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$15,000 Grants to Women for Community Growth and Development

If you are involved with your local community in any capacity, then this grants $15,000 to women artists and cultural producers in eligible areas who practice art in order to create social change that positively affects audiences. A preliminary application must be submitted prior to a full application. Applicants must demonstrate a commitment to art for social change work and must have created art in this genre for at least the past five years.

Creating social change must be integral to the ideas, beliefs, and goals that are woven throughout the applicant’s art and process of creating and sharing their art. Eligible applicants must live in Greater Philadelphia, in one of the following counties: Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, or Philadelphia County.

The Transformation Award is an unrestricted award (it is not project-based) open to women and trans people working in any art form. The Transformation Award is open to individual artists and cultural producers creating art for social change in any medium, including traditional and nontraditional as well as multimedia and experimental forms.

Art for social change is art with a vision and an intentional analysis. It is an artistic or creative cultural practice that may operate in traditional or nontraditional mediums, modes, or disciplines. Art with a vision impacts people in many ways. It can:

  • Raise consciousness
  • Alter how people think about themselves, their society, or their culture
  • Create a vision of a more just world
  • Be a tool or strategy for organizing and movement building
  • Preserve or reclaim traditional cultural practices using your artistic practice as a form of resistance or empowerment
  • Create space for expression and build a sense of community
  • Challenge racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ageism, ableism, or other oppressions
  • Question mainstream culture and beliefs
  • Shift or transform the perception of power and/or privilege and the dynamics associated with justice, equality, and/or accountability
  • Value healing justice practices focused on strengthening communities, not just individuals
  • Engage and utilize a reciprocal process — where there is teaching and learning simultaneously and the consent for engagement is mutual, as is the benefit for yourself as an artist and the community you are engaging

Social Change Intent/Vision

Applicants are asked to identify at least one but no more than three social change categories that best describe the intent or vision behind their practice.

  • Cultural preservation / restoration
  • Decarceration
  • Demilitarization
  • Disability justice
  • Economic justice
  • Environmental justice
  • Feminism
  • Immigrant justice
  • Indigenous sovereignty
  • Land sovereignty / housing security
  • LGBQA social movements
  • Racial justice
  • Transgender justice / gender self-determination

For more details, see here:

https://www.leeway.org/images/blog/2023_LTA1_Application_Guidelines_FINAL.pdf#page=5

Artistic Disciplines

Applicants are asked to choose a primary category, as well as a secondary category if needed, that best represents their artistic practice. For the list, see here:

https://www.leeway.org/images/blog/2023_LTA1_Application_Guidelines_FINAL.pdf#page=6