KFW is proud to announce continuing funding for the second year in our Multi-Year Radical Timely and Urgent Grant Program.
The 2024-2026 Radical, Timely and Urgent grantees focused on feminist issues in their communities that challenge the status quo through risk taking and shifting power dynamics. The projects use a variety of art forms for participatory artmaking that highlight feminist social change topics including but not limited to: infusing communities with opportunities to be heard through art; centering art by women, trans and gender nonconforming people; responding to the needs of neurodivergent artists; addressing climate change through artmaking; uplifting female Appalachian musicians; promote bodily autonomy, and empowering elderly Black women to reclaim their narratives and assert their presence through multidisciplinary art.
Five grants totaling $49,925 were awarded. Recipients include:
Bobbi Buchanan (she/her) of Cox’s Creek: $10,000 to engage people in recovery from addiction, trauma, and mental illness in the arts through the Arts Leadership Program. Peer mentors will be trained to lead writing and art workshops, build community, and plan, promote, and facilitate arts events. Through monthly Artists’ Socials and a literary publication, the ALP will give voice to some of the most marginalized in our community and help them become leaders in the arts.
bugz fraugg (she/they/it) of Berea: $10,000 to support a pilot project called “Molecular Ecosystems,” a femme, queer, solar punk network of artists who will work together to form cross-sector collaborations and civic engagement. KFW funds will be used to nurture and develop eco art networks, that will be formed throughout Kentucky. These artist-networks will then engage in collaborative efforts to generate unique, localized solutions to public, municipal, business, non-profit and/or grassroots issues. A website will be used to promote the projects, the Working Genius teamwork model, and Solar Punk as well as eco-arts resources and discourse.
Genesis Arts Kentucky of Louisville: $9,925 to support “Sojourner Circle,” a radical initiative empowering Black female elders, specifically women ages 55 and up, through hands-on art-making activities and community-building. Participants will engage in workshops on creative movement, visual arts, creative writing, and storytelling led by Portia White and Gwendolyn Murphy. The program recognizes aging Black women as vital contributors to artistic expression and feminist discourse.
Kyndred Collective of Newport: $10,000 to facilitate the cultural organizing project, “Kyndred Collective,” an artist collective and digital platform for creative community building and mutual support led by and for Kentucky’s gender-diverse, neurodivergent (ND) artists. Kyndred Collective was founded in response to complex, systemic barriers which isolate, exclude, and disable many ND artists. The project honors and engages the wealth of information, memory, talent, and skill held by Kentucky’s gender-diverse, neurodivergent artists, and aims to model and facilitate neuroqueer relational ecologies of belonging and care.
The Mountain Grrl Experience of Pikeville: $10,000 to pay the artists, performers and presenters at The Mountain Grrl Experience, a 3-day, family friendly cultural event featuring musical performance, dance, art and workshops all led by women. The event will promote and celebrate the creativity and resilience of Appalachian women in a safe and encouraging environment while bringing attention to the voices of women in the arts as well as the need for advocacy, education and action for social change for victims of domestic violence.
