Meshwork – $ 10,000 

Meshwork is a metamorphizing group of interdisciplinary artists, scholars, and activists based in Baltimore. Since 2013, they have collaborated in many formats, from curating and performing, to writing and scholarship, to mutual aid and support. They are interested in embodied knowledge-making and mediumship. Meshwork focus on using the body, intuition, ritual, and intersubjectivity to connect with sources of knowledge beyond what is codified in dominant knowledge systems. Meshwork is inherently a collective, occult practice, grounded in communion with the living and the dead, and with histories that reside in materials and places.

   

Bmore Boricuas – $ 10,000 

In collaboration with Tola’s Room, which is a Puerto Rican home museum and cultural space located in northeast Baltimore City, along with the founder/owner and multidisciplinary artist, Christina Delgado, this short will document many conversations amidst various sources, including Baltimore Heritage, Puerto Ricans in Baltimore City, and cultural artifacts and legacies Puerto Ricans have had in Baltimore since the early 1900s. Community members will be interviewed, and there will also be a program of art-making that expresses this narration of migration from the local diaspora community members themselves.

Cloud Nebula: An Afrofuturistic Playground – $ 10,000 

Cloud Nebula: An Afrofuturistic Playground is a performance art installation. Through art installation, opera, and film participants will be invited to explore the rich and textured world of Cloud Nebula. Set in a fantastical sci-fi world, Cloud Nebula chronicles the journey of Jakub, a cosmic star in human form, tasked with guiding the refugees of her dying planet to the Golden Cloud Nebula. On her journey, she is confronted by Osei, an artificial dark sun intent on devouring the true stars of the galaxy to gain power. This story, which has been produced as a short film, will serve as the nucleus of Cloud Nebula: An Afrofuturistic Playground.

Our Art Room – $ 10,000 

Our Art Room (OAR) is a critique series and collective of women, femmes, and gender non-conforming artists in their early careers. This collective is an incubator for emerging and growing artists to expand networks, share resources, and provide accountability to each other in a community setting. This seven month critique series begins May 2024, where ten artists will bring works to reflect on their personal practices at NoMuNoMu Gallery in Bromo Arts District. The collaborative offers a supportive environment for artists to bypass the exclusionary standards of the ‘art world’ and the institutions that uphold them. The objective of the artist collective is to create an intentional culture of care that does not exist for artists who are seeking to develop their practice outside of large institutions.

The Gold Line  – $ 10,000 

The Gold Line is a historically-enriched and scientifically creative study of pre-gentrification North Avenue through images, soundscapes, poetry journaling, and performance art that will ultimately live as an augmented reality “gallery walk” on North Ave, as well as a digital archive. The Gold Line Project, a collaboration by Olu Butterfly, Bashi Rose and Salim-Hassan Williams, is a place immersion, named after the MTA bus line that runs along North Avenue hinting at its treasure. The project exists to, as elegantly and eloquently as we can, honor this moment in this place; to honor the dignity even of a man face down in a ditch who does not know he is; to look at the unsexiest parts of our city before they are scrubbed clean.

The Short Kuts Show Live Storytelling Experience & Narrative Therapy Initiative – $ 10,000

The Short Kuts Show Live Stand-Up Storytelling Experience & Narrative ‘Thairapy’ Initiative is a project created by The Cambio Group co-founder, education equity consultant, Dr. LaMarr D. Shields, Ph.D., and social designer Darius Wilmore, co-founder of the Taharka Brothers Ice Cream Co. TSKS began, in earnest, in 2017, debuting at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum in 2018. TSKS is a live stand-up storytelling experience (and narrative therapy initiative) inspired by the legacy and history of Black American music (storytelling themes of each show are selected from our record collections–from song titles, song lyrics, album titles, etc.) and steeped in the oral tale-telling, yarn-spinning traditions, hair-care, and hair chair therapy (practiced, unofficially, by barbers/beauticians—hair chair therapists) sessions experienced in the Black community’s barber/beauty shops–designated sanctuary spaces within the Black American community for generations where storytelling takes place by community members routinely. TSKS has occurred several times a year at the RFL Museum since 2018, usually to near-capacity or sold-out crowds. This year the experience is adding Enoch Pratt’s Central Library branch as a new participating venue, introducing our style of beats-based live stand-up storytelling to new audiences.

The Jury

Cydney Elaine Pickens (she/her)

is a curator, appraiser, and avid supporter of the arts currently based in Houston, Texas. While attending the University of Houston, she successfully completed a dissertation investigating the relationship between traditional and modern performance art in Africa and Europe as vehicles for metaphysical understanding. This research continues to inform her craft-centered and community-engaged curatorial practice celebrating the interconnectivity of society through creative expression in raw and synthetic materials such as wood, glass, fiber, and metal. Through her personal art collection, relationships with artists, collectors, and institutions, she displays her devotion to sharing the influence of heritage and cultural identity on contemporary art.

Sylvia Jones (she/her)

Sylvia Jones’ debut collection, Television Fathers, is forthcoming with Meekling Press (October 2024). Her poetry has appeared in Smartish Pace, DIAGRAM, Poet Lore, the Hopkins Review, R&R Journal, the Santa Clara Review, Shenandoah, Revolute, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from American University and served as a 2021–22 Stadler Fellow at Bucknell University. She lives in Baltimore, MD and teaches poetry and creative writing with the Goucher Prison Education Partnership and at The George Washington University.

Nicholas Cohen (he/him)

With a background in arts advocacy and community engagement, Nicholas Cohen has devoted his career to fostering equity, accessibility, and investment in the creative sector. Since 2017, as the Executive Director of Maryland Citizens for the Arts (MCA), he has spearheaded a strategic vision that led to unprecedented funding for the Maryland State Arts Council and secured over $100 million in COVID-era relief funds.

Before his tenure at MCA, Nicholas was the Community Engagement and Education Director at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Under his leadership, the orchestra provided educational programs to over 85,000 students each year, granting free access to more than 50,000 students from communities throughout the Mid-Atlantic. His dedication to the BSO’s flagship social music program, OrchKids, centered on strengthening community ties, securing financial support, and advancing social justice initiatives.

In his community leadership roles, Nicholas chairs the Baltimore City Midtown Community Benefits District. His national contributions include serving on President Joe Biden & and Vice President Kamala Harris’s Arts Policy Committee and co-chairing the Maryland Governor’s COVID Arts Recovery Task Force.

Nicholas is a proud member of the Leadership Maryland Class of 2023 and is an active Bassoonist/Contrabassoonist in Baltimore and throughout the Mid-Atlantic region.

Maggie Villegas (she/ella) 

Maggie Villegas  is a Colombian-American creator, strategist, and organizer for a just creative economy. She combines her passion for connecting people, her creative energy, and her love of Baltimore to build platforms that invest in futures collectively led by artists, cultural workers, and creators.