the-scenes looks at what it takes to make Boston a public art city. In September, we welcomed local artists Lani Asunción and Joanna Tam for a performance program extending their ongoing explorations into the construction of national identity, safety, empowerment, and freedom in the wake of cultural and environmental oppression. These artists invited us to consider Lot Lab’s history at the nexus of the Freedom Trail and the Boston Harbor, connecting the movement for water and migrant freedom to the American colonial project.

Lot Lab 2023 was the culmination of a handful of artists, dozens of partners, hundreds of participants, and thousands of visitors. The art we curate isn’t just public because it’s outdoors, it’s public because of the people who bring it to life. Creative programming– created through partnerships with musicians, dancers, poets, performers, artists, local business owners and health practitioners– also provides multiple access points to a project like Lot Lab, making it a space for everybody and anybody.

Public art is a labor of multitudes, and is only possible with support and feedback from community members like you. What do you want to see at Lot Lab in 2024? Want to get involved? Who’s missing from our summer programming? Send us a note at info@nowandthere.org.

Banner photo (c) Annielly Camargo