Somerville will expand its arts leadership as part of a reorganization, Mayor Jake Wilson said Tuesday in a statement. The statement came more than a week after firing the director of the Somerville Arts Council, Gregory Jenkins.
“I want to set the record straight,” Wilson said. “We are not pulling back from the arts. We are doubling down.”
Somerville will create a new cabinet-level leadership position for the arts “as part of a Citywide reorganization.” This will include creating a Culture & Community department, would be tasked with overseeing arts, libraries and parks and recreation. Other Cabinet positions include Infrastructure, Public Health, and Strategic Planning. The city will also hire a new director for the Somerville Arts Council (SAC) in a “transparent, fair, and thorough” search that will include the SAC board.
Wilson also apologized for how the community learned about Jenkins being let go after nearly 25 years at the SAC. On Feb. 13, Jenkins announced his departure on Facebook, and Wilson shared a response that raised more questions than answers. “You deserved to hear this from me first, with full explanation, and you didn’t. I’m sorry for the alarm that caused,” his statement said.
After Jenkins’ post, a grassroots group of Somerville residents involved with the arts started an online petition and posted a toolkit for a letter-writing campaign. By Tuesday, the petition had over 600 signatures and Cambridge Day had been copied on more than three dozen emails to the mayor.
Wilson’s pledge to be transparent in hiring would seem to be a response to this campaign, which called for the city to be “transparent about” the hiring process and include the arts community, including the SAC board, in the search.
The toolkit also specified that Wilson maintain SAC priorities including its Cultural Plan, developing a Somerville Cultural Trust along with the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, and increasing funding for grants for the Local Cultural Council, local artists, arts in schools, and arts organizations.
Arts community rallies
Ellen Waylonis, a co-owner and CEO of Esh Circus Arts, was part of the group that created the petition and letter-writing effort. “Somerville has a really connected arts community,” she said, so “as soon as the news about the director’s dismissal came out, folks started talking.”
The campaign, she said, “is about looking forward: asking for collaboration, asking for partnership” from the mayor’s office.
Susan Berstler, founder and director of the Nave Gallery, was also a part of the group. She’s been organizing arts programming in the city since 1995 and was a member of the arts council board during the search that led to Jenkins’ hiring, which she said the board was involved with.
“Somerville’s been lucky, it’s only had two directors of the Arts Council,” Berstler said. She felt the council’s success is due in part to that continuity in council leadership, and that “the people in there have really gotten to know the community and developed programming that the community responded to.”
Waylonis, who has been a working artist in Somerville since 2009, emphasized the many ways the council has provided opportunities for Esh students and artists over the years. The school has a program that trains aspiring professional circus artists, and many of those students’ first public performances were at the council’s SomerStreets events. Graduates of the professional program have also gone on to receive local cultural council (LCC) grants from Somerville to create and present their own circus shows.
The council “is an amazing team,” Waylonis said. “They’re not a big team, but they really take the time to get to know everyone. They are folks who show up at every event.”
And Somerville’s arts scene is admired regionally and even nationally, Waylonis said, “in large part because the council really shows up to advocate” for it. In particular, she said the council “has really been a partner” in advocating for affordable arts space.
“I feel that the arts in Somerville draws such a big community,” Berstler said. “It’s not just the city of Somerville, you know? There’s people from the Greater Boston area who consider us their place to come play, and we benefit from that.”
More arts spending
Wilson confirmed with Cambridge Day this additional arts-focused leadership position is being planned for as part of the fiscal year 2027 budget that starts July 1 and for which planning discussions are already underway.
He also wrote that having heard from many people in the past week “reinforced how grateful I am to live in this place where people care and want to contribute their time, effort, energy and brilliance to making Somerville a place where art thrives.”
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