Linda N. Cabot ’76

Artist and activist

Artist, filmmaker, conservationist and philanthropist

Linda N. Cabot ’76 didn’t take any formal art lessons until after she finished college. But an art history class at Farmington with long-time teacher Alice Delana proved foundational to an adult life filled with art and advocacy. Researching a paper on the 18th-century English artist and satirist William Hogarth, she remembers “being fascinated by the power that art can have for social change and social impact.”

That early insight paired with a passion for the ocean nurtured through decades of sailing off North Haven Island in Maine led Ms. Cabot to produce a one-hour documentary in 2009 that explored environmental issues in the Gulf of Maine. Filmed during a weeklong cruise with her two daughters aboard the family’s sailboat, “From the Bow Seat” featured interviews with scientists, fishermen and other experts on the Gulf’s history, topography and environmental challenges. It appeared, and can still be seen, on Maine Public Television.

Two years later, she founded Bow Seat Ocean Awareness Programs (bowseat.org), a Boston-based nonprofit whose mission is to engage youth in environmental conservation and advocacy through the creative arts.

“Bow Seat is all about creative advocacy, art making, social impact and environmentalism,” said Ms. Cabot, who is a trustee of the New England Aquarium and Women Working for Oceans. “And I think it stemmed from being aware, early on, of the power of art as not just something to admire or to look nice hanging on a wall, but as something that really can have meaningful social impact.”

Bow Seat hosts an annual Ocean Awareness Contest, which invites youth ages 11 to 18 to submit creative works in response to an environment-related theme. Nearly 30,000 students from all 50 states and more than 130 countries have participated in the contest since 2011, and Bow Seat has awarded over $625,000 in scholarships to advance the winners’ creative talents and passion for the environment. Participants can also have their work exhibited or published beyond the contest. The organization also encourages environmental activism through a council of youth leaders who serve one-year paid terms to help peers around the globe advocate for their future and the environment. Elizabeth Akomolafe, this year’s student head of school at Porter’s, is a member of the panel. In 2021, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) endorsed the contest as part of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.

Activism in education and art

Ms. Cabot’s activism and philanthropy are not confined to Bow Seat. She is a life trustee of Neighborhood House Charter School in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston and a founding board member of Horizons at Dedham Country Day School, which is a tuition-free, six-week summer enrichment program for low-income children and youth in pre-kindergarten through grade 12.

She said the catalyst for her involvement with these organizations was a six-week stint as a volunteer tutor in a Hartford public school during her junior year at Porter’s. “I think if it wasn’t for that Winterim experience, I would never have really understood the power of education and also how under-resourced kids are really struggling,” said Ms. Cabot, who studied psychology at Harvard University and graduated in 1980. She did not pursue formal art training during college.

“I was afraid to take an art class because my voice felt very small,” she remembered. “I was worried that I’d take a class and somebody would say, ‘You’re doing it wrong. You have to do it this way.’” Once she developed her own art practice, she felt confident in her own abilities as a painter and began taking night classes at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston while working as a medical researcher during the day. She is now a trustee of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

Since 2018, she has been sharing her art via the textiles and apparel she sells at LindaCabotDesign.com. The business was inspired by Ms. Cabot’s love of her grandmother’s expert needlework and the way it made her home such a warm and welcoming place.

“This blended my conservation ethos with my love of textiles,” she said, noting that she wanted “to raise awareness about consumption and consuming wisely with the environment in mind.” Her table linens, apparel and infantwear are made of sustainable fabrics like cotton, hemp, and linen and are all sewn by hand in Massachusetts.

A single, powerful thread has been woven through all of Ms. Cabot’s pursuits, and she acquired it at Porter’s. It’s “the knowledge that women are capable of leading. That’s a very powerful thing for a young woman to feel.”

Porter’s Center for Global Leadership Is Creating