Top row: Vanesa Suarez lights a candle in memory of Roya Mohammadi; NHIC members Kiana Cintron and Ambar Santiago-Rojas; Sun Queen leads an open mic at Strange Ways in Downtown New Haven. Middle row: Students at the Board of Alders advocate for their teachers after the 129 proposed student-facing staff budget cuts; St. Luke's Steel Band conductor Kenneth Joseph; and Kica Matos at a fundraiser in the Hill to support a family affected by ICE. Bottom Row: Ward Nine Alder Caroline Tanbee Smith speaks at the New Haven Pride Center, second grader Olivia David at Hill Central Music Academy; Ruby Melton and Gail McAvay. Lucy Gellman File Photos.
Sometimes they were pan players or choir directors, reminding musicians of how not alone they were. Sometimes they were poets, alchemizing language, then staying up late to fight bureaucracy at a city budget hearing. Sometimes they were bookstore owners and public health nerds and soft-spoken crafters, making the time to build community wherever they could. Sometimes they were faith leaders, ready to reckon with local history and to recognize what New Haven got right, too.
Often, if not always, they dedicated hundreds of hours to New Haven and the region, a service for which there will never be enough compensation or overtime. Sometimes, they were beloved artists and arts champions who didn't live to see the new year.
Perhaps they were you, in your own quiet way, too.
In 2025, our artists of the year were those who helped, often in the face of a system or systems that did not (and do not) want to see them succeed. They were urban gardeners and emergency food providers, musicians who fundraised for immigrant families and de facto community centers, teachers who showed up to fight for their students, and students who showed up to fight for their schools.
They were muralists who broke miraculously free of the Yale bubble, poets who understood that language was a form of power, carceral critics who knew how to use the arts for good, and matriarchs who passed on after decades of community care, setting an example for all who learned about their work.
Kenneth Joseph in January of this year. Lucy Gellman File Photo.
For me, the story of the helpers—who have always existed, regardless of who is in City Hall and who is in the White House—starts this year on January 20, as celebrations of Martin Luther King, Jr. coincided with the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th President of the United States.
In downtown New Haven, members of Music Haven and St. Luke's Steel Band filed into First & Summerfield Church just hours before protests filled downtown New Haven. At the front of the room, they unlocked instrument cases and rolled in barrel-like steel pans, turning music into a whole other form of prayer.
As he called the room to attention with the poise of a preacher, St. Luke's conductor Kenneth Joseph did not shy away from the world outside the church's doors. Instead, he and members of Music Haven wove it into their set, with joint selections like Bob Marley and the Wailers' "One Love," Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes’ “Wake Up Everybody,” Nina Simone's "Feelin Good" and the Black Eyed Peas' “Where Is The Love,” that filled the whole space with a round, ringing and jubilant sound.
"We just have to do more loving each other and just coming together," he said in an interview after the concert.
Members of the New Haven Immigrants Coalition social media team, composed of current New Haven Public Schools students and recent alumni, film several "Know Your Rights" videos in English and Spanish. More on that very specific and extensive kind of helping below. Lucy Gellman Photo.
And he was right. On the ground, many, many New Haveners had been preparing for this moment for months, gathering resources, building skillboxes, and creating emergency numbers that immigrant families, food insecure New Haveners, and people facing housing emergencies and homelessness could call. They had already been leading "Know Your Rights" trainings, working with emergency food providers, and planning nonprofit webinars on everything from immigrant rights to federal funding cuts that might be just around the corner. When those inevitably came, many worked together to figure out what that meant for New Haven.
At CT State Gateway (formerly Gateway Community College), educators and administrators cut the ribbon on the Melton McAvay Center for Equity and Social Justice (CESJ), a new human rights hub and social justice sanctuary in the heart of downtown New Haven. The space is part of a $300,000 commitment that partners Ruby Melton and Gail McAvay, both fierce champions of social justice and the arts in New Haven, have made to the institution.
Since its inception at the top of the year, the center has hosted film screenings on carceral reform, launched an LGBTQ+ Student Club, and created an open mic dedicated to social justice themes, and given its first scholarships.
The artist Cuee and organizer Kirill Staklo at a rally in downtown New Haven in August.
Meanwhile, so many helpers stepped in to bridge a gap, or multiple gaps, because they saw a need and jumped in the space in between. Addressing people in late January from inside the New Haven Pride Center—an organization that has seen its own year of transition—a coalition of LGBTQ+ advocates, Pride Center staff, service providers and elected officials rolled out the city's first LGBTQ+ resource guide, announcing a commitment to LGBTQ+ community that has echoed through Pride Month flag raisings, a revived "Pride Prom" and festivals like New Haven Black Pride, as well as a continued $30,000 line item for the Center in the current city budget.
Artists, who live at the intersection of every identity, showed up in more grassroots ways to help, too, from drag queen story hours to vendor markets to outdoor performances that brought queer visibility downtown and beat the summer heat. Trans Haven, which runs programming specifically by and for Trans folks, kept running its robust art market, while also juggling support and affinity groups and events like movie and game nights meant to cultivate community and fight social isolation. When in July, Yale-New Haven Hospital and Connecticut Children's Hospital announced that they would be ending gender-affirming care for youth, artists and arts educators were among the hundreds who showed up in both New Haven and Hartford to protest the decisions.
"I remember getting off that table, getting all that weight off my chest—and that weight included everybody that didn't believe, that didn't want to love, and be on this trans joy journey," said the musician Cuee of the decision to transition, and the liberation that came with it. "This isn't a healthcare policy. We all know that this is about control."
“We are here today because we love our students,” weighed in Erin Michaud, an arts teacher at Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School. “We do not get to pick and choose which students deserve dignity."
Top: Students dance in celebration of Black History Month at Betsy Ross Arts & Design Academy. Bottom: A photo from a packed city budget hearing in early May. Lucy Gellman File Photo.
But let's rewind to January and talk about another kind of helper. As already-underpaid arts educators (who have been helpers since the history of history) entered a new semester under the constant threat of federal funding cuts, they programmed performances alongside protests, making space for their students to show off capstone projects, rehearse for school musicals (many, many school musicals), celebrate Black History Month and summon Black joy, hold eco-focused clothing swaps, and find some sense of normalcy in a year that felt upside down by February.
They built curricula and supported new student work, wove public art and theater into lesson plans, used the score of Annie, Jr. to address student anxieties, and hammered home how the history of the past can inform the present—especially in a time of political upheaval. They turned Shakespeare into a learning opportunity, sometimes making magic on a shoestring.
And in turn, students, colleagues, parents and supporters showed up, and kept showing up, to help keep their peers and teachers safe. In March, hundreds of young people and teachers alike gathered downtown to rally against cuts to the U.S. Department of Education, with an escort from the James Hillhouse High School marching band that kept spirits high.
When, just a month later, New Haven Public Schools Superintendent Madeline Negrón said there could be 129 student-facing staff cuts in the schools, they packed City Hall, giving hours of impassioned testimony that laid bare the quiet and life-changing work that teachers do. Among them were young people like Diana Robles, Japhet Gonzalez and Board of Ed member Jonaily Colón, all students at High School in the community who made time to come, despite a mountain of homework waiting at home.
Pat Smith and Harriett Alfred.
When a month after that, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested and detained an NHPS parent, teachers were part of a team that sprang into action to provide support. Quietly, they have continued to provide that support, sometimes part of the rapid response strategy that forms in the wake of an ICE arrest and a parent that is suddenly, terrifyingly disappeared.
When in June teachers Harriett Alfred and Patrick Smith took their final bow at Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School, over a dozen alumni popped up at a retirement party, each with stories of how these helpers changed and sometimes saved their lives. That same gratitude echoed from Barnard Environmental Science and Technology School to the the Dwight/Edgewood Project (D/EP) to a closing Wexler-Grant School, where teachers were using the arts as an education in life skills.
So perhaps it should not have been a surprise when many of them popped up again to pay it forward: Smith now works for NHPS as its coordinator of fine arts and Alfred is now substitute teaching at Betsy Ross Arts & Design Academy, where she recently led the choir in a performance for the school's annual Winterfest.
Nova Alvarado Reyes practices a standing ovation at Bishop Woods Architecture & Design Magnet School earlier this year. Lucy Gellman File Photo.
Some of that educational work—that willingness to help—also came from arts organizations and arts champions in the community, who saw a gap and stepped in to be the bridge (a shout out to the New Haven Free Public Library, which has set a high bar and a template of sorts for how to do meaningful community programming with limited resources).
In September, the Shubert Theatre announced a $1.2 million investment that would bring theater into New Haven's schools and build out a partnership with students at Southern Connecticut State University. By October, it had launched the first round of those classes, and received a new gift from philanthropist (and New Haven booster) Lindy Lee Gold that would allow it to grow its work at the Mitchell and Stetson Branches of the New Haven Free Public Library.
“Theater is a safe place for so many kids, and it was a safe space for me too, and I hope that I’m able to instill a curiosity and love for theater … that will grow into a lifelong love,” said Education Programs Manager Tracy Stratton, who for years taught at West Haven High School, as she worked to get that programming off the ground earlier this year.
Kiana Cintron and Ambar Santiago-Rojas.
During so much of this time (and through several institutional transitions, including a new director of cultural affairs who is herself a helper), a few artists, arts advocates, creatives and curators emerged as unwavering and steadfast helper-leaders, with a capacity for compassion matched only by their energy.
They include, of course, members of the New Haven Immigrants Coalition (NHIC), Unidad Latina en Acción (ULA), Junta for Progressive Action, and Connecticut Students For A Dream (C4D) who often use public art, music, dance and performance as a form of protest. Working around the clock, these helpers—from Kiana Cintron and Ambar Santiago-Rojas to John Jairo Lugo to Tabitha Sookdeo to different team members who simply identify as worker bees—have knitted together immigration and community, making it an issue that many New Haveners can't not care about.
By March, for instance, NHIC's social media team—current NHPS students and alumni, with full class loads, extracurriculars and jobs that they also had to do—was in full swing, with a mix of online content around immigrant rights and in-person “Know Your Rights” trainings, including in many of the city’s public schools.
Behind the scenes, these helpers were hard at work, often the first people to verify and communicate an ICE sighting, comfort and support a family affected by arrest or deportation, do emergency food aid for immigrant families, or bring public attention to a shift in Hartford that might affect statewide legislation. Across organizations, they started doing court accompaniments, public service alerts, speakouts against Avelo Airlines, and community “Know Your Rights” trainings.
Kica Matos, who leads the National Immigration Law Center, moves from her drum to the street during a set from Proyecto Cimarrón in July 2025. Lucy Gellman File Photo.
More publicly, they also used the arts to relay information and sustain a community's joy. When in June, Hill resident Nancy Martinez was arrested while taking her children to school, artists in groups like Proyecto Cimarrón joined ULA to raise funds for the family, turning the street into an unexpected batey.
When, less than two months later, Wilbur Cross High School student Esdrás Zabaleta-Ramirez was arrested and detained during a workplace raid in Southington, artists, activists, poets and crafters—as well as faith leaders who have remained vocal in the face of an anti-immigrant administration—all rallied in support of the student, rejoicing when he returned home. As ICE increased its presence in New Haven, they kept up that support, with a parade and celebration of Día de los Muertos that became a show of community solidarity.
Meanwhile, artists and creatives worked and worked and worked to serve the community—sometimes until their last breaths. Led by artist-activist Vanesa Suarez and collaborator Nika Zarazvand, the anti-femicide collective Vivan las Autónomas grew its work fighting for increased accountability, often using art as a path to hope and healing. In April, the two spearheaded a protest in West Haven, asking for more information around the disappearance and death of Roya Mohammadi nearly three years ago. Months later, they gathered again for a now-annual Día de los Muertas, a chance to remember and grieve the dead in safe and loving community.
Sun Queen. Abiba Biao File Photo.
The poet and activist Sun Queen, who over a decade ago co-founded Black Lives Matter New Haven, spearheaded not just open mic nights and the cultivation of third spaces in New Haven (including an upcoming art exhibition in 2026), but also transformative advocacy work with U-ACT, or the Unhoused Activists Community Team.
On a given night, a person might spot her at a contentious budget hearing, occupying municipal space, or checking in on colleagues and friends as she pushes the city for better living conditions for those experiencing homelessness.
“My poetry is my protest,” she told Youth Arts Journalist Mya DeBerry earlier this year. “I love seeing how my words connect to other people’s hearts."
And then, of course, you might be a helper too, reader. Maybe you heeded the call to support Best Video when the organization sent out an emergency appeal. Maybe you performed at New Haven Pride, and let someone in the audience know that they were perfect exactly as they are. Maybe you taught a viewer how to grieve, as the artist Anatar Gagné did in her show at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art earlier this year, or raised the roof for this sweet sanctuary city that we call home.
If you did, thank you. May we keep helping each other in 2026.
This article includes links to stories from myself, Abiba Biao, Jarelis Calderon, Nelani Mejias and Emiliano Cáceres Manzano. The coverage that the Arts Paper was able to get to this year, and the students we taught during our annual Youth Arts Journalism Initiative, would not have been possible without them, and other freelancers.