WE ARE NOT ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS FOR A JUST CITY CULTURAL FUND AT THIS TIME. PLEASE CHECK BACK FOR INFORMATION ABOUT 2023 APPLICATIONS.
Without new visions, we don’t know what to build, only what to knock down. We not only end up confused, rudderless, and cynical, but we forget that making a revolution is not a series of clever maneuvers and tactics, but a process that can and must transform us.
–Robin D.G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
Sparking Radical Hope For A Racially Just Oakland
(Refer to our Glossary of Key Terms for definitions of bolded terms)
Belonging in Oakland: A Just City Cultural Fund (the fund) is a collaborative funding and support program that looks to Oakland’s community-rooted Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) visionaries, artist activists, and cultural practitioners to help answer the question:
How might we imagine a truly racially just and equitable Oakland where everyone belongs?
The fund is a unique public-private partnership inspired by the values lifted up in the City of Oakland’s cultural plan, Belonging in Oakland. The partnership brings together the cultural equity vision of Oakland’s Cultural Affairs Division, the racial justice mission of the Akonadi Foundation, and the commitment to equitable power building of East Bay Community Foundation (EBCF).
We believe that the artists and cultural practitioners of the communities most impacted by social injustice are ideally placed to imagine new landscapes and narratives, liberate deferred potential, recover old wisdoms, and unleash radical hope for a just city.
The fund launched at the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown in the spring of 2020 with an initial three-year investment of $1.2 million from the Surdna Foundation’s national initiative, Radical Imagination for Racial Justice, and additional funding from EBCF and Akonadi Foundation. Twelve grants of $25,000 were awarded to BIPOC artists and cultural organizations to give them time to reflect and reimagine what a just Oakland could look like as they engaged in responses to the pandemic and racial reckoning sparked by the murder of George Floyd.
In the fall of 2021, eight two-year grants totaling nearly $800,000 were awarded to BIPOC artists and cultural organizations, who could once again work in their communities to co-create aspirations to build a racially just city.
The program not only seeks to lift up positive visions and actions to build the world we want to live in, it also strives to acknowledge the hidden costs of maintaining cultural practices in Oakland’s communities of color. Each grant has 12% added to it for life sustaining expenses of artists and cultural practitioners—such as healthcare, childcare, student or other debt, restorative time or activities, or other such expenses.
Radical Imagination for A Just Oakland Gets a Boost
As the fund enters its third round of grantmaking, it does so with a renewed energy and sense of possibility. The Surdna Foundation recently awarded $2.8 million to the fund for an additional six years of support. This extraordinary vote of confidence in our program and community affords us the opportunity to dream more expansively about the longer-term impact of the program. As we take a moment to reimagine our work, we continue to affirm our journey to shift the culture of philanthropy more towards solidarity and to strengthen the brilliance and self-determination of Oakland’s communities of color.
Please stay tuned for program developments later this year by subscribing to our mailing list by completing the form below.
WE ARE NOT ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS FOR A JUST CITY CULTURAL FUND AT THIS TIME. PLEASE CHECK BACK FOR INFORMATION ABOUT 2023 APPLICATIONS.
Learn about past awardees and reviewers.
For questions and assistance, contact justcityfund@eastbaycf.org.
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