The Bobby Mendes Peace Legacy is a unique program of Touchable Stories Inc., which was founded in 1996 by Shannon Flattery, a Boston-based artist, and has continued as a community program provided by Flattery and Tim Mason. As a 501 © 3 non-profit organization, Touchable Stories secures vital funding and helped to design the core programs involved with the Bobby Mendes Peace Legacy’s anti-violence efforts developed in response to the growing tide of homicides in Boston’s Dorchester/Roxbury neighborhoods. BMPL initiatives include grief counseling for children and adults, advocacy, holiday celebrations fostering solidarity, public speaking in prisons and schools as well as safety and encouragement to pursue education for local children.
Touchable Stories founder Shannon Flattery has served as the Co-Director of the Bobby Mendes Peace Legacy since its inception. As a practicing artist and community advocate, Shannon felt that art and community could be brought together to powerful effect. The Touchable Stories core program was developed as a community-based platform for artists and community members to explore social issues and identity through a combination of collecting and recording oral histories, holding community dinners and roundtable discussions, and then turning the emerging themes into walk through exhibits that told the community story “in their own words”.
In 2006 Touchable Stories sent Isaura Mendes and her youngest son Matthew to Birmingham England to participate in a peace makers dialog as part of an international exchange with the artist collective Friction Arts. Over the course of two weeks Isaura and her son spoke to at risk youth and survivors of violence in that community opening many doors. Matthew found for the first time the safety to speak out about the violence which he lived with daily and which had claimed his brother a decade earlier. As part of their west coast community project, Touchable Stories organized “East Meets West:A Peacemakers Dialog” in Richmond, California, once again bringing together BMPL founder Isaura Mendes with anti-violence organizers from that coast including The Tent City Peace Movement, representatives from MASK (Mothers Against Senseless Killing) and spiritual leaders from the Native American community.
Shannon holds a BFA from Tufts University and studied art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. She has worked for the past 20 years creating vibrant community-based programs and art exhibits for a broad range of audiences both nationally and internationally. Of all the many communities and programs developed by Touchable Stories series, The Bobby Mendes Peace Legacy is the program Shannon is the most proud and honored to have been a part of over all these many years.