Fall 2018 Grantees
We are excited to welcome the current cohort of grantee partners into the Pop Culture Collaborative community. These grantee partners are imagining, creating, and collaborating to change our culture and we are proud to work with them as we seek to build a just and pluralist society. Scroll down and click ‘Read More’ to learn more about each grantee and their funded work.
To support more in-depth connection to the Collaborative community, current grantee partners can be viewed and sorted across five grantmaking categories and by additional strategy tags. Click the boxes below and the strategy tags within each grantee description to see how grantees connect to each other and the pop culture for social change field.
All current and past grantee partners can be also be viewed and sorted by grantee cohort, grantmaking category and strategy tags. We hope this opportunity makes for a rich discovery experience.
AllAbundance MindsetArticleArtists Advancing Culture ChangeAudiencesBecoming AmericaBecoming America ArticleBTS1BTS2BTS3BTS4Building the Pop Culture for Social Change FieldCulture Change Research and LearningEmbracing DifferenceEssayFuture of TelevisionInfographicInnovations in Mass Audience ActivationLatest NewsMovement-led Pop Culture Narrative StrategiesPipelinesPluralist LeaderPop Culture for Social ChangePress ReleaseQ & AStatementThe Upstanders MindsetVideoWriters Room
13Exp is a new experiential social impact entertainment studio, one of the first in a growing field focused on interlocking scaleable, digital and physical content with social impact as a driving force. Experiential narratives tell stories that reflect the reality of what it is to be human in the modern world: many of us now experience and engage with the world indiscriminately on media platforms, content sources, social channels, and live moments.
The Barcid Foundation is a nonprofit media arts organization founded by writer-producer Ian Skorodin to foster understanding of the culture, traditions, and issues of Native Americans. With the goal of creating a genuine and mutually beneficial relationship between the Native American community and the entertainment industry, Barcid offers Native writers the training, resources, and access necessary to forge relationships and pursue a career in the entertainment industry.
Founded in 1863, the Brooklyn Historical Society (BHS) is a nationally recognized urban history center with a mission to connect the past to the present and make the vibrant history of Brooklyn tangible, relevant, and meaningful for today’s diverse communities, and for generations to come. Recently, BHS launched “Muslims in Brooklyn,” a multi-year public history and arts project designed to amplify Brooklyn’s Muslim communities through traditional oral history and experimental mass audience storytelling.
Jolt Initiative is a Texas-based, Latino-focused grassroots organization that increases the civic participation of Latinos to build a stronger Texas and democracy. Jolt was launched after the 2016 election with a mission to increase the civic engagement, power, and leadership of Texas’s Latinx population by building a movement that shifts power to working people and communities of color.
The National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) builds power nationally for domestic workers, including nannies, housecleaners, and home healthcare workers. NDWA organizes low-wage workers to improve their living and working conditions; win respect and justice from employers and government; challenge racism and sexism that has led to the persistent devaluing of this labor, so that the dignity of domestic work is honored; end the exclusion of domestic workers from recognition and protection; and fight labor displacement and exploitation created by globalization.
Noor Theatre is an OBIE Award–winning company that supports, develops, and produces the work of theater artists of Middle Eastern descent. Led by Founding Artistic Director Lameece Issaq, an award-winning actor and writer, Noor was created to develop artists’ voices and share their often-unheard stories with a diverse audience. Noor’s aim is to allow artists to control the narratives about their own cultures and to eliminate stereotypical and/or dangerous portrayals of Middle Eastern people.
OTV | Open Television is a platform for intersectional digital television that develops and supports the launch of indie series by Chicago-based Black, brown, differently abled, and queer artists. OTV aims to revolutionize the way TV and the arts are developed through an artist-centered and community-based approach. In the last few years, OTV has released 41 pilots, shorts, and series that have received over 1 million plays on Vimeo alone.
PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. PEN’s mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible.
The Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC United) is dedicated to seeking improved wages and working conditions for restaurant workers nationwide. Founded in New York City after September 11, 2001, to provide support to restaurant workers displaced as a result of the destruction of the World Trade Center, ROC United has grown into a national organization of 130,000 restaurant workers, “high road” restaurant employers, and consumers working together to realize a vision of a food system that includes sustainable wages and working conditions for the people who cook, prepare, and serve our food.