Cycle 8 Velocity Fund Grantees

ID: A photograph of several rows of protestors inside a room with wooden chairs and painted walls. They wear matching red shirts, holding signs. At center, a long-haired person, mid-shout, holds a sign reading “$60 MILLION IS A SELL OUT DEAL”

Archiving a Movement: No Arena in Chinatown

Peri Law (she/her)

I aim to archive the No Arena in Chinatown campaign through the voices and creative process of the Philadelphians behind the movement. Through art workshops in spaces crucial to the campaign, participants will gain the tools to capture and reflect on movements that have shaped their personal [lives] and their community’s lives. The art from these workshops, alongside protest ephemera and primary source material, will be collected into a zine, distributed throughout Philadelphia as an act of resistance against ongoing displacement.

Photo Credit: Albert C. Yee. Images (within quilt): Special Collection Research Center, Charles Library, Temple University. ID: A contemporary quilt with red trim shows smaller black-and-white photographs framing larger geographical maps of Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood. The black-and-white photographs range from building storefronts, crowds and protests, to more intimate interior shots.

Codes & Messages: New Improvisational Textile Compositions

Betty Leacraft (she/her)

Codes & Messages is a series of 10 to 12 improvisationally hand-dyed textiles that explore the use of color and symbol as coded communication and honors the subversive mechanisms of survival that Black people utilized from enslavement to present day. Through workshops, exhibition, and artist talks, this project combats the continued erasure of African-American history and passes down textile practices/traditions from the African Diaspora, reminding new generations of tools that could be useful in these challenging and uncertain times.

Photo Credit: Jayden Schultz. ID: A photograph showing a person’s hands writing in an open accordion book with pencil. Various flowers and leaves are adhered inside the accordion book.

Colors of the Healing Garden

Talia Greene (she/her) with Philadelphia Juvenile Justice Services Center, Artemisia Orchards

Colors of the Healing Garden is a collaborative art project and mural that builds on the horticulture program at the Philadelphia Juvenile Justice Services Center. Participants will engage in a series of individual and group projects leading to the creation of a permanent relief-style mural. The mural will be composed of individually painted blocks of scrap wood that will reflect the changing colors of the garden over time.

ID: A composite photograph. At top, five people around a small table with food, smiling, with three holding up two fingers in a peace sign. At bottom, two side-by-side portrait photographs of differently aged people that resemble each other, from thick-rimmed glasses, to hand posture, to black suit.

Covers: Music Migration and Memory of the Korean Diaspora

Prisca Choe (she/her) with Team MP3

Covers archives the memories of migration of the Korean diaspora through album cover recreations of the music elders listened to during their immigration.

ID: A black-and-white photograph of a person, shirtless and reclined on a bed, resting their head on a bent arm and pillows. Behind them is a tapestry of illustrated leaves.

Disabling the Queer Lens

Uriah Bussey (they/them)

 

I will continue a film and digital photography series that I began this summer, Disabling the Queer Lens (working title). I started photographing my community of Black and Brown queer disabled people with COVID safer portraits. My goals are to create a photobook of the series and to produce cyanotype prints to accompany the photos I have taken. The series will culminate in a local public art exhibition.

ID: Top-and-bottom photographic collage with yellow text sections. Top section showing two photographs of a pair of people overlaid on a photograph of two silhouettes, on a beach at dusk. Bottom section contains one photograph of a person midlaugh, one photograph of a person looking toward the camera, and both overlaid on a shot of a motel at sunset.

Miriam Down the River

Zoë Hodge (she/her) with Darien Woodard

Miriam Down the River is a short film about a trans woman who kidnaps her estranged sister for one last day of sisterly bonding. The film explores sibling connection, identity, and the idea that bigotry is taught not inherited. Once completed, we will host local and festival screenings alongside talkback sessions to start conversations and make real-world impact.

ID: A photograph of two people sitting on a gray couch, shown from behind. They look towards a large grayscale painting of a row of people sitting side-by-side on a wall, with hands and feet in various postures of comfort.

 

Moving towards Home

Laila Tauqeer (she/her)

This project invites Muslim high school and college students in Philadelphia to explore poetry and visual art through five in-person sessions held across the city—in parks, bookstores, cafés, libraries, and museums. Participants will create collages, zines, oral histories, self-portraits, and more, with the process and outcomes coming together in a public exhibition. Titled Moving towards Home, after a poem by June Jordan, the project draws on traditions of resistance and solidarity by engaging both historical and contemporary poets. It aims to nurture creative expression and community connection while grounding participants in radical artistic and poetic lineages—past and present—ultimately supporting students in discovering their own agency to organize, imagine, and build solidarities through art and storytelling.

ID: A photograph of several people facing away from the camera with arms raised and bent at right angles, toward a large stage curtain lit in purple. The figures wear variations of sheer draped garments and headwraps. Above them, projected onto the curtain, are names: “LUISAH TEISH” “GRACE JONES”.

PRIESTESS PORTALS

Nia Witherspoon (she/they)

I’m currently working on a project called PRIESTESS PORTALS — a traveling temple installation and ritual-performance space offering healing experiences to Black femme communities in modular, site specific, nature-based, and sustainable modalities. Participating communities will receive a divination which will determine the modules that travel to them drawn from the larger work. Modules can be drawn from one of 7 chambers (Dream, Birth, Death, etc.) and one of 5 scrolls, each re-telling an aspect of Isis’ underworld journey mythology.

Photo Courtesy: MengCheng 梦城团 Collective. Photo Credit: D’Angelo Conner. ID: A photograph of a person with short blonde hair, shown from behind, pointing at a large mixed media artwork. The artwork contains cyanotypes of photographs and objects, quilted with red, white, and pink panels, and framed in a blue cloud-shaped border.

Routes to Roots

Yvonne Lung (she/her) with Cindy M. Ngo, Lily Xie, Hanna Kim, and Yidan Zeng

Routes to Roots fosters joy, connection, and solidarity for immigrant communities impacted by ICE kidnappings. Through shared meals and cultural storytelling, we highlight histories and voices from communities most affected. Each event features a menu that pairs recipes with personal stories and actionable ways to support those directly impacted. The project will culminate in a zine compiling these recipes, stories, and actions, honoring the routes our neighbors have walked and celebrating the roots they’ve planted in Philadelphia.

ID: A cover layout with title text “SCISSORS” in red, with “CIS” crossed out, followed by smaller white text “BY & FOR QTBIPOC DYKES” below. Superimposed on a photographic backdrop of lace draped over an arch, there are four small black-and-white portrait photographs in bronze gilded frames, connected by a red looping line. Centered at the bottom of the cover is italic text: “KNITTING GENERATIONS TOGETHER”.

Scissors: Building Community Infrastructure for Lesbians of Color

Imani Douglas (they/them) with Anya, Nali, & Des

Scissors is a Philadelphia-based visual arts and publishing project by and for Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, and people of color lesbians. Combining graphic design, collage, and print media, the project expands through public workshops, interviews, and a Lesbian of Color Zinesters Cohort connecting artists across cities. By using visual storytelling and community design practices, Scissors makes art and knowledge accessible to those most often left out of traditional cultural spaces.

ID: A collage on dark blue background that shows clippings of newspaper photographs of demolition. Headlines include “COMMUNITY HALTS CRANES”, “SEEDS OF REVOLUTION”, and “MAY DAY CELEBRATION”.

The XING PROJECT

W. Chen (he/him) with Ginger Arts Center

Due to the current administration, we have seen increasing violent transphobia and the threat it poses to queer youth autonomy. We present a two-pronged response: 1) seeding: providing tools for youth to begin experimenting with gender and identity expression through community-led arts workshops, and 2) growing: nourishing youth perspectives to imagine alternative, liberatory trans and queer futures through connecting youth to trans and queer guidance figures and accessible spaces.

ID: A digital collage showing Doris Rheubottom at center, in front of a microphone, with a garment made of colorful embroidery, and highlighted by concentric yellow, red, and blue marks that appear as an aura. On the top right corner, a cropped photograph of Doris speaking into a microphone. On the left, faded block text that spell out “DREAM”.

Swing Mezzo: Ancestral Reclamation through Jazz, Poetry, and Projection

Raina León (she/her)

Swing Mezzo is a community-rooted, artist-led performance reclaiming the legacy of Doris Rheubottom, a Swing-era vocalist erased by racism and sexism who lived in Philadelphia for over 30 years. Though featured in Black newspapers and the film Smash Your Baggage, she and her peers remain absent from jazz histories. This project transforms archival fragments into visual-poetic performance, weaving projections of press clippings, playbills, and photographs with live poetry, jazz, and ritual. The result is both art and communal intervention. For over 40 years, her grave went unmarked, but Doris Rheubottom still wants to sing. Her grave is now marked; now it’s time to celebrate her and her voice.

ID: A long-haired person wearing a short-sleeve shirt and jeans reaches up to touch a large flower made of crepe paper, hanging on the side of a large backdrop decorated with colorful flowers, ribbons, and textiles.

Teatro ambulante

Andrea Garcia (ella)

We will create mobile sets that echoes the roots of the dances, so that each performance by Ńuuxakun community group — which I founded and directed for the last three years — conveys the Magic of Latino Culture. We aim to combine the children’s movements with visual backdrops and three-dimensional props such as painted canvases and handcrafted items such as headdresses, made with the children, teens, and the parents of the group.

ID: A projection mapping installation on draped fabric, showing a shirtless figure with a rope tangled around their face.

trans by nature

Hagudeza Rullán-Fantauzzi (she/her)

trans by nature is a multimedia installation and public art project centering the voices of trans Philadelphians. Through video, sound, and sculptural projection, the work affirms transness as a natural state of being, inseparable from the diversity that exists across all forms of life. Participants appear in public spaces, performing a shared gesture, while their recorded affirmations, “___ by nature”, form an immersive soundscape. Rooted in collaboration, trans by nature builds a collective portrait of trans identity, visibility, and belonging.