1975: Vietnamese Diaspora Commemoration Initiative

At ArtHONK! Festival, the 1975 Team invites festivalgoers from all walks of life to create, reflect, and share what they hope to carry forward for future generations. Inspired by the banyan tree as a symbol of roots, resilience, and connection, participants can decorate bookmarks and miniature conical hats while responding to prompts about the memories, traditions, values, and stories they want to preserve. Together, these colorful creations and reflections will become part of the growing story of the 1975: A Vietnamese Diaspora Memorial, celebrating community, creativity, and the many things we carry with us across generations.

Website: www.1975vietdiaspora.com
IG: 1975vietdiaspora

Behind The Mask Studio & Theatre

Behind The Mask creates vibrant performance and arts educational programming with masks, puppets, murals, and residencies with themes of diversity, community, international folklore, and nature & wildlife conservation.

During ArtHonk! 2026 we will present masked and puppet animal characters from our latest production, Old Mr. Toad’s Nature Stories & Songs. These animal characters sing and tell stories about community, anti-bullying, nature conseravtion and biodiversity. The animal characters find commonality in their missions and learn to bring their different gifts together to create forest harmony. After each short section, we will engage to audience as the characters for dialogue about these topics. We talk about tough topics with gentleness, humor, and stunning artwork.

Website: www.behindthemask.org
FB: facebook.com/behindthemask1

Boston Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence

As an order of 21st-century queer drag nuns, our street performance, ministry, and culture-jamming are rooted in a dual vow: to promulgate universal joy and to expiate stigmatic guilt. Our interactive, public fabric works—the Veil of Remembrance (Joy) and the Veil of Shame—function not merely as performance props, but as community-driven altars of artistic activism. By inviting marginalized bodies to externalize their deepest internal landscapes onto these physical fabrics, we transform private isolation into collective, political liberation.

The sisters will have moments to discuss with participants of the festival about our different ministries throughout the greater New England area; obviously primarily centered in the Boston metropolitan area; the sisters are greatly embedded in political activism. We will be asking participants if they would like to voluntarily take a moment to write on the veils of joy and/or shame; the veils of joy will be given to one of the sisters to wear at future events and the veils of shame will be burned and destroyed. There will also be the opportunity, if they so wish, for participants to receive a glitter blessing from one of the sisters; this is a spiritual moment where one of the sisters “prays” over a member community and places some of our houses glitter on the forehead/hand of the participant as an outward sign of the beauty and shimmer we all carry within us internally.

www.thebostonsisters.org

Cambridge Wildlife Arts

Cambridge Wildlife Arts, launched in 2012 as a Honk! Parade marching group, has since then focused on art-making as a way for people of all ages and backgrounds to make personal and community connections with city animals, plants, and habitats. Outdoors for all is a central principle. We are making the transition to a volunteer-led organization in 2025 and welcome new volunteers.

The Banners Project arose as a response to the current crisis. Fiber arts have played a role both in free expression and in healing from trauma. The banners represent solidarity— in their message, in how they are made, and in being a collective asset. The home languages of immigrant communities in our cities are integral to the Banners Project, which declares the importance of the mother tongues spoken in every city neighborhood.

This afternoon we invite you to join a sewing circle, whether or not you know how to sew. Sew and embroider in community to construct a fabric banner with a message of resilience, resistance, and community care, illustrated with wildlife images.

The banners may be carried in the Honk! Parade by anyone who has participated in a sewing circle.

FB: IG: cambridgewildlifearts

Climate Crisis Cabaret

Climate Crisis Cabaret is a new group of Boston area theatre artists, scientists and activists who have organized to kindle action on the climate crisis. In March 2025, we produced the first of a series of cabarets aiming to energize climate activism in our community. We’re now looking for artists, scientists and activists who want to work with us. Interested? Visit climatecrisiscabaret.org, to learn about our recent cabaret. Contact us at if you’re interested in helping us create future events!

At ArtHONK! 2026, Boston actor Debra Wise reprises her performance from Climate Crisis Cabaret: The Warm-Up, produced in March at Arrow Street Arts in Harvard Square. As the divine DIANE, she comes to awaken humanity to the climate crisis. This brief scene from the hit play Hurricane Diane will be performed at intervals during the afternoon.
FB: @ClimateCrisisCabaretBoston

Extinction Rebellion

Extinction Rebellion is an international non-violent movement focused on raising the alarm about the climate and ecological crisis, pressuring governments to act, and inspiring people to get involved. This year we will be coloring animal and insect masks and painting cardboard props of trees and houses some of which will be painted to look on fire in preparation for the Extinction Rebellion “OUR HOME IS ON FIRE” theme contingent in the HONK! Parade on Sunday. Our interactive activity will also include a local wildflower seed bomb making station, where passersby can make and take clay or paper-based seed bombs to cast this autumn or spring, and get to know and improve some neglected spots in their neighborhoods or their own yards, and help our pollinators.

XRBoston.org
IG: XRBoston

Eyes Wide Open II: The Human Cost of War

Massachusetts Peace Action is a grassroots movement for peace and justice. Through grassroots organizing, policy advocacy, and community education, we promote human rights and global cooperation, seek an end to war and the spread of nuclear weapons, and support budget priorities that redirect excessive military spending toward human and environmental needs. We are an affiliate of Peace Action, the nation’s largest grassroots peace and disarmament membership organization, with more than 100,000 members and 30 chapters across the country.

Eyes Wide Open II: The Human Cost of War is a collaborative traveling exhibit developed to visualize the human toll of the US-Israeli war on Iran and provide a sacred space for public reflection, mourning, and generating ideas for action to end the war. The original traveling exhibit typically features artifacts of loss, displays of children’s shoes, backpacks, and stuffed animals representing the Iranian schoolchildren killed when U.S. missiles struck their school in Minab, Iran, on February 28, 2026. Fifteen pairs of combat boots represent U.S. service members who have lost their lives in the war.

At ArtHONK! Festival, we are showcasing Eyes Wide Open II: The Human Cost of War, featuring prints of drawings by children from the Minab school as well as paintings of some of the children’s portraits. This visual display is designed to humanize the statistics and facilitate direct connection with the perspectives of children living through the war. Visitors are invited to participate by writing messages to their elected representatives on postcards created from Minab children’s drawings. We will also provide markers and crayons for children who stop by our table to write letters and create drawings that will be sent to the surviving children of Minab. Their artwork will be added to the display for the duration of the event, transforming the exhibit into an evolving space for cross-cultural dialogue.

masspeaceaction.org
IG: website: https://masspeaceaction.org/

If Not Now – Boston

We are a movement of U.S. Jews organizing our community to end U.S. support for Israel’s apartheid system and demand equality, justice, and a thriving future for all Palestinians and Israelis. We speak powerfully and act publicly to call American Jews into action: in the streets, in our communities, and in our politics. To do this, we must take a firm, loving approach to transform our Jewish communities to fight for a vision of Jewish liberation: which means our safety does not come at the expense of others, but is bound with the liberation of all people. Join us!

IG: @IfNotNowBoston

Where Is Home?

TPS (Temporary Protected Status) is a humanitarian protection program designated by the Secretary of Homeland Security to nationals of designated foreign countries who are already in the United States and whose home countries are unsafe to return to due to conditions such as environmental disasters (e.g., earthquakes, hurricanes, epidemics), ongoing armed conflict, or other extraordinary and temporary conditions. TPS is a temporary program that protects recipients from deportation and provides work authorization, but does not lead to lawful permanent resident status or give any other immigration status. We understand TPS is created as a temporary humanitarian solution to complex situations. However, many TPS holders have been living and working in the United States for many years-some for 20 – 30 years. These TPS recipients are business owners, homeowners, healthcare workers, taxpayers, and have families as well as U.S.-born children. They are an integral part of the American Society and a large contributor to its economy. The MA TPS Committee is one of the leading organizations to fight on behalf of more than 1.3 million families and their 350,000-plus U.S.-born children who have lived in the United States for decades.

Where Is Home? A collaboration between the MA TPS and the Boston Experimental Theatre Company, Where Is Home is an interactive collage and storytelling project that amplifies the voices and lived experiences of families with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) who face deportation and family separation. At the heart of this project are personal materials and stories shared directly by TPS families, some of whom have been living here for more than 25 years, have US-born children, have started businesses, and for whom the U.S. is the only place they call home. Through these interactive collage and immersive street theatre performances, we invite visitors to listen, create, and reflect on their own experiences of What Does Home Mean to You? And what does it mean to be forced to leave it behind?

Website: www.masstps.org & bostonexperimentaltheatre.com

IG: @masstpscommittee

Limitless Bingo

Limitless Bingo is an invitation for us to become and outspoken leader of local campaigns and a full time believer of all we can obtain. Author/Bicycle Benefits founder Ian Klepetar and Illustrator Danielle Marino have teamed up to challenge you to play Limitless Bingo…an interactive game to beautify your life and enhance your community.

Mutant Kazoo Adoption & Instrument Petting Zoo

Come jam with the teachers of WholeTone Music Academy at ArtHONK in Davis Square! We will be hosting our Mutant Kazoo Adoption Agency and a small Instrument Petting Zoo. You can try out a new instrumental, jam with new friends, and adopt a kazoo! We have a multitude of funky kazoos looking for a new home.

Website: wholetoneacademy.com

The Freedom Flyers

Making many sized monarch butterflies to fly as symbols of Anti-Ice, Pro Immigrant Justice Art!

We invite adults, youth, and children to join our free art workshops and vibrant parade troups. We will make and carry Monarch butterflies and symbolic images for immigrant justice and against the cruelty of ICE!

Serendipity Stilt Dancers and its FB contact ,
and my name Maya Apfelbaum for contact.

Website: http://www.MayaGoldRiverArts.com
FB: @SerendipityStiltDancers