I’ve told you before how excited we are at Artblog for The Velocity Fund and their expansion program, ‘Added Velocity.’ Both funds give grant money directly into the hands of Philadelphia artists for projects that involve communities. We congratulate the awardees and love their projects! And we encourage all artists working with or in the community, or who have an idea for a project in the Philadelphia community, to apply for the Velocity Fund grant. If you are an awardee of the (up to) $5,000 initial VF award, that makes you eligible to apply for Added Velocity ($15,000) to amplify your mission and expand your project. Get in touch with the VF staff. They are friendly and can answer your questions.
As a team of writers and editors, many of whom are also artists, Artblog applauds the model of direct grants to artists and applauds the team at Velocity Fund and their funders, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and The William Penn Foundation, for this insightful and forward-thinking initiative. While the first year VF grants of (up to) $5,000 are terrific and much needed, the added boost of $15,000 from Added Velocity should and will (we believe) encourage more artists to work with communities on projects in the arts and to apply to the VF for the important work they do. The competitive process is tough but fair, with independent and highly qualified jurors and an application that will take you less time than most competitive grant applications. According to the VF team there have been around 120 applications each year to the VF program. 2020 applications open in March 2020, with a June 2020 deadline. Notification of grants is in September 2020 (actual dates coming soon).
Congratulations to the 2019 Added Velocity grantees!
APIARY Magazine (Steven Burns*)
Black Quantum Futurism (Rasheedah Phillips*)
Creative Resilient Youth (CRY) (Andrea Ngan*)
Reentry Think Tank: Reentry Bill of Rights’, (Mark Strandquist*)
Speak Speak, Walk Walk… Listen (Amy Hicks*)
(*denotes lead organizer of the project – link to projects here)
Added Velocity – in its Inaugural Year – Announces Grant to Support Five Philadelphia-based Art Projects
Added Velocity will fund five ambitious projects led by Philadelphia-based artists $15,000 (each) to build on the successes of their initial Velocity Fund initiatives. Added Velocity– which is administered by Temple Contemporary at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture with generous support from the William Penn Foundation –builds on the momentum of The Velocity Fund by directly supporting successful previous grantees who demonstrate a commitment to expanding their initial projects in meaningful and far-reaching ways in Philadelphia.
The 2019 Added Velocity grantees are:
APIARY Magazine (Steven Burns*)
Black Quantum Futurism (Rasheedah Phillips*)
Creative Resilient Youth (CRY) (Andrea Ngan*)
Reentry Think Tank: Reentry Bill of Rights’, (Mark Strandquist*)
Speak Speak, Walk Walk… Listen (Amy Hicks*)
(*denotes lead organizer of the project)
Each of applicants were 2018 Velocity Fund grantees, initially selected from a pool of over 120 proposals. The Velocity Fund is one of 12 Regional Regranting programs established with the support of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts to fund “under-the-radar artistic activity” by partnering with leading cultural institutions in cities across the nation where the level of self-organized artistic activity is the highest.
Added Velocity applications were reviewed by a distinguished panel of arts administrators and curators: Courtney Fink, co-founder and executive director of Common Field; Margot Norton, curator at the New Museum in New York City; and Philadelphia-based independent curator Blake Bradford. This same panel met in 2018 to decide the initial grants, so this process presents a unique opportunity to revisit the outcome of prior funding. This year’s grantees proposed a wide range of projects, from walking tours to speculative time portals, magazines to youth-led projects—each with the goal of deepening impact within Philadelphia communities through creative intervention.
Rob Blackson, director of exhibitions and public programs, Temple Contemporary, Tyler School of Art and Architecture, says of the process:
“This year’s inaugural Added Velocity grantees are a testament to the necessity of connecting artists with communities throughout Philadelphia. I am so excited to see how each of these creative initiatives will continue to grow thanks to the Velocity Fund and support from the William Penn Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.”
Added Velocity Project Descriptions
APIARY Magazine (Steven Burns*) will build a series of community partner-aligned thematic creative writing workshops and editorial sessions in neighborhoods across Philadelphia, lead by local writers – transform their traditional annual print release schedule into a biannual model – and reorganize our current all-volunteer staff structure to be both sustainable and scalable.
Black Quantum Futurism (Rasheedah Phillips*) will bring the Black Womxn Temporal Portal –a temporary temporal sanctuary with an interactive toolkit of Black womanist temporal rituals preparing us for Black quantum womanist futures– to various community-based locations in North Philly. The Portal will receive upgrades enhancing the interactive, hyper-customized nature of the Portal for Black womxn and girls to truly shape their own space and time in the portal, including a new short film revolving around its tech and tools.
Creative Resilient Youth (CRY) (Andrea Ngan*) will expand CRY, a teen-led collaborative project bridging gaps in teen mental health care, combating stigma, and creating space for dialogue about intergenerational trauma through collective art-making. In its second year, CRY teen leaders will invite a new cohort of high school-age collaborators to produce an art exhibit, collective zine, public events, and establish a peer-to-peer public art workshop and research initiative aimed at supporting pre-teens in middle school.
Reentry Think Tank: Reentry Bill of Rights’, (Mark Strandquist*) initial project culminated with the Free Library of Philadelphia (FLP) accepting the “Reentry Bill of Rights” into their permanent collection, as part of a larger event where the Mayor, Defenders, and DA’s office also accepted a copy. Building on this momentum, they will partner with the FLP to exhibit the Reentry Bill of Rights in different library branches across the city, hosting public events, conversations, and workshops to engage community members to add-to, edit, and “ratify” the Reentry Bill of Rights. The project will culminate with a final event at the FLP’s Central Branch, where Reentry Think Tank Fellows will present the ratified version to stakeholders.
Speak Speak, Walk Walk… Listen (Amy Hicks*) is a series of projects planned by Grizzly Grizzly that explores its role in its own neighborhood, broadening the gallery programming with lectures, walking tours, neighborhood events, and supplemental print and web publications.Collaborating with Asian Arts Initiative, Space 1026, and Venture Café, the collective will deepen its relationships in North Chinatown and establish new connections in North Broad and University City – expanding beyond the four walls of its gallery.
More about Temple Contemporary:
Temple Contemporary creatively re-imagines the social function of art. This mission is guided by an extensive advisory council representing a broad spectrum of Philadelphia residents, including high-school students of color in our North Philadelphia neighborhood, faculty and students at Temple University and civic leaders such as nurses, public historians and block captains. Collaborating with these advisors has centered Temple Contemporary’s position of creative public service and has necessitated a fundamental philosophical shift for the organization to recognize social engagement as the determining factor of its programming. This shift necessitates a foregrounding of curatorial accountability, reciprocity and exchange that forms the basis of Temple Contemporary’s social life and, by extension, its values. Recent initiatives include Funeral for a Home, reForm, Symphony for a Broken Orchestra and, 1000 Ways to Listen (forthcoming). Temple Contemporary is an initiative of the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University.
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