A civic dialogue series at Baltimore Center Stage

Inspired by Citizen University’s Civic Saturdays, The Baltimore Butterfly Sessions will bring together music, poetry, literary excerpts, and thought-provoking keynote addresses to catalyze conversation and build awareness around today’s most pressing issues. Tapping into some of the brightest voices around the nation and in Baltimore, each Butterfly Session will convene artists, activists, organizers, and thinkers to unpack a civically resonant topic. Through the Baltimore Butterfly Sessions, BCS aims to create a space for civic dialogue & fellowship across difference and stay firmly rooted in our local community. Come for the music, come for the poetry, come for the conversation.

The 2020-21 Butterfly Sessions have concluded. All sessions were recorded and can be viewed below.

Why “The Baltimore Butterfly Sessions”?

A symbol of growth and emergence, transformation and borderless migration, butterflies remind us that tiny shifts in one place can set profound change in motion. Butterflies also have a special resonance in Baltimore. You may or may not know that the city of Baltimore is sometimes referred to as a “Black Butterfly and White L.” According to Dr. Lawrence Brown of Morgan State University, “Baltimore’s hypersegregated neighborhoods experience radically different realities.” Typically, Black neighborhoods fan out to the east and west resembling the shape of a butterfly while white neighborhoods run down the center of the city in the shape of an “L.”

Through the Baltimore Butterfly Sessions, BCS aims to create a space for civic dialogue & fellowship across difference and stay firmly rooted in our local community.