Artist Trust Announces Increased Support of Washington State Artists Who Identify as Trans* and Indigiqueer
Published: October 11, 2022
Categories: Featured | Grants & Fellowships
We are excited to announce a new Artist Trust Fellowship Award focused on Trans* and Indigiqueer artists, thanks to a five-year partnership with The Lillian Miller Educational Foundation, Inc (LMF).
The Lillian Miller Foundation Fellowship for Trans* and Indigiqueer Artists is a $10,000 unrestricted cash award newly offered by Artist Trust for Washington State artists of all disciplines who self-identify as trans in its most inclusive sense. This includes transgender, indigiqueer, Two-Spirit, genderqueer, or nonbinary people, and anyone whose gender identity is nonconforming and/or different from their gender assigned at birth.
With the addition of this new Fellowship Award, we will offer sixteen $10,000 Fellowship Awards for Washington State artists in 2023, the most in our history! The applications for these awards are now open. Visit www.artisttrust.org/grants/fellowship for more information or to apply.
We were super excited to work with Seattle artist Anthony White on the creation of this award! Anthony serves on the board of The Lillian Miller Educational Foundation, Inc (LMF). LMF had previously funded our COVID-19 Relief work with queer artists, and a deeper partnership seemed like a natural next step. Coincidently, we first met to discuss this idea the day we learned Roe V. Wade was overturned by the United States Supreme Court, right before Seattle Pride weekend. It was a dark day in June 2022, but as we all spoke together on a zoom call, we started to feel hopeful and inspired. Artist Trust had already taken steps internally to make intentional support for Trans* artists a priority for our organization. Now with the help of the Lillian Miller Educational Foundation, Inc., we could take a much bolder step and offer dedicated funding for Trans* artists.
Anthony is excited too! He told us, “The LMF’s five-year gift to Artist Trust will hopefully sustain and continue to build the artist population in the Pacific Northwest and shine a light on individuals and communities that far too often go unseen and under-acknowledged. My hope is that the Lillian Miller Foundation Fellowship Award for Trans* and Indigiqueer Artists will provide opportunities for individuals (recipients of the award and beyond) who are making important and potentially impactful work, and who feel like they’ve been working in the dark for far too long.”
After that initial meeting, we worked to move the Award from concept to reality through our internal processes. The idea was first vetted by our staff team and our Strategic Vision Committee (including members of our board and greater community). In September, the Seattle LGBTQIA+ Center offered the training Insights into Trans Inclusion as part of our annual retreat, attended by board and staff. We thought it important to begin to build acumen around Trans* and queer culture at all levels of our organization. Afterwards, our Board of Trustees voted unanimously to approve the new award. Then, we convened a group of trans, queer, and non-binary artists to give us input before the program was finalized. They recommended increasing the inclusiveness of the language around the Award by including an asterisk after the word Trans and adding Indigiqueer to the title. We were excited to incorporate their feedback. The focus group included artists Sam Choi, Indigo Magenta, Fabian Romero, and June T. Sanders. We are so grateful to this group of artists for taking the time to advise us!
Applications for Artist Trust Fellowship Award including the new Lillian Miller Award, are currently open, with a deadline of November 7, 2022,11:59 pm. Please help us spread the word about this opportunity! A total of $160,000 will be awarded to sixteen artists of all disciplines in the first quarter of 2023. To donate in support of this work, visit www.artisttrust.org/donate. To learn more about partnering with us to create a dedicated grant for Washington State artists, contact info@ArtistTrust.org.
