Past, Present, Possibility: Investing in Trans and Queer Cultural Power
David Mura
Organizers: Jaime Sharp and Sixto Wagan
Speakers: Nichelle Baez, Andrea Jenkins, Sixto Wagan and Morgan Willis
L to R: Morgan (Mo) Willis, Andrea Jenkins, Sixto Wagan
2SLGBTQIA+ artists, especially Black, Indigenous and people of color, have long used cultural work as a tool for survival, joy, resistance, and community-building. Yet, philanthropy continues to underfund LGBTQIA+ movements, often siloing trans and queer artistry from broader strategies for justice and transformation. Through storytelling, strategy, and shared visioning, speakers will explore how cultural expression fuels community resilience and social change; what it means to fund queer and trans safety, healing and joy; the harm of extractive grantmaking and how to shift toward solidarity and care; and strategies for embedding queer and trans liberation across arts philanthropy.
What are some of the tools and strategies you are using in this moment of crisis?
Morgan Willis:
As an intermediary, Morgan Willis’ work is a bridge to secure the bag and move the bag, but there is always a social challenge to understand art as a strategy — not just decoration. Morgan quoted Ursula Le Guin on how art is a vehicle of change, more specifically a catalyst for change. The messages we share are art driven, and the art and messages change what people hear, see, or say; and that is how art changes and shapes behavior and political action.
Andrea Jenkins:
Andrea Jenkins uses poetry and spoken word to bring attention to issues and in Andrea’s work on the city council. Andrea was able to bring the position of poet laureate to Minneapolis, and that is an example of art as a means of social justice, leading with art as a tactic. Andrea is now leaving the city council and wants to focus on narrative building, documenting our stories and histories, archiving, especially in this moment when they’re trying to erase queer trans identities and histories.
Nichelle Baez:
Nichelle Baez opened by saying “we’re not art funders but movement funders.” Movement funding is often left out when we’re talking about arts funding. And with this funding and work, you need to improve wrap around support--general operating support, organizational support, leadership development support, capacity building support, coaching, building the long arc of justice. We must respond to the contemporary and thinking of a long term vision for freedom and justice.
What is a narrative strategy? Key phrases? Things that have been successful?
Morgan Willis:
Morgan asked a series of questions: What are we afraid to talk about? What is not being talked about? What are our grantees talking about. What are they saying to us? What are they asking for? What are they saying about their communities? How should we talk about it? How are we reaching our folks? How are we amplifying their voice? How much of our ego is here?
Be humble, believe the voices you are funding. Strategy should be an opportunity for listening and asking questions, just as the architecture and the work of a bridge is held up by tension, by infrastructure. We have to build the infrastructure that supports the bridge of art, not just the art product itself.
Andrea Jenkins:
In my narrative strategy, “I am the American dream,” I want to work on the counter narrative of queer people as the American Dream; we are our ancestors’ dream.
Nichelle Baez:
Narratives shape how we see and interact with the world, they can bring us together or divide us. We must use art to build civic engagement, collective action; we need to fund the beauty and creation out of Black trans organizing.
Diamond Stylz is a podcaster, activist, and executive director of Black Transwomen, Inc. She is best known for co-creating and producing the podcast Marsha's Plate, which discusses Black trans experiences, pop culture, and current events from a Black trans-feminist lens. She uses her platform to center Black trans stories, and her podcast is particularly powerful in countries where queer and trans people have been criminalized.
What specific harm has been done?
Morgan said that the level of specific harm, the answer should involve youth-led queer and trans organizing. The Puerto Rican Theater creates spaces for queer and disabled people to get together for storytelling, organizing, gathering; they use street art as an opportunity to bring in youth, for instance teaching them how to do murals.
Andrea: Andrea works with the Trans Justice Funding project; the project started out with $50,000 community raised money because foundations were not showing up for queer and trans organizing.
Sixto: Are we doing the work to find the people who have already done the work? Are we connected to the people who are connected to the community?
Nichelle: You cannot say you support something and not support queer and trans folk. And this should be not just the arts or movement, but given the cut backs, we must work on the perception that the arts are open to queer and trans folks. We should invest in people’s salaries, rest and joy grants that allow people to just be, given the trauma and difficulties our communities face.
Morgan: People say “we’re not queer-trans funders. We don’t want to be pigeonholed.”. But if you are supporting arts and others in the community you are already funding queer and Trans folk, and you’re not recognizing that and the crucial rule queer and trans folks play in the arts. You are better able to serve people if you address equity in funding, and the queer and trans communities are underfunded in a large part because of the transphobia and queer phobia exhibited in statements which marginalize our communities and their need for funding.
How do you increase resources to queer and trans folks especially BIPOC? You must address your self-definition. You need to create a narrative for your mission to include queer and trans folks.
What would you like to see seeded? What would you like to help this happen by October 2028?
Nichelle: Philanthropy is a tool for moving money. The right is good at this, united around a common narrative strategy—anti-Trans. We need to have a common narrative strategy and we must fund to win. Is your money moving to the most marginalized, to Black Trans women? Don’t just do things for the election year.
Morgan: Believe us when we say there is a need for more resources, now for the survival for our communities. Take the example of Ursula LeGuinn’s novel about ambi-sexual beings, which demonstrates how queer opens up spaces for all of us to reimagine what is possible. There is wisdom in our communities.
Further Questions for the audience:
How do we connect actions and activate networks to develop strategic responses?
How do we link events into a strategy?
How do we draw and identify the queer and trans community you want to support?
How do we make a strategy? Who is the person who has the power to give you what you want?
Think about constituents and allies—how do we get all of them together?
