Application deadline: December 7, 2015, 5pm (EST)
Robert Rauschenberg Foundation
381 Lafayette Street
New York, NY 10003-7022
T +1 212 228 5283
www.rauschenbergfoundation.org
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Artists with ambitious projects addressing racial justice through the lens of mass incarceration are invited to seek up to 100,000 USD in support.
The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation announces the next call for proposals to its Artist as Activist Fellowship program. In its inaugural year, more than 600 artists applied and six fellowships were awarded. Moving forward, each call for proposals will be guided by a thematic frame. During the 2016 and 2017 fellowship cycles, the thematic frame is racial justice through the lens of mass incarceration.
Of the 2.2 million people currently in American prisons or jails, 1 million are African American. This rate of incarceration is a 500 percent increase over the past 30 years, and if current trends continue, one in three black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime. Nationwide, African Americans represent 26 percent of juvenile arrests, 44 percent of youth who are detained, and 58 percent of the youth admitted to state prisons.*
This constitutes an epidemic. Particularly so given mass incarceration’s intersection with wealth inequality and economic justice, voting rights, immigration rights, access to affordable housing, and inequitable educational policies. It is exhausting to unravel the complexity of this issue, let alone to design ways to dismantle the social and economic structures that produced mass incarceration as a phenomenon. Yet that is the task before all of us, one that requires an army of creative thinkers.
The 2016 Artist as Activist Fellowship provides the opportunity for creative professionals who are committed to making meaningful progress towards ending mass incarceration to seek a robust set of resources to advance their work. RRF believes that, at their best, art and artists are disruptive. The very nature of being a compelling artist is to generate new thinking and inspire new ways of being, whether through fostering empathy or by proposing radical alternatives to our current systems. If a new world is possible, it is the minds of artists, designers, culture bearers, and other creative professionals who will call it forth.
To learn more about the fellowship, including how to apply, click here.
About the Artist as Activist program
Since the program’s launching in 2012, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation has invested nearly 1,000,000 USD in 15 artists working at the intersection of art and social justice, as well as 10 organizations that are leaders in the cultural ecosystem that makes such work possible. In its 2016 cycle, the program will shift to exclusively offer two-year fellowships that are guided by a thematic focus. In 2016 and 2017, that theme is racial justice through the lens of mass incarceration.
About the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation
The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation fosters the legacy of the artist’s life, work, and philosophy that art can change the world. The foundation supports initiatives at the intersection of arts and issues that embody the fearlessness, innovation, and multidisciplinary approach that Robert Rauschenberg exemplified in both his art and philanthropic endeavors.
Media Contact
For further information contact press [at] rauschenbergfoundation.org
* Sources: The Sentencing Project and NAACP Criminal Justice Fact Sheet
