The Council for the Arts at MIT (CAMIT), a group of alumni and friends of the Institute who support arts engagement at MIT, funds grant programs to support arts projects that engage the MIT community. Students, faculty, and staff are eligible to apply for funding from the Council’s Grants Committee, and students are also eligible to apply for mini-grant funding of up to $500.
CAMIT Grant Projects
In 2024-25, the CAMIT Grants Committee supported 35 projects by 17 student groups, five undergraduates, six graduate students, and seven faculty and staff.
The Student Arts Mini Grant Program (previously Undergraduate Arts Project Mini-Grants and Graduate Arts Project Seed Grants) additionally supported 30 projects by students and student groups.
Arts Projects Supported by the Council for the Arts at MIT
The Council’s grants program, supported through the generous annual giving of its members, enable current MIT faculty, staff, and students to undertake a wide range of art projects that directly engage the MIT community.
A student-written play: There Is No Ark
Alayo Oloko ’25
A performance of a new play about a group of astrophysicists who debate what to do when they discover the impending end of the world.
ADT Fall Showcase: Rain
MIT Asian Dance Team
A dance performance for the MIT community and beyond featuring a wide range of fun and exciting dances, including traditional Chinese dances, contemporary and fusion pieces, and covers of k-pop performances.
African Cultural Night Showcase
African Students Association
An event for 600+ attendees featuring African music and dance, fashion design, theater, and a special guest headliner, focusing on the theme of play and creativity through humor.
Apricity
Katrina Chan ’26 & MIT Filmmakers Association
A student film about a group of friends as they navigate unexpected challenges and experience the ephemeral beauty of life’s fleeting moments while stranded together on a college campus during a snowstorm.
Chorallaries of MIT Fall A Capella Concert
Chorallaries
A performance of song and choreography by MIT’s oldest mixed-voice a cappella group.
Conductive Ceramics: A Musical Tea Experience
Sam Chin (G, Media Lab)
An interactive tea ceremony featuring different sensing ceramic pieces which control customized AI-generated music and lighting.
Every Log Everywhere All at Once
Reuben Fuchs ’25 and Clay Lewis ’26
An original feature-length musical film inspired by Everything, Everywhere, All At Once that tells the story of Axol, a college student trying to figure out what direction to take in life, and contains original music, singing, and scoring.
Feria de Abril at MIT
A celebration of the Spanish Feria de Abril festival for the MIT community, featuring a professional flamenco performance with traditional music and typical Spanish food.
Footwork XVIII: Celebrating 20 Years of Donk
Ridonkulous
A showcase and workshop series for dancers from around Greater Boston, hosted by MIT hip-hop dance team Ridonkulous as the group celebrates its 20th anniversary.
From Darkness into Light: Reviving East Campus
East Campus Lighting Team 2025
A series of creative lighting designs and installations to bring to life East Campus’s Rollercoaster and Fort Build.
Gertrude Stein’s Not Sightly, a play
Joseph Lark-Riley (staff, MTA)
A theatrical performance that blends text by Gertrude Stein, research into the Ancient Greek Eleusinian Mysteries, found-object puppetry, and electronic music.
Lion Dance Spring Show
MIT Lion Dance Club
A performance by the MIT Lion Dance Group that incorporates elements of traditional lion dancing with modern dance routines, including hip hop, contemporary, and traditional Chinese dance.
Cultural and Aesthetic Implications of Automation in Biotech
Matej Vakula (lecturer, ACT)
An IAP workshop and exhibition in the ACT Gallery exploring the aesthetic dimensions of microfluidics and biotechnology.
Midday Ravelry
Valerie Chen and William Wang (G, EECS) with Lily Tsai (PhD ’24)
A performance by MIT students and recent alumni of music for piano, violin, and cello by Maurice Ravel, in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth.
D-Lab Students Co-Creating Solutions with Local Innovators in Uganda and Tanzania
Heewon Lee (staff, D-Lab)
A documentary film showcasing the collaboration between MIT D-Lab students and local innovators in Uganda and Tanzania.
MIT Flow’s Debut Chinese Dance Showcase
MIT Flow
An inaugural showcase of traditional dances inspired by Chinese culture and history, including court dances, martial arts, myths and legends, folk dances, literature, and more.
MIT Gala 2025
MIT Gala
A runway show featuring MIT community-designed fashion pieces and starring student models styled by student designers, held in conjunction with a student arts showcase.
Street Scores
Izzi Waitz, Jingrong Zhang, Fábio Duarte (staff, Senseable City Lab)
An interactive exhibit that translates data of pedestrian behavior and interactions in public spaces on campus into choreographed dance and music.
Logarhythms 2025 Spring Concert
MIT Logarhythms
A performance by the MIT Logarhythms, MIT’s oldest a cappella group. Since 1949, the Logs have entertained audiences with their unique mix of harmony and humor, and are known for their dynamic performances and innovative arrangements.
MIT Open Ballroom Dance Competition
MIT Ballroom Dance Team
The MIT Open is one of the largest and most well-respected collegiate amateur ballroom dance competitions in the US, attracting 800+ dancers from over 70 colleges and studios.
Resonance Fall 2024 Acapella Concert
Resonance of MIT
A performance of contemporary hits by Resonance of MIT, a co-ed a cappella group.
Macbeth
MIT Shakespeare Ensemble
Performances of Macbeth set in an apocalyptic future, in celebration of MIT Shakespeare Ensemble’s 50th year.
Murder on the Orient Express
Wuming Theater Club
A Chinese-language adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express that introduces distinctive Chinese elements to aspects of the script, costumes, and props.
Muses Spring Concert
MIT Muses
A showcase of vocal performance by MIT’s only a cappella group for women and gender minorities.
Groundhog Day (The Musical!)
Next Act
A musical theater performance during MIT’s Campus Preview Weekend by Next Act, a student theater group celebrating its 40th anniversary.
L’elisir d’amore
Pico Opera
A staged opera performance of Gaetano Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore by singers and musicians from across MIT.
The 45th edition of Rune, MIT’s literary and art magazine
Rune
A student-run magazine that features artistic and literary work and provides opportunities for MIT student artists to express and connect.
Silt Magazine Issue 3
Lucy Corlett and Olivia Fiol (G, Architecture)
A graduate student-run magazine that archives and celebrates the creative work of students in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning and a larger community of artistic urbanists who orbit MIT.
Tangible Dreams: Exploring Visual Patterns Through Physical Neural Networks
Cédric Colas (postdoc, BCS)
An interactive art installation based on a neural network, where visitors can manipulate cables, knobs, and switches to direct how information flows through the system, transforming simple coordinates into vibrant visual patterns.
The Holographic Biome
Paris Myers (G, Media Lab)
An interactive, structurally-colored sensory sculpture installation that brings together robotics, installation art, and embodiment.
The Pillowman
Life on Stage Theatre (LOST)
A student production of Martin McDonagh’s award-winning play The Pillowman, which uses horrifying and vivid stories to convey the impact of art on society.
ROOMS: Forms of Belief, Belief in Forms
HONMI (Namhi Kwun, SMArchS ’25, with Bryan Honting Wong SMArchS ’24)
An exhibition at Wiesner Student Art Gallery on beliefs and rituals, constructed as a meditative and reflective space for personal and collective experiences.
Thelxinoë: Queer Sound-Reactive Wearable Computing and Performance
Eric Liu (G, IDSS)
A spectrogram dress designed for drag performance which visualizes and maps sonic inputs onto the visual spectrum through fashion engineering and data-driven design.
Traditions of East Campus: How Culture Unites Us
Pari Rajesh ’27, Ariella Blackman ’27, Ugo Okwuadigbo ’26
An exhibition in the Wiesner Student Art Gallery showcasing the history, culture, and traditions of MIT’s East Campus dormitory, coinciding with the reopening of the renovated East Campus buildings in fall 2025.
What is Your Light? A Community-Based Installation at the MIT Chapel
Christina English (staff, ORSEL)
A collaboration between the MIT Office of Religious, Spiritual, and Ethical Life and artist Maria Finkelmeier, the installation “What is Your Light?” transforms the exterior of the MIT Chapel into a dynamic, multi-sensory space inviting reflection, connection, and inspiration.
Student Arts Mini Grants
Mini Grants provide funding of up to $500 to students and students groups to launch a project, prototype an idea, or create a community arts engagement experience.
A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder
Musical Theatre Guild
A comedy musical following a down-on-his-luck young man who has just discovered he is ninth in line to a wealthy earldom.
Aethersax
Andrew Li ’25
A saxophone that also acts as an antenna, creating soundscapes from electromagnetic waves picked up by the instrument.
Art panels for VR makerspace
AR/VR@MIT
Painted panels featuring images of space and the night sky in recognition of a collaboration between the AR/VR@MIT club and the MIT AeroAstro department.
Asymptones Spring 2025 Concert
Asymptones
A free concert for the MIT community featuring fun and nerdy musical performances by the Asymptones a cappella group.
Aurora Borealis Ball
Emma Chickles (G, Physics)
An immersive atmosphere created through painting and decorative installations for the Department of Physics “Aurora Borealis Ball.”
Portraits of Microbial Archaeology
Yitong Tseo (G, Biology)
Faces grown for faceless microbes; living fossil portraits of deep evolutionary time. A bacterial genome sequenced over 6 years (8,000 generations—an ancestral arc of the same scale as humans) is coded into features of a human face and cast into living masks of biofilm.
Carving the Cosmos
Swati Ravi (G, Physics)
A project that bridges the gap between scientific discovery and artistic representation by using linocut printing techniques to explore and visualize the unseen universe—specifically, the magnetic fields around black holes and neutron stars.
Charm Lab
Rumi Lee ’25
A hands-on jewelry-making workshop where MIT students created custom charm bracelets, blending creativity, self-expression, and community connection as part of the UA Innovation Winter Craft Market.
Clothing Swap and Decor
Jolie Kim ’25
An artistic activity for members of the class of 2025 during senior week focusing on upcycling and creatively decorating used clothing.
Spring Recital: An Afternoon of Music
Fredric Kong (G, Economics)
A recital featuring students in the Economics department performing on violin and piano for the MIT community.
Decentralized agency-1
Ethan Chang ’25
A phone charging stand with a levitating robot arm that scrolls through the phone at night in order to interfere with social media suggestion algorithms.
Fireside Story & Prop-Making Workshop
MIT Spinning Arts
A workshop for the MIT community and a performance that combined traditional musical theater narrative techniques—acting, music, choreography—with spinning props.
Green Herrings in a Yellow Room
Sloan Aulgur (G, Architecture)
Prototype scale models of theatrical sets for a play that reinterprets Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper.
Infinite Magazine Workshop Series
Infinite Magazine
Workshops on “Thrifting Vinyls & Painting People” and “Make Your Own Zine!” hosted by Infinite Magazine and dedicated to fostering creativity and building community.
Kinetic Chandelier
Jacob Payne (G, Architecture)
A chandelier installation that responds to human interaction, where the expression of the lightbulbs is controlled by touch.
Lithophane Map
Jessica Lam ’26
An illuminated map of the United States that celebrates the MIT community by representing each state with an image taken there by an MIT student.
MIT Pridefest
TransMIT
An artistic workshop on creating community flags as part of an MIT Pride celebration.
Next Haunt 2024
Next House
A haunted house-themed escape-the-room game featuring spooky puzzles and a scary theatrical storyline, created by and for the MIT community.
Octavio
Ayyub Abdulrezak (G, EECS)
A system that maps the piano playing activity around MIT’s campus through creative visualizations.
Physical implementation of a tiling concept with block prints
Jessica Stringham (G, Media Lab)
A prototype exploring the physical-digital interplay between hands-on geometric block printing and computational generative art.
Public Eyes
Vinzenz Aubry (SMACT ’25)
A generative video installation that engages viewers with a circle of animated digital eyes that respond to human presence. Who is watching whom? Part of Artfinity.
ROCK PAPER SCISSORS
Mara Jovanovic (G, Architecture)
A series of experimental wooden furniture pieces that explore unexpected ways to produce comfort, exhibited in the Wiesner Student Art Gallery.
Shape Morphing of Biodegradable Materials Using Hydrophobic and Hydrophilic 4D Printing
Hye Jun Youn (G, Media Lab)
A 4D printing project with biodegradable materials which are pre-programmed to transform into specific artistic shapes in response to water absorption or drying.
Sonic Spectra
Aisha Cheema (G, Architecture)
An immersive, participatory audiovisual installation that brings together music, data, and audience input to create new and ever-changing artistic projections.
Tea Time Radio
Avigail Gilad (G, Architecture)
A student-run Architecture Department radio show hosted on MIT’s student radio network WMBR featuring interviews with students and alumni about their work, interests, and projects.
The Big: The Costs of Data Collection in the Digital Age
Sabrina Su ’25
A photographic project that encourages reflection on the widespread impact of big data collection in everyday life by visualizing the processes of image augmentation and mapping the pathways of data in our lives.
The Circle Constant: Experiencing Pi
JD Hagood ’27 & Mehek Gosalia ’25
3.14159…. thousands of digits of pi cascade down the columns of Lobby 7 in a celebration of Pi Day and a demonstration of the magnitude of this fundamental number. Part of Artfinity.
Thresholds 53: Idle Bookmaking Prototype
Mingjia Chen (G, Architecture)
Exploration and experimentation with different graphics, printing, and bookmaking techniques in preparation for the publication of Thresholds 53, a student-run peer review journal of architecture.