It’s a good day to be a Louisiana World Maker and Terrance is next level honored and humbled to receive this unrestricted grant as one of 32 other amazing artists/culture bearers from an array of disciplines. Being in the arts as long as we have, we understand how often BIPOC artists are NOT funded.
So do the righteous folks at the Foundation for Louisiana, and what we had to read, and re-read was this on the application:
“this grant also intends to level the deep divide in arts funding for BIPOC artists.”
WOW! We’ve submitted some grant applications in our time and never, ever saw this language. This is both radical and revolutionary, and we are in awe.
From the Foundation for Louisiana website:
“We believe that being a culturally rooted Louisiana artist can be a radical act. We believe that resourcing artists and culture bearers to do their work in Louisiana is absolutely essential to the wellbeing — cultural, social, political, communal, spiritual, and ecological — of Louisiana. In order to create a more just Louisiana, we must ensure that artists and culture bearers, especially those who are born and raised in Louisiana, have the ability to stay and thrive in their communities.
Following a competitive open call and peer review panel process, Foundation for Louisiana’s inaugural round of arts and culture grantmaking, the Louisiana World Makers Awards, has been awarded. 32 Louisiana artists, cultural workers and tradition bearers across the state of Louisiana will receive a total of $320,000 in unrestricted funds to support the visionary creative work that helps point our communities toward justice while explicitly identifying artists and culture bearers as critical to liberation work throughout the state.
The World Makers awards will support a broad array of creative disciplines of those whose artistic and cultural work addresses climate impacts, mass incarceration, cultural memory and legacy, or displacement and erasure of Black and Indigenous communities. Over 360 artists applied for this first-time opportunity from FFL. Priority was given to Black artists, Indigenous artists, and artists of color born, raised, and/or with generational ties to Louisiana. Additional priority was given to elder artists and culture bearers, and transgender and gender-nonconforming artists and culture bearers.”