Locals to Headline This Weekend’s Opening Doors Festival, Honor “One Community, Open to All”
The Opening Doors Project, a Melrose-based nonprofit, is pleased to announce the first-ever “Opening Doors Festival,” a celebration of diversity and inclusion through music and art. The festival is this Saturday, June 11 at 3 p.m. on the Cabbage Patch Field at Melrose Memorial Middle School (indoor rain location to be announced if necessary). To register for the free festival, visit openingdoorsproject.net/live-events.
The free, all-ages event features a musical conversation about work, friendship, and race by veteran musicians and storytellers Reggie Harris and Alastair Moock; music and drumming by Dorchester-based Boston City Singers; and a community art project facilitated by Boston-based Artists for Humanity and Melrose-based Follow Your Art Community Studios, in collaboration with Melrose teen artists.
The Opening Doors Project is a volunteer organization with a nonprofit mission to amplify voices of color and advance conversations about race through the arts. This Saturday’s festival in Melrose is the group’s first large-scale live event.
“The festival is part of an ongoing effort to help make Melrose ‘One community, open to all’ — a process that begins with representation and inclusion,” said Opening Doors Project Co-Founder, Alastair Moock. “It’s about music and art, and it's about listening – really listening – to each other.”
Harris and Moock will be joined for the musical portion of the event by Boston City Singers, a diverse and talented group of teenagers from Dorchester and beyond who have toured all around the world.
As they perform, visual artists from Follow Your Art Community Studios (FYACS), Artists for Humanity, and high school students from both Melrose and Boston will work with community members and kids of all ages on a collaborative visual art project related to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
“We are thrilled to bring the talented youth of Artists for Humanity to Melrose. The community project we work on at the festival will be a permanent symbol of the connections we’ve made through this collaboration," said Kris Rodolico, FYACS Director.
Stacey Babb, who co-founded The Opening Doors Project with Moock, said the idea for the event came about in fall 2021, when the non-profit learned about local grant opportunities.
"The grant opportunities available in our city from organizations like the Melrose Cultural Council, Melrose Messina Fund for the Arts, and the Melrose Cooperative Bank Foundation enabled us to offer the event for free, making it accessible to all,” said Babb.
Registration for the event is encouraged to ensure seating if the event needs to move indoors. Learn more and register for free at openingdoorsproject.net/live-events.
