Teen Arts Cafe: Teen Performing space partners with Broadway Boston
Copy of the poster promoting the Teen Arts Cafe.
Located in the teen central room, in the Copley branch of the Boston Public Library, is a performing stage available for teens to show off the arts in an open mic style event. Created by Caroline Burke ‘24, the space has been a way for teen students around Boston to express themselves and show the arts. Burke is interviewed to explain how she feels about the arts cafe.
“The arts cafe, in general, was made by me last year, I think around this time. I just went into BPL and I had never met Chris before, who is the person who works there, and I said, ‘Hey I have a proposal for you, what if we did this event,’ ” Burke said.
She goes on to explain that students from several schools in the Boston area have joined and even some teens from surrounding towns. She also comments that it’s available to anyone in Boston as long as they are a teen.
“My role is basically, I help Chis plan it, we organize the room, we get all the tech equipment and Ms. Millard from Newman carries over some of the music equipment for them so she really helps with that as well, the library provides some tech but we provide the other half,” Burke says when asked about the roles in creating the event.
She also says that each time they have snacks and drinks. Previously they had a boba bar, and before that they had a hot chocolate and coffee bar. Burke also goes on to say, “I usually introduce the event and then I hand it off to Reign (the student from Boston Arts Academy who runs it with us) who MC’s it.”
Burke explains that they get many different types of performances. “We get a wide variety of singers, so Ms. Millard will bring like a guitar and keyboard usually, so you could do that or on the other hand, you could send us karaoke tracks online and we’ll play the instrumental for you, we also get people who do guitar, a lot of people who perform their own monologue and actors, there is also some stand up comedy… and we have a lot of poets, including me who will do slam poems from really any variety,” comments Burke.
Burke also highlights some performances and regulars that come in, such as a hiphop and breakdancer named Henning, a teen who performed a beautiful poem entitled ‘I am a Dominican Woman’ and several students from our school who come and perform. She continues, “It’s really anything, you can tell me any performance you want to do and I’ll say go for it”.
For the Broadway Boston event, Burke commented, “Broadway in Boston reached out to BPL and asked how they could get involved in some arts things with them and then Chris, who works at the teen central, we have this event with Caroline and Reign and they came up with this idea last year and they had a few successful events, so that's kind of how if happened and they’re going to be coming in February to do this.”
Burke further explains that Broadway in Boston is going to be sponsoring a visual arts display at the event that relates to their show ‘ Moulin Rouge’ and any teen artist can contribute and the reward from the company will be free tickets to the show. The visual arts can include photography, painting, drawing, sculptures, etc.
For the planning aspect, Burke explains, “ For the February one, since we’re involving another company, I’m sure it’s going to be more planning, usually, when it’s Chris, Reign and me, we have it down to a science but I’m sure with Broadway in Boston, they’re going to want to fact check and make sure everything is in place”
However, she says the event won’t change, it’ll just be a bit different in planning, but that is sure to happen when introducing anyone new into the project “There is going to be another creative voice in the project and we are going to have to account for that, it’s not going to change drastically but whenever you have new creative voices you have to evolve your project a little bit”.
“I’m really looking to have like a visual arts display at one of the coming up events, that’d be really cool or being able to have a little film festival as part of it, as a filmmaker myself, I’d be really partial to that, like if we can bring in a screen, but that’d be more in the future,” Burke describes when talking about what she hopes to include in the future. “Since I’m a slam poet, I’d be really interested in working with GrubStreet or Mass Poetry on an event.. I’d think it would be cool to get more writers and different types of writers in on the event”
“I really want to preserve what it was in the first place, because ultimately, when I made this project, I didn’t really do it for anything, it was my CAS project when I was in the IB but I think, even if I had never done the IB, I would have still made the teen arts cafe because for me it was important, because I was developing my voice as a slam poet and as a singer as a Freshman and Sophomore and I was looking for performance opportunities, and I really prefer a live audience”
Burke continues to say that everywhere she looked, it was a bar or an 18+ club, and as a 17 year old, she couldn’t find any place where she could perform. She says Boston used to be such a hub for the arts, but all the available spaces then, she couldn’t perform, and that she loves the arts and the city and wanted to help bring them back.”
“So it was really important to me to make the teen arts cafe” She also says “ It’s also an all teen space, other than Mr. Iwanicki and Ms. Millard and the people that work there, but other than that it’s only teens, kind of to make sure no one’s censoring themselves, other than hate speech which we do not allow, so that it’s all completely organic.
For this year, there will be an event every season, the closest one is on the Thursday before Halloween which is October 26th, it will all be Halloween themed and people will be encouraged to dress up in their Halloween costumes. Audience and performers are all welcome.
Newman students and other students from Boston gathering before the Arts Cafe of 2022-23 school year.
