Cultural Council potluck event celebrates arts organizations around the city

Over the past year, 51 arts projects and cultural organizations around the city received state and local funding through the Waltham Cultural Council to support their work in Waltham. 

WCC grants can cover everything from performances to visual art exhibitions to history projects, but they have to serve the local Waltham community.

This weekend, a handful of grantees came to the Waltham Fields Community Farms for a celebratory potluck to talk about their projects and the role of the arts in Waltham.

Many grantees thanked WCC volunteers for their role in running the grant program. The program supports a range of projects, including local organizations such as the Waltham Philharmonic, that have been operating in Waltham for decades. It also supports artists who are new to the city, or who are holding temporary performances in Waltham; for example, Somerville-based artist Julia Csekö, a first-time grant recipient, used her grant to help fund an exhibition of her art at Bentley University this spring.

Applications for this year’s funding cycle opened recently and will stay open until Oct. 15. The WCC will allocate a total of $43,100 in funding, and the council will announce grant winners in the new year.

The projects

For the past few years, Rondaé Drafts of Music Dance.edu has been running a hip-hop chair dance program at the Waltham seniors’ center. As she gets older, she says she understands more and more the importance of keeping active.

This year, Drafts has been able to expand her programming to include a hip-hop square dance class, and she’s run an event with the Waltham Housing Authority. Her programs for Waltham seniors, she said, are made possible by the WCC’s grants. And she’d like to expand her offerings in Waltham further; she’s hoping to potentially bring her square dancing classes to Parks and Recreation summer camps. 

The Waltham Choral Parents Association, meanwhile, has been around for more than 40 years to support the high school’s show choirs and show band. Despite its long experience, WCPA parents Amy Pereira and Daniella DiMatteo said running the organization comes with its share of difficulties.

Unlike with sports, Pereira pointed out, there’s no central organizational body for show choirs — which means no consistent central source of funding. Even many of the competitions students attend every year aren’t guaranteed. “It takes a program like ours, that has been around for a while and is well funded, to do [a competition],” she said.

Pereira said the WCC’s funding goes toward hosting Waltham High’s own annual competition in the spring, which not only gives Waltham’s students a chance to perform alongside other choirs, but provides a platform for show choirs from all over the country that come to compete.

Funding sources like the grants distributed by the WCC, Pereira said, help keep the program running. “It’s been going for 40 years — and we hope it goes for another 40!” she said.

Disclosure: The Waltham Times received WCC grants in 2025 and 2026 to fund its arts coverage.