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Evident by the smell of masala chai and the smooth jazz rendition of “Sweet Caroline” filling the air near the Kendall/MIT Open Space, Oct. 5 marked the third year of Fall Party, an annual autumnal event thrown by MIT Open Space Programming.
Complete with food trucks, free hot seasonal drinks, face painting, and more, Fall Party shares the central goals of MIT Open Space Programming in that it is committed to bringing together the local community and fostering a sense of belonging in shared spaces.
“It’s a really lowkey but fun family-friendly event,” Sasha Martin said, assistant director on the MIT Open Space Programming team. “In all of our programming, our goal is to engage with and connect the Cambridge, MIT, and Kendall communities and build community, build space for people to feel welcome and a sense of belonging.”
Fall Party has evolved through the experimentation of MIT Open Space Programming to find what works best for the organizers and the community. But what has remained the same throughout these years is the event’s commitment to contributing to the sense of belonging and connectedness in the local area.
“It’s exciting! It brings all these people in from the streets and into places that maybe they wouldn't normally access,” Tara Ten Eyck said, a trumpet player for Fly By Brass Band, one of the three live bands that performed. “I don’t know how many people normally would walk through this space, but it's just nice for people to have a reason to come here, and then they have a reason to come back.”
For Rhea P. Maniar ’28, Fall Party provided her with the perfect opportunity to break free of the “Harvard bubble” and explore the MIT and Kendall area for the first time.
“Me and my floormate decided that we wanted to have the full New England fall experience,” Maniar, a Florida native, said. “So we just looked up Fall things to do and [Fall Party] came up and we decided to go.”
One aspect of furthering this connectedness between the local regions of Cambridge, MIT, and Kendall is efforts from Fall Party and other programming from MIT Open Spaces to promote local artists and connect residents with the musical scene. Fly By Brass Band has contributed to this connection by playing for the Fall Party numerous times.
“MIT has a lot of different outdoor community events,” drummer Ellen Patridge said, a more-than-six-year member of the HONK!, Boston’s collection of activist street bands. “So they’re trying to bring in local brass bands and make space for their communities.”
Patridge was accompanied by the rest of Fly By for this year’s Fall Party, including Ten Eyck who has been involved in the local HONK! community for roughly 10 years.
“We’re grateful that we have a lot of organizations around that support music,” Ten Eyck said, as a late-in-life trumpet learner. “And support the community, give back to the community, and give people something to do in their regular lives.”
Beyond Fall Party, some other seasonal and signature events in the Kendall/MIT Open Space include their lunar New Year celebration as well as their midday music series and speed networking event that both take place roughly once a month. MIT Open Spaces hopes to continue expanding their programming and outreach to further this sense of connectedness in the local community.
“We’d love to continue building on the work that we’re doing,” Martin said. “And being able to offer more and more of what serves the communities that we are investing in here.”
