Sustaining Practice

• Eli Brown | Researching time and space to further think through the next iteration of Trans Family Archives, pushing toward the formation of a sustaining, multigenerational team, co-invested in the project and in group decision-making.  

• Emily Curran and Josephine Devanbu | Restorative Cultural Critique, an experiment in open-ended cultural critique and scheming, dreaming, and speculation about the future of museums. This experiment grows out of our work with Look at Art. Get Paid. (LAAGP), a socially engaged art project that pays people who don’t visit art museums to visit as guest critics of the art and its institution.  

• Furen Dai | Proposing to create a 3D rendering video piece of an encyclopedic museum’s ruin through guided tours; bringing current conversation around encyclopedic museums where audiences can experience connections between cultures across time and space.  

• Perla Mabel and Erica Imoisi | The Rhinoceros Womxn project consists of armor being made for Black Femme Boston community members. A collaborative self-love approach of exchanging narratives with intention toward Black Liberation; a march from Mattapan to South Boston highlighting the gentrification across Boston ending at a mural site depicting elevated and empowered Black Femme Bostonians.  

• FeministFuturist, Carolyn Wirth, Freedom Baird, Christina Balch, Karen Meninno, and Linda Price-Sneddon | Planning public installations and detailed research into the possibilities and limitations of a specific site. 

• Whitney Mashburn | Seeking funding to support research and development for “Holding Spaces” archive, a burgeoning curatorial project aimed to bear witness to lived experiences of those marginalized by chronic illness.  

• Dave Ortega | Writing and drawing a graphic novel about the devastating effects of the Spanish colonization of the Americas.

• Gabriel Sosa | Research projects considering the role of memory in jury trial specific to Massachusetts criminal court system.  

• Ngoc-Tran Vu | Proposing a multimedia storytelling project based on Intergenerational culture of Vietnamese women both in the U.S. (Boston-based) and Vietnam. This project will be conducted from a series of bilingual conversations and building on Viet Family Stories. 

• Omolará Williams McCallister | Creating collaboratively devised performance piece around masquerades and capes made from resist dye fabrics, which include a combination of wearable sculpture, movement, fiber art, projection, sound, installation, and audience interaction. Telling a story about a group of nomadic QT BIPOC people who have built a floating, water-based society in a decolonized Afro-future.  

New Works & Ongoing Platforms

• Marlon Forrester, Jaypix Belmer, and Casey Curry | You, Me, We: (D.R.G.) Dystopian Revolutionary Gallery Pod | A creative placemaking project that bridges communities by puncturing institutional spaces with portals into communities often unseen or dismissed by the institution such spaces represent. 

• George Halfkenny and Melissa Teng | see you in the future | A reminder that someone else cares for your continued survival, a reality never taken for granted around Mass/Cass. We are interested in exploring this request on a collective level, by engaging the richly nuanced community groups surrounding the Engagement Center and co-creating an art piece with stable and distributable forms. 

• The Hidden Prompt - Heresa Laforce and Adaeze Dikko | Progression| Regression | A project that birthed itself out of this very commitment. This project is the manifestation of a deep interest in the cultivation of art spaces as projects of community agency and celebration. As a public-engaging project, this work concerns itself with the making of an archive as a space to mourn and rejoice and process - a space for the stories of Maldonians to find breath, nourishment, and admiration.  

• Courtney Stock, Janet Loren Hill, Demetri Espinosa, and Diana Jean Puglisi | Bosscritt Critique and Curatorial Club | To facilitate a critique publication that would help to support our general programming. The funding would enable us to work with peer consultants to create a publication that aims to dismantle the harmful academic habits and dated structures of critique and offer inclusive and productive alternative possibilities. 

• Stefan Grabowski, Genevieve Carmel and Collective members | AgX Film Collective | The AgX Film Collective is applying for general support to sustain the work of our collective of more than 30 Boston-area filmmakers who work across film and video, with an interest in experimentation and openness to formal hybridity. This grant would better prepare for a safe re-opening of a space, to offer revamped film workshops, screenings, and other public events.  

• Callie Chapman, Marissa Molinar, and Caitlin Canty | Creative Action | Propose to create “evergreen” educational resources for artists who are new to civic engagement in Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville. Resources will include clarification of each City’s structure; the pathways for policy change, from advocacy to legislation; some basic history; a calendar of important events for engagement, including forums, town halls, and opportunities to vote; and updated contact information for representatives.  

• Po Couto, Kimm Topping, Maddie Brancel, and Alex Azevedo | Haus of Threes | To create and open the doors to a Haus of Threes physical space that will serve the greater Boston area. To host a public grand opening where resident artists can exhibit and sell their work. To pay queer performers from the Boston area as entertainment at the grand opening event, and to deliver business and art workshops to Resident Artists.  

• Allentza Michel and Powerful Pathways | Mattapan Open Streets/Open Studios (MOS/OS) | Organized by Powerful Pathways, the objective of the Mattapan Open Studios/Open Streets (MOS/OS) is to celebrate and uplift the built and cultural environments of Mattapan using arts and design. Through a week of free inclusive place-based activities and events, artist exhibits, performances and small business promotions' Build community and promoting the local arts, artists, and the community cultural fabric; Support economic development and shed positive light on the neighborhood.  

• Alison Croney Moses, Zahirah Nur Truth and Tanya Nixon-Silberg | My Black Body | Brought together Black mothers in the Boston area through virtual and in-person connection, exploration and cultivation of embodiment practice while supporting the development of artistic creations of honest and affirming representation. My Black Body Challenges Black mothers to nurture the artist and mother in all of us and challenges our larger community to uplift these Black bodies.  

• Boston LGBTQIA+ Artist Alliance | Propose to purchase a risograph printer. BLAA will be able to iterate Boston’s first queer arts printer and publisher.