We Make Places Breathe Again
An original work written by Maia Jaye “Maize” Livramento
June 2026
If this is your first time here,
a welcome to my city; a city where sometimes the buildings remember more than people are willing to admit.
See, some places don’t just hold history.
They hold hurt.
You can feel it in the way a boarded-up window looks like it’s waiting for something someone.
In the way a playground goes quiet too early and in the way a mural fades too quickly.
Somebody once told me art is decoration.
And I knew immediately that they had never stood in a place that needed saving.
I’ve seen what happens when color comes back to a wall that had once given up.
I’ve seen a child trace a painted line with their finger, almost like they’re following a map right back to themselves.
I’ve seen grown men—shoulders heavy with things we can’t see, stop in front of a piece of art like it called out to them by their childhood nicknames.
Don’t tell me art is extra when I know, like we all know, ART IS ENTRY
Space is never empty.
Space is filled with memory, with policy and
Filled with who was welcomed as well as
Who was watched.
Space remembers red lines.
It remembers silence.
It remembers who got erased
and who called it development.
When we say spatial justice,
we’re talking about who gets to feel safe
in their own reflection.
We’re talking about
who gets to imagine themselves
into tomorrow.
See, Imagination is not soft.
Imagination is the infrastructure.
It is the blueprint before the blueprint.
It is the audacity to look at a broken system
and say: I can see something else here.
I often think about my city,
How we carry ocean in our bones.
How we know tides and how we know things leave and how they come back different.
I think about all the ways we were told what we are not;
Not this enough.
Not that enough.
Not funded enough.
Not seen enough.
still—
we painted anyway.
We wrote anyway.
We danced in spaces
that were never designed to hold us.
We made stages out of corners, made galleries out of grief.
Because healing—
real healing—is not quiet nor should it be contained.
It is not always pretty.
It is not always polished for donors.
Sometimes healing looks like a spray can
in a trembling hand; sometimes healing
sounds like a voice cracking
on the first line.
Sometimes healing
is just—showing up to a space that once rejected you and refusing to shrink inside of it.
Art does not ask permission to matter.
Art insists.
Insists
that we are more
than the worst thing
that happened here.
Insists
that beauty belongs
in places that have been denied it.
It insists
that our stories
are not side notes—they are structure.
So when we gather like this—
in rooms with resources,
with vision, with the power to decide what gets built and what gets forgotten,
I need us to remember
We are not funding projects.
We are restoring breath.
We are not installing pieces.
We are interrupting absence.
We are not supporting artists.
We are trusting the people who know how to translate pain into possibility.
Because somewhere right now
in a city like mine—a kid is walking past a wall that could either tell them nothing or tell them ‘you belong here’.
That difference—
that small, sacred difference—
is everything.
And I know rooms like this.
Rooms full of beautiful minds.
Big hearts, Careful language.
People trying to build something more humane than the world we inherited.
And that matters.
But intention alone has never kept the lights on in an artist’s studio.
Intention alone
has never protected a cultural worker from burnout.
Intention alone has never stopped
a neighborhood from being erased right after it becomes beautiful again.
So today,
I am asking that we remember something deeper than admiration.
Do not just applaud the artists who know how to survive impossible conditions.
Ask why survival
is still the requirement.
Because every city says
they love artists—until artists need rent.
Every city says they believe in public healing until healing requires long-term investment.
Every institution says they care about community voice—
until that voice comes messy,
grieving,
loud,
honest,
uncurated.
But real art—the kind that changes people, has never been tidy.
The mural and the movement
have always belonged
to each other.
The poem and the protest.
The song and the survival.
The dance and the dignity.
This has always been sacred work.
And sacred work cannot survive
on scraps and symbolism.
Not if we mean it.
Not if we mean all the words we love to print in programs:
equity.
justice.
community.
healing.
Those words are expensive words.
They cost something.
So if anyone in this room believes
that art can transform space—
then transform the conditions for the artists.
Fund the vision before it becomes fashionable.
Support the people before burnout buries them.
Commission the mural.
Pay the poet.
Hire the organizer.
Protect the dreamers before developers learn how to market their language
back to them.
Because I’ll tell you this—
some of the most powerful artists
I know are one emergency away
from disappearing from the work entirely.
And imagine what the world loses
every time that happens.
Imagine the mural
that never gets painted.
The child who never feels seen.
The gathering that never happens.
The neighborhood
that forgets its own magic.
I come from New Bedford.
My city has taught me that beauty can survive hard things.
City of salt air and survival.
Of working hands.
Of stubborn hope.
What I know is this:
people do not become whole because someone saved them.
People become whole because someone believed they were worth investing in.
That is what art
has done for me.
Someone handed me
a microphone before I knew
what my voice could carry.
Someone made space for me
before I knew I deserved space.
Someone listened long enough for me to become myself out loud.
So if this room feels moved, good.
But movement is not the finish line.
It is the beginning of responsibility.
Support the living artists.
Not just the legacy
after they die.
Support the community before displacement, not just the documentary
afterward.
Support the messy,
beautiful , unfinished work
of keeping people human
in a world constantly asking them not to be.
Because art is not a luxury item.
Art is evidence
Evidence, that we have not given up
on each other.
And if we do this right—
if we truly do this right—
then years from now someone will walk
through one of our neighborhoods,
And still be able to hear music spilling
from an open door,
see color climbing
up brick walls,
see children making
something from nothing—
and they will say,
Someone loved this place enough
to imagine more for it.
That someone is in each one of us.
And if this is your first time here,
welcome to my city;
A city still daring to reimagine itself.
A city where art
is not an accessory to the future—
it is how the future arrives.
Brick by brick.
Wall by wall.
Story by story.
Artist by artist.
Until imagination becomes infrastructure again.
Until belonging becomes policy again.
Until every child can see themselves
in the future we’re building right now.
“We Make Places Breathe Again” is original work was written by Maia Jaye “Maize” Livramento in June of 2026. The work was written to be performed at DATMA’s EPIX Convening with the Barr Foundation who commissioned the poem on behalf of DATMA. Maize is an award winning Cape Verdean/Native American visual and spoken word artist born, raised, and residing in New Bedford, MA. She specializes in performance poetry known as “Slam” and won 1st place in the 2023 Juneteenth Virtual Poetry Slam. She served as a judge for New Bedford Art Museum’s Echoes of Expression Poetry Contest and is a Team Leader and Program Director with the nonprofit organization 3rd Eye Youth Empowerment. She is a featured artist in Ethan de Aguiar’s short film “Love Letters for New Bedford”.