This year’s fellowship process started with hundreds of applicants and ultimately narrowed to the eight selected fellows whose ideas, leadership, and commitment to collective liberation stood out. We are introducing seven members of this year’s cohort to ensure everyone feels safe as they move their projects forward.
Jac V is working on the Cottonwood Collective: Solidarity Economy. They are a land-based practitioner, creating new food systems and integrating political education for the collective who work on and benefit from the farm. This is about cultivating a solidarity economy that builds power through collaborative learning and an ecosystem of resources.
Kriss Jackson-Harper is creating The Posi Pos Media Lab: a Trans Joy & Black Queer Survivor Storytelling Hub. Their work emphasizes healing and self-determination through storytelling for Black Trans and Disabled Artists. With a community team, Kriss will co-create a digital archive exploring how Black queer survivors redefine joy, care, and belonging.
Louis Tigney is working on The Grapevine Radio Club, an idea to go back to previous forms of communication that are independent from the reliance on the internet or electricity to be able to connect across the Mountain South, especially in times of disaster, whether climate or political, and the education that goes along with the tech training.
LX Cast is launching The Relational Design Lab. The work analyzes the intersections of relationship and belonging to create digital technologies that resist dominance and extraction as communities connect in online and offline spaces. The Lab will hold and support the inquiry and research around relational design and to put into practice experiments and learning through social and digital technologies.
Nicholle La Vann is making a film called “Salt Water Queen.” The film chronicles a journey of spiritual transformation, following one woman and her daughter’s commitment to healing on the water. It explores how Black people can heal from grief through their relationship with water, and how we can heal water through mental health advocacy.
Rahim Buford is working on I Love Someone in Prison, a statewide mutual support network that removes the stigma, shame, and fear people feel when publicly loving someone who is incarcerated. This disrupts the complex lineage of the prison-industrial complex by activating and connecting loved ones of people who are incarcerated.
Sonya Rio-Glick is building the Crip Abundance Network (CAN). She is creating a system of nongovernmental social support scaled by and for disabled people. Her work is at the intersection of different aspects of the disability experience, affirming self-actualization and providing political education for caregivers.
Over the next six months, they will come together to take their projects from dream-stage to reality with community-based coaching, learning, and growth.
