The Social Justice Fund is pleased to announce the 2005 Cultural Grant recipients. We awarded a total of $60,000 to seven innovative social justice groups using the arts and cultural expression to promote racial justice, lgbt rights, tribal sovereignty, criminal justice reform, and the farmworker movement.
The newly revitalized cultural grants program is organized into two categories. Grants of $10,000 are awarded for social change groups partnering with artists to build their capacity to use the arts and cultural expression in their ongoing program work. Grants of $7,500 are given to groups using the arts or cultural expression to promote progressive ideas and to empower communities facing institutional discrimination, exploitation or oppression.
We sincerely thank the members of the cultural grants committee for their time and commitment to the grant making process. The 2005 Cultural Grants committee included Carina del Rosario, Bookda Gheisar, Brenetta Ward, Jack Danger (committee chair), Jon Pollock, Ken Thompson, Leticia Lopez, Moira Bowman, and Uma Rao.
The list of seven groups who were funded breaks down as follows:
Geographic Spread
| Region | No of Groups |
| Seattle (all led by people of color) | 3 groups (43%) |
| Oregon (3/4 in rural communities) | 4 groups (57%) |
| Idaho, Montana, Wyoming | None* |
*The committee recognized this as a gap, and recommends that staff be allowed time to conduct outreach to those states during 2006 to encourage applications from these inland states for the next cycle.
Arts and Cultural Work
| Art Strategy | No. of groups |
| Theater 1 | 5 groups |
| Traditional Cultural Art 2 | 2 groups |
| Youth 3 | 4 groups |
| Film | 1 group |
1 5 groups are using theater as a strategy to address social justice issues, either through actual theater performance, or through the use of Forum Theater or Theater of the Oppressed as a tool for popular education and social change visioning.
2 2 groups are using traditional cultural art forms based in communities of color, like handcrafts and storytelling, to promote ideas of social justice and equity. Both of these groups are also using these art forms as a way to generate revenue for their organizations/constituents.
3 4 groups are specifically targeting youth with projects using arts and cultural expression. Of these, one is working to connect issues of race and sexual orientation, and one is using the project as a way to foster intergenerational dialogue.
Issues
(some groups work in more than one issue area and are counted more than once)
| Issue Area | No. of groups |
| Domestic Violence | 1 group |
| Criminal Justice Reform | 1 group |
| Native American Rights | 1 group |
| Civil and Human Rights | 1 group |
| Global/Immigration Issues 1 | 5 groups |
| Immigrant Worker Rights | 2 groups |
| Communities of Color | 5 groups |
| Women and Children 2 | 2 groups |
1 5 groups address global/international issues and/or issues of migration - one in the South Asian community, one in the broader API community, two in the Latino immigrant community, and one in the white community.
2 1 organization is led and supported primarily by women and works on issues primarily affecting women and children. However, one additional organization is requesting support for a specific project that would build economic power and leadership among immigrant women.
Other
| Other Organizational Attributes | No. of groups |
| No Regular Paid Staff | 2 groups |
| Formal Membership Structures | 2 groups |
You can read the full descriptions of the 2005 cultural grants in our grants section.