Community Liaison

Time Status & Schedule: Full-Time (40 hours/week)

Compensation: $75,000 - $80,000

Term: 26 months (October 2026 — December 2028)

Organization Overview

The Boston Public Art Triennial (The Triennial) brings bold contemporary art into public spaces across Boston through a citywide exhibition every three years and year-round artist commissions and programs. As the organization prepares for Triennial 2028 (May 2028 – November 2028), it continues to strengthen the operational infrastructure necessary to support artists, exhibitions, fundraising, and community engagement.

The Community Liaison plays a critical role in ensuring that Triennial 2028’s artworks and programs are shaped by the priorities, knowledge, and trust of the neighborhoods where the exhibition takes place, forming reciprocal community relationships on which this work depends.

Job Overview

The Community Liaison plays a critical role in building and sustaining meaningful, long-term relationships between The Triennial and communities across Boston toward its vision of a vibrant, open, and equitable city. Serving as The Triennial’s primary relationship-builder in the neighborhoods where Triennial 2028 will take place, this position develops trusted, reciprocal relationships with community organizations, residents, local leaders, artists, and other neighborhood stakeholders. This person spends the majority of their time listening in community settings, enabling them to share what they learn and advise The Triennial’s artworks, programs, and audience development.

The Community Liaison builds and sustains neighborhood relationships, leads community-centered audience engagement, and supports programs and events. Based on feedback gathered in 2026 and 2027, the Community Liaison plans and implements community experiences and reciprocal partnerships, co-leads an advisory group, and supports data collection in the lead-up to Triennial 2028.

The Community Liaison reports to the Director of Engagement and works alongside the Public Programs Manager, the Triennial 2028 Curatorial team, artists, and partners. This is a contract position with the potential for renewal.

The Triennial is committed to partnerships that deliver tangible value to the communities it works with, not just its own programming. This includes compensating community members and organizations for their time and expertise, resourcing partner organizations where possible, and shaping Triennial 2028 programming around neighborhood priorities rather than institutional ones. The Community Liaison is both a steward of these commitments in day-to-day relationship-building and an internal advocate for them, ensuring the organization follows through on what it promises to the neighborhoods where it works.

Job Mission‍ ‍

Strengthen the Boston Public Art Triennial’s presence within Boston’s neighborhoods by listening to and organizing alongside community leaders, cultivating authentic partnerships, and creating pathways for Bostonians to meaningfully engage with contemporary public art.

Key Behaviors

The Community Liaison is:

• A Listener: who spends more time absorbing than presenting in community settings, and trusts that showing up consistently matters more than having something to say every time

• A Trust Builder: who understands that relationships develop over years, not event cycles, and who keeps commitments to partners even when institutional timelines shift

• A Translator: who moves fluently between community settings and institutional ones, and who advocates in both directions, speaking up internally so the organization hears what it might otherwise miss

• Patient: recognizes that rushing trust-building to match institutional timelines can undermine the relationships this role depends on

• Comfortable navigating conflict: approaches challenging conversations with openness, curiosity, and care

Primary Responsibilities

Build and sustain reciprocal neighborhood relationships

• Build and maintain meaningful, year-round relationships with neighborhood associations, community-based organizations, mutual aid networks, local leaders, artists, schools, resident groups, and other trusted community stakeholders across Boston

• Spend the majority of time in community settings listening, not presenting; bring organizational updates only when directly relevant to what a partner has asked

• Move relationships beyond event-based transactions toward ongoing, mutually beneficial collaboration

• Report back to community partners on how their input shaped Triennial decisions, on a predictable and recurring basis, not only when convenient

• Translate community insights into actionable recommendations for programming, partnerships, communications, and organizational strategy, and advocate internally when institutional plans conflict with what community partners have said they need

Engage community-centered audiences

• Engage audiences who may not traditionally participate in contemporary art or cultural institutions, through grassroots, relationship-based outreach rather than campaign-style marketing

• Partner with the Communications team to shape neighborhood-specific outreach that reflects local languages, communication channels, cultural contexts, and trusted messengers

• Support the Director of Engagement on opportunities for collaboration throughout the year, including programming, outreach, artist engagement, and audience development

Program and Events Support

• Support Community Listening Sessions by applying community organizing best practices and ensuring participants feel welcomed, heard, and meaningfully connected to the process

• Maintain an ongoing feedback loop with community partners, demonstrating concretely how their input has informed Triennial decisions and work

• Maintain relationships year-round, recognizing community engagement as an ongoing practice rather than project-based outreach

Experience

• 3+ years of experience in community organizing, community engagement, cultural organizing, grassroots advocacy, or neighborhood-based work

• Demonstrated experience organizing or supporting successful community campaigns, initiatives, or coalition-building efforts

• Existing relationships with community organizations, neighborhood leaders, mutual aid networks, or resident groups in Boston, particularly in Back Bay/South End, Roxbury, Mattapan, Jamaica Plain, and Forest Hills

• Experience facilitating meetings, listening sessions, or public conversations with diverse stakeholders

• Strong understanding of Boston’s neighborhoods, histories, and community ecosystems; lived experience in the communities this role serves is highly valued

• Curiosity about contemporary art and belief in its civic potential; deep art-world experience is not required

• Multilingual candidates strongly encouraged; [Spanish, Haitian Creole, Cape Verdean Creole, and Cantonese] are especially valuable

How to Apply‍ ‍

To apply, please send a resume and cover letter to jobs@thetriennial.org with "Community Liaison" in the subject line. In your cover letter, we'd love to hear about complex projects you've brought from planning to completion, particularly any involving public space, multiple stakeholders, or creative collaborators. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until the position is filled.

Boston Public Art Triennial is an Equal Opportunity Employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any kind. Boston Public Art Triennial is committed to the principle of equal employment opportunity for all employees and to providing employees with a work environment free of discrimination and harassment. All employment decisions are based on the needs of the organization, job requirements, and individual qualifications, without regard to race, color, religion or belief, family or parental status, or any other status protected by federal or local law. Boston Public Art Triennial will not tolerate discrimination or harassment based on any of these.