CREATE Boston celebrates art, food, drink, and music while developing more opportunities for Boston’s great artists.
CREATE Boston launched five years ago, just around when Fort Point, New England’s oldest and largest artist community, started to lose its identity to redevelopment. “With no city plan to assist the now-displaced artists, we wanted to find a way to foster them back into the community,” says CREATE’s founding chef, Louis DiBiccari.
DiBiccari and his partners decided to pair artists with chefs, creating an installation for a one-day event designed to bridge the gap between visual and culinary arts in the city of Boston. Now in its sixth year, CREATE remains a celebration of art, food, drink, and music, but it has also broadened since its inception. The event now pairs bartenders with artists and chefs, and the organizers have added DJs, live music performances, merchants, live installations, performance art, and more.
“It’s becoming more of a festival of sorts,” says DiBiccari. But while New England has lots of art events, food events, and plenty of music festivals, CREATE is unique because it establishes a level playing field for art, food, music, and drink. CREATE returns on April 7th as a part of BESPOKE, a weekend-long celebration of food, art, culture, and ideas in Boston’s historic SoWa neighborhood.
CREATE Boston, 2016 | Photo courtesy Natasha Moustache Photography
Boston is now years into the redevelopment of Fort Point, and, thankfully, more and more restaurants are trying to support local artisans—whether it’s through purchasing their pottery, art or photography, or by using local products specifically in the kitchen. “We’re seeing lots of chefs moving toward using small local producers for ingredients,” DiBiccari says. “That all falls under the umbrella of CREATE.”
DiBiccari led the way in this mindset with his restaurant Tavern Road, which he opened in 2013 with his brother Michael. Now, most of what you see at Tavern Road has a tie back to CREATE. “I don’t know what Tavern Road would look like without CREATE,” says DiBiccari. “Lots of our space is characterized by our relationships with CREATE artists.”CREATE’s long-term mission is to develop more opportunities for Boston’s artists. “I’m a lucky guy,” says DiBiccari. “I discovered I loved to cook and there were plenty of opportunities to make it my career. Artists need more opportunities here.”
Tickets to CREATE can be purchased here.