Springboard for the Arts has announced the 2019 20/20 Fellows. The 20/20 Fellowship offers an unrestricted $15K award, plus a $5K professional development stipend to Black, Indigenous, People of Color and Native artists of any discipline or career stage who are creating tools, pathways, and systems of support for artists in their communities.
This year’s fellows are painter Leslie Barlow, artist Kaamil A. Haider, poet Tish Jones, and designer and dancer Felicia Perry.
“We are very excited to support these artists and their work that builds platforms and opportunities for other artists,” says Caroline Taiwo, Economic Opportunity Program Director at Springboard for the Arts. “With the powerful and important work done by these artists to generate creative people power, the Fellowship is a financial and capacity-building recognition of these efforts and their impacts.”
The fellowship allows the artists to decide how to use the funding in support of themselves, their businesses, communities, and independent creative practices, and do not require recipients to create projects or exhibit artwork.
The 20/20 Artist Fellowship is a three-year pilot program that was offered yearly through 2020 and supported with funds from the Bush Foundation and the Surdna Foundation.
The Fellows were selected through an open application and community panel process. Panelists for this round of 20/20 Fellows were Bill Cottman, Jeremy Staab, Tio Aiken, Teeko Yang, MK Nguyen, and Dameun Strange.
Learn more about the new fellows here.
Reach the MSR staff at msrnewsonline@spokesman-recorder.com.