The Kentucky Foundation for Women is proud to announce that Charity Gilbert, Beaux Hardin, Ella Webster and Liliana Mora are the recipients of the 2024 Firestarter Award. The award will be given at the foundation’s annual celebration of community, KFW Day, on September 29.
The Firestarter award honors artists ages18 to 25 who are taking risks in the creation of new art, involved in social justice/community engagement, and who demonstrate a developing feminist voice, including new insights and visions and/or fresh approaches to feminist topics or art for social change.
“These young feminist artists are creating art that inspires us to look at the world anew. They are exploring female sexuality, mental health, the Queer Black experience, environmental justice, and equity. Their work will blaze a path to a more just Kentucky and better world. They are awakening a new way forward with the vision that marks a true Firestarter,” said KFW Executive Director Sharon LaRue.
Charity Gilbert, 22, of Oneida, performs and composes music. She was selected as a Firestarter for her songs, which center the first-person perspective of a young East Kentucky woman who processes her own place-based experiences of recovery, class differences, Appalachian identity, environmental destruction and more and connects them with the broader social systems.
Gilbert says of her work, “I come from an Appalachian County in Eastern Kentucky and my community is what has most heavily influenced my work. The disparities in the region and the connection to pharmaceutical companies pushing drugs into the region and extractive industries heavily impacting the environment are things that have impacted my community heavily, so they are very present themes in the music that I write. I began writing music around 2016 and it was first an outlet for me when struggling with mental health. From there, it grew to become not just a way to share my voice, but to give a voice to those around me by shedding light on the issues impacting my family and broader community. Songwriting has changed my life entirely and given me a way to speak on what matters.”
Beaux Hardin, 20, of Lexington, is a Spoken Word artist whose work explores the Intersectionality of race, gender, and sexuality through topics including the Black Queer experience, the American Black Arts Movement, La Negritude Movement, and Black pride, joy, and celebration. Hardin published a chapbook titled “Black Que(e)ries” with ten poems in English and ten poems in French. The chapbook derived from their research exploring how poets of the American Black Arts movement (the literary area in the Civil Rights Movement) and from La Negritude movement in North Africa, use their colonized language to express their culture and identity; to uplift themselves as a part of international “Black Pride” and then to exercise what was learned.
Hardin says of their work, “I love to create activist poetry and spoken word, almost rap, about black experience as a queer individual. The writing is influenced by Black Arts movement writing. In my work I challenge the viewer to see my perspective, and the perspective of other marginalized communities and to challenge their predetermined biases and unconscious thought/privilege. My writing, my work, is to voice the black queer experience and to generate money from black voices to go back to the black community to further education. I’m working towards making education accessible for everyone; being able to read and write should not be a privilege but a right.”
Liliana Mora, 24, of Berea is a painter and muralist. Along with her artistic collaborator, Bugz Fraugg, Mora helped create a mural to rally public opposition towards EKPC’s (Eastern Kentucky Power Cooperative) proposed High Voltage Powerline. The mural is 51ft x 11ft and is on the side of a parked semi-truck in a rural part of Madison County. She is also in the process of recreating classical Athenian pottery forms and adding red/black figure illustrations with contemporary themes. She is using the form of the ceremonial wedding urn and the graphic style of Greek pottery illustrations to create story lines about abortion access, contraception, and other issues pertaining to sexual freedom, inherent risks of intimacy and consent.
Mora says of her work, “The mural is a piece of protest art meant to oppose the degradation of a stretch of land from Big Hill to Red Lick Kentucky. We advocate for the land rights of a rural, underserved population. The mural has been a long and labor-intensive volunteer project. It is in a rural area, so recognition is unexpected. I am incredibly grateful and honored to even have been considered.” She sees the pottery work as a way of having direct discourse with the Greek lineage that still so deeply affects our modern culture.
Ella Webster, 22, of Lexington is a songwriter, studio musician, and performer in folk, Kentucky old time, Bluegrass, rock and Americana genres. Her work addresses womanhood, grief, a sense of place, Kentucky, heritage, preserving her grandfather’s songwriting, and preserving traditional Kentucky old time fiddle tunes.
Webster says of her work, “In the country/Americana music scene where I primarily perform as a fiddler, there is a small number of female musicians; especially instrumentalists. Festivals or shows disproportionately feature fewer female acts. At shows, I am almost always the only female performer present, and am the only woman in the band that I tour with. The “othering” of women in a male-dominated music scene is something I have had to live and grapple with in order to succeed. Equipped with these experiences, I make it a point to foster community among women, young and old, at the Cowan Creek Mountain Music School where I teach every summer. This comes in the form of organizing female jams, or mentoring the new generation of young women at the camp. My original music covers themes of womanhood through storytelling; coming of age, friendship dynamics in relationships, and external pressures from society or men in my life. As a touring artist and member of the Kentucky folk/country/Americana music scene, my goal is to create community as I have seen so many women do before me. Whether at Cowan Creek music school, a show, a festival, or a jam, I know that through my own outreach I may exemplify how to create safe and welcoming spaces for all.”
For more information on each winner, visit their individual announcement pages: