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    Ford and Mellon Foundations Name 2024 Disability Futures Fellows

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    The 20 recipients, including a Broadway composer, a Marvel video game voice actress and a three-time Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, are the initiative’s final cohort.The Ford and Andrew W. Mellon Foundations on Wednesday named the 2024 Disability Futures Fellows — the latest class of disabled writers, filmmakers, musicians and other creative artists who will receive unrestricted $50,000 awards.This year’s recipients include Gaelynn Lea, a folk artist and disability rights activist; Natasha Ofili, an actress and writer who in 2020 became one of the first Black deaf actors to portray a video game character — Hailey Cooper — in Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales; Warren Snipe, a.k.a. Wawa, a deaf rapper and actor who performed in sign language at the 2022 Super Bowl; and Kay Ulanday Barrett, a three-time Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and essayist whose work focuses on queer, transgender people of color.Lea said she almost missed an email telling her she got the award. “Because the email said, ‘We’re excited to offer you $50,000,’ it went to my spam,” Lea, 40, said in an interview. (She later received a follow-up email.)“It’s very validating that I’m doing this stuff I really care about, and now it’s being recognized,” added Lea, who won NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Contest in 2016, and composed and performed original music for a Broadway production of “Macbeth” starring Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga. Lea plans to use the award to fund the writing of a memoir to be published next year.The initiative, which is administered by United States Artists, named its inaugural class of fellows in 2020, with the goal of increasing the visibility of disabled artists and elevating their voices. (About one in four adults in the United States has a disability, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.) The second class was announced in 2022, and this is the last cohort in the program. The fellowship supports people at all stages of their careers.Elizabeth Alexander, the president of the Mellon Foundation, said in a statement that the program reflected the foundation’s support of the “work, experiences and visions of disabled artists — both in their individual practices and in the collective power they wield in the arts at large.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ford and Mellon Foundations Announce 2022 Disability Futures Fellows

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      A Broadway actress, documentary filmmaker and DC comic artist are among this year’s recipients. They were selected by fellow disabled artists from a pool of about 60 nominees.Nasreen Alkhateeb, a filmmaker who has documented Kamala Harris on the campaign trail; Antoine Hunter, also known as Purple Fire Crow, a Deaf, Indigenous choreographer whose work has been performed around the world; and Tee Franklin, who is writing new Harley Quinn comics for DC, are among the second class of disability futures fellows, the Ford and Andrew W. Mellon Foundations announced on Wednesday.The fellowship provides 20 disabled U.S. artists, filmmakers and journalists with unrestricted $50,000 grants administered by the arts funding group United States Artists. They are chosen by peer advisers who are themselves disabled artists. The fellowship supports people at all stages of their careers, and the class includes emerging and established artists.One grant recipient, Corbett Joan O’Toole, 70, an activist and historian who was featured in the Oscar-nominated documentary “Crip Camp,” said, “I’m really shocked.”“I do a lot of good work, but it’s not necessarily the prominent stuff,” she said. “It’s networking, providing resources for people, filling in the gaps.”This is the second class of fellows in the program, which was established in 2020 as part of an effort to increase the visibility and elevate the voices of disabled artists. Originally conceived as an 18-month initiative, the foundations announced last year that they would commit an additional $5 million to support the program through 2025.About one in four adults in the United States has a disability, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Dickie Hearts, a Deaf, gay and BIPOC actor and filmmaker known for his recurring role in Netflix’s San Francisco-set series “Tales of the City,” said he hoped to use the funding to produce a live version of an original concept musical in American Sign Language that he had directed remotely on Zoom during the pandemic.“I would love to see more deaf people behind the scenes, as well as onscreen,” he said in a video interview this week, which was conducted with the assistance of an ASL interpreter. “I want to see more creative executives, deaf directors,” executive producers and writers.The grants offer flexible compensation options. The money can be distributed in a lump sum, in payments or even be deferred, depending on what works best for the artist.Also among the recipients are Alexandria Wailes, a deaf actor who recently portrayed the Lady in Purple in the Broadway revival of Ntozake Shange’s choreopoem “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf”; JJJJJerome Ellis, a composer and poet who has a stutter (the reason for the repeated J’s in his name) and produces work about stuttering and Blackness; and Wendy Lu, a journalist and disability rights advocate who was recently hired as an editor by The New York Times.“I’m working on a book that’s coming out next year, playing concerts again, dancing more — it’s so exciting to be back working live,” said Ellis, 33, who about a year and a half ago moved back to Virginia, where he grew up, from New York.The inaugural class of fellows included the choreographer Alice Sheppard, the filmmaker Jim LeBrecht and the journalist Alice Wong.The Ford and Mellon Foundations are planning to invite people in the philanthropy and cultural sectors to learn from fellows and disability arts leaders at a symposium in New York in 2025, and fellows will be invited to a networking retreat in 2024. More

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      Ford and Mellon Foundations Expand Initiative for Disabled Artists

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      The foundations are adding $5 million to the Disability Futures program, which will continue through 2025 with two more classes of 20 fellows each.The Disability Futures initiative, a fellowship established by the Ford and Andrew W. Mellon Foundations last fall to support disabled artists, is expanding. The foundations announced on Friday that they will commit an additional $5 million to support the initiative through 2025, which will include support for two more cohorts of 20 fellows.The fellowship, which was created by and for disabled individuals, was conceived as an 18-month initiative. It provided 20 disabled artists, filmmakers and journalists, selected from across the United States, with unrestricted $50,000 grants administered by the arts funding group United States Artists.But Margaret Morton, the director of creativity and free expression at the Ford Foundation, said it was clear from the beginning that it couldn’t just be a one-off venture.Projects undertaken by members of the first cohort will be showcased at the first Disability Futures virtual festival, on Monday and Tuesday, with programming from some of the country’s leading disabled artists, writers, thinkers and designers. It is free and open to the public.Among the highlights: A session on disability portraiture with the filmmakers Jim LeBrecht and Rodney Evans, the painter Riva Lehrer and the journalist Alice Wong; a conversation exploring the connections between climate justice and disability justice led by Patty Berne; and a virtual dance party hosted by the garment maker Sky Cubacub, with music by DJ Who Girl (Kevin Gotkin). Evening runway performances from models wearing items from Cubacub’s Rebirth Garments and a meditation experience with the initiative Black Power Naps, featuring Navild Acosta and Fannie Sosa, are also on tap.“It’s been really profound for me to see how much the fellows chosen in the first cohort were interested in elevating others in the community,” Emil J. Kang, the program director for arts and culture at the Mellon Foundation, said in an interview on Thursday.The next class of fellows will be announced in 2022. They are chosen by peer advisers who are themselves disabled artists.But the feedback from the first class, Morton said, was frank: Do even better in the selection process.“One of the fellows challenged us,” she said, about there being only one Native American fellow. “And we appreciated that and were challenged to get it right and make sure we have a deeper pool.”The grants offer flexible compensation options. The money can be distributed in a lump sum, in payments or even be deferred, depending on what works best for the artist.The fellowship “has made an incredible difference in my life and career,” the writer and photographer Jen Deerinwater said in an email. “It’s allowed me more financial freedom, without the risk of losing my disability and health care services, to pursue more artistic pursuits such as music.”The pandemic has made foundation leaders “deeply aware” of the challenges disabled professionals face, Morton said. About one in four adults in the United States has a disability, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.“We gained a deeper impression and perspective about what it’s like to navigate through the world,” she said.The program’s overarching goal is to help the artists make connections, Morton said.“Our biggest dream is visibility,” she said. For audiences to see the artists and for funders to see that “they should start investing in disabled practitioners.” More