Awarded Grants

The 2020 Community Voices grant will support the production of "Audio Olney," a monthly podcast featuring diverse Olney community leaders, residents and artists and designed to address arts & culture and local issues. The podcast will reflect Olney Culture Lab's mission of showcasing the diverse cultural expressions in Olney, strengthening community networks, and building social capital.

The 2020 Community Voices grant will support ongoing production of COVID Stories – A Digital Memoir From The Pandemic, a community storytelling project that documents this critical time in our history.

The 2020 Community Voices grant will support a virtual rendition of Theatre in the X's “West Philly Play,” a social justice people's theatre. Via community play sessions on Zoom, stories will be shared by individuals involved in the 52nd Street standoff with police following the uprisings sparked by the murder of George Floyd. Community members will share their experiences with the gentrification of their neighborhoods. These videos will be recorded and be available publicly on Theatre in the X's website and will also serve as research for the creation of a 2021 in-person “West Philly Play.”

The 2020 Community Voices grant will support the creation of the Coatesville Black Media Renaissance (CBMR) project, which will use storytelling and media-making to heal and reconcile race relations in the city of Coatesville. Specifically, CMBR will provide local artists and storytellers a vehicle to amplify community voices through a variety of media platforms such as film, print media, and mural arts to create a community driven media model that activates change against unjust media narratives, policing, and other racist practices that continue to marginalize Coatesville residents.

The 2020 Community Voices grant will support the disParities Media Project, a pilot media-making project that exposes the structural inequities affecting families with children in Norristown and Pottstown, where over 50% of the residents are Black and Brown. In partnership with ACLAMO and The Urban League, Children First will amplify the stories and lived experiences of these communities in search of justice and change.

The 2020 Community Voices grant will support Philly Audio Diaries, a youth public radio training program. The program will provide POC youth with rigorous, one-on-one reporting experience in the city. In addition to connecting youth to public radio stations, the program will compensate students for their work.

The 2020 Community Voices grant will support a collaboration with Raise the Bar Philly and Mighty Writers to produce a four-week intergenerational storytelling project. West Philadelphia youth journalists will interview community members about topics related to the Black experience with policing in Philadelphia as well as the community's vision of a better future for Black Philadelphians.

The 2020 Community Voices grant will support the disParities Media Project, a pilot media-making project that exposes the structural inequities affecting families with children in Norristown and Pottstown, where over 50% of the residents are Black and Brown. In partnership with ACLAMO and The Urban League, Children First will amplify the stories and lived experiences of these communities in search of justice and change.

The 2020 Community Voices grant will support the launch of an independent news website of bilingual (English, Spanish, and/or Portuguese) investigative stories in the form of articles and videos. Working in collaboration with Philadelphia Latinx, immigrant, and communities of color, each story will be culturally competent with rigorous journalistic standards to expand the coverage of diverse and timely stories told by and for the community.

The 2020 Community Voices grant will support a time capsule book and website of essays, photographs, poems and other creative formats documenting the Uprising (Against White Supremacy, in Defense of Black Lives) in Philadelphia from May-June 2020. The project will collage intergenerational reflections of Black Philadelphians with an intersectional emphasis and attunement to the ongoing labor of “how we get free.”