Sep 01, 2015
Oct 07, 2015
Cedric Douglas is a Boston-based public artist, designer, street artist who has created work in the community for over 20 years. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in graphic design.
This year Cedric will be an artist-in-residence with the Northeastern Center for the Arts, working with our staff, students and faculty to organize Boston’s first Street Art Festival in 2016. This festival planning has been initiated by the City of Boston’s Youth Lead the Change: Participatory Budgeting project.
As an artist, Cedric combines the use of street art ideology and raw creativity to connect, inspire and interact with the community. By understanding the transformative power of street art culture, Cedric has learned that what the general public once viewed as vandalism has become a form of advertising and social awareness that inspires communities to make change all over the world.
Cedric is currently working on public art project called The UP Truck. The UP Truck is a creative art truck that is used for community engagement in Upham’s Corner Dorchester. Cedric was selected first out of over 70 national and international applicants. The grant was for $500,000 and was funded by The Boston Foundation in partnership with Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, and Art Place America. The goal of UP Truck is to use art as a vehicle that empowers local residents to explore their inner artist and to be creative. The second goal is to receive communities’ feedback to create a permanent public work of art piece and site selection that reflects and inspires the community.
Cedric was recently awarded to be Artist in Resident of Upham’s Corner Dorchester. He will be based in the Upham’s Corner neighborhood of Boston were he will be working with residents artists, local business, and non profits find ways to integrate art into creative solutions to community issues. Cedric was recently awarded a grant from the City of Boston’s Edward Ingersoll Browne Fund and from the New England Foundation for the Arts. These grants will be used for design and fabrication of the permanent public work of art piece in Upham’s Corner.
Our Artists In Residence program brings professional studio artists and designers onto campus and into the classroom. Through our residency program and community-based collaborations, the Center has also become a model for supporting creative practice that emphasizes making a positive impact, civic engagement and social justice.
During his residency, Cedric will meet with students in the Collaborative Video and Community Engagement course taught by Dr. Allesandra Renzi in the department of Media & Screen Studies. And Cedric will work with Northeastern’s Public Art Initiative.
Photo: Jaypix Belmer
Artist / Designer: Cedric Douglas
Video produced by Students: Meredith Berg, Zoe Gregoric, Gabriella Ketema, Alexa Azarian for Video Basics and Collaborative Video and Community Engagement with Alessandra Renzi, Fall 2015.
Click the image above to see the full video.
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