2019 Champion of Artists Awardee Spotlight: Kay Bourne

As we lead up to 13th Annual “Artists Under The Dome” Event and the MALC 2019 “Champion of Artists” Awards on November 18, 2019, at the State House, we are highlighting each of the five “Champion of Artists” awardees. This post is highlighting Kay Bourne.

This is the fourth time MALC has given these awards, which will be part of the morning program. The award ceremony will begin at 11:00am in the State House’s Great Hall, located on the second floor. The ceremony, along with all the events that are part of the annual Artists Under the Dome event, are free and open to the public. Although it is not required, we are urging people to register for the event.  For more information and to register: http://www.artistsunderthedome.org/annualevent.htm

This year’s awardees in alphabetical order:

• Blair Benjamin – Fiction Writer, Director of MASS MoCA’s Studio Residency Program and Founder & Director of Assets for Artists (A4A)
• Kay Bourne – Journalist, Editor, and Educator
• Greg Liakos – Writer, Journalist and former Director of Communications and External Relations for the Mass Cultural Council (This award is given in memory of State Representative Chris Walsh)
• Abe Rybeck – Playwright, Organizational Consultant, and Founder of The Theater Offensive (TTO)
• Lisa Simmons – Filmmaker, Director and Curator of the Roxbury Film Festival, and Founder of the Color of Film Collaborative (This award is given in memory of MALC Co-Founder Liora Beer)

Kay Bourne is beloved by so many in the art community and beyond. She has done so much for so many artists and residents of the Commonwealth. Kay has single handily ensured that the work of so many artists of all disciplines from communities of color have had their work reviewed and written about. The art world and the Commonwealth are so blessed and better off from Kay’s expansive efforts and her dedication for social justice for all.

Profile: Kay Bourne

A journalist and editor since 1966, Kay Bourne, who served as arts editor for the Bay State Banner for some 45 years, and who wrote the Kay Bourne Arts Report for the Color of Film Collaborative,  and was until retirement the Theatre and Fine Arts Assignment Editor of EDGE/Media Network, an on-line publication for LGBTQ readers and others with 18 portals nationwide. She does play reviews, interviews with artists, reviews of art shows and music CDs, and book reviews for EDGE whose home base is in Boston. She also regularly contributed stories on jazz performances and artists for the “Christian Science Monitor”

She has been honored with a Puddingstone Award from Discover Roxbury for her journalism that has strengthened Roxbury’s social, cultural, and economic development and a citation from the Elliot Norton Boston Theater Critics Organization for her decades of championing Boston’s African American arts.

Kay has collaborated with photographer Craig Bailey on a photo exhibit documenting the black presence in theater in Boston, which they call “Through a Glass Darkly;” she presents interactive discussions in each presenting venue. They also developed and gave similar presentations on 50 Boston Black Playwrights. Kay gave a talk at Hibernian Hall on Black Dance in Boston through the centuries and with Adrienne Hawkins gave a talk at the Boston Center for the Arts through a Martha grant also on black dance in Boston.

She is also working on her archives covering the arts as well as the reporting she did on school desegregation and police, courts, and corrections for the Banner which she has donated to Emerson College Library as a Special Archives. where scholars, students, and the public have access. In 2009 she presented a scholarly paper at the University of Connecticut on the Black Presence in the Arts in Boston during the period 1919 – 1934, which explored the era known as the Harlem Renaissance as experienced in Boston.

She was the artistic director of the Harvard Radcliffe Forum Theater which presented new works at the Loeb Drama Center and elsewhere on campus as well as at the Rose Coffee House in the North End of Boston.

Kay served on the very first Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women started during the Governor Frank Sargent administration where her specialty was the status of women in law enforcement and in trouble with the law. She wrote a paper that resulted in lowering the age at which one could earn a GED and, in another instance, wrote legislation and testified against 18 month and two year indeterminate sentencing in the Commonwealth, which passed.

Later on she founded and ran the school at the Suffolk County House of Correction at Deer Island.

She was the Education Coordinator for the Dept. of Transitional Assistance and its liaison to the Dept. of Education working on behalf of education and training services for single parent head of households and the homeless.

She trained for classroom teaching at Keene State College receiving her bachelor of education in 1960 and has a master’s of education from Harvard Graduate School of Education.

A recipient of the Melnea A Cass Award, she was a summer NEH journalism fellow at Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. She is listed in various editions of Who’s Who. She served as an elected member of the board for the Boston Branch of the NAACP in the years of Tom Atkins leadership when school busing was launched in Boston.

She is widowed with two children and two grandchildren.

SAVE THE DATE & REGISTER!!

The 13th Annual Artists Under the Dome Event 2019

Monday, NOVEMBER 18th, 2019
9:30am to 1pm

Massachusetts State House’s Great Hall

[sexybutton size=”xl” color=”magenta” target=”_blank” url=”http://artistsunderthedome.org/annualevent.html” icon=”noicon”]RSVP HERE![/sexybutton]