Catalyst for Change Fellowship
Supporting Latinx/é artists based in the US, including Puerto Rico, in the advancement of racial justice through community-centered artistic solutions.
Meet the 2025 Catalyst for Change Fellows
The 2025 fellowship highlights five Latinx/é arts and culture leaders from across the U.S., including Puerto Rico, whose work is intended to catalyze community-based and artist-produced visions for creative solutions to social injustices.
About Catalyst for Change Fellowship
The 2026 NALAC Fund for the Arts: Catalyst for Change (CFC) Fellowship focuses on radical imagination as a key component of pursuing racial justice. The award is intended to catalyze community-based and artist-produced visions for creative solutions to injustices. Via a nomination process, the CFC application is invite only to Latinx/é artists and cultural workers who demonstrate the potential to utilize collaborative, community-informed processes within their artistic or cultural practice. CFC-supported projects are artistic/cultural interventions: they artfully increase civic engagement and activism in order to create systemic change.
The CFC award will support the development and execution of an artistic or cultural project, and fellows agree to execute their funded projects in the geographic community in which they live and create work. Per funding requirements, and to bolster the artist’s/cultural worker’s community impact, 100% of the award must go to costs directly associated with the community artistic/cultural project.
The fellowship is a partnership between NALAC and the Surdna Foundation.
As a CFC grantee, Fellows commit to the following:
- Develop or continue an artistic or cultural project that creates the conditions required to disrupt systems of oppression.
- Develop or continue an artistic or cultural project that is guided by meaningful engagement with community members. This approach recognizes that collaborative work with community input supports the cultivation of equitable community-level outcomes that advance racial justice.
- Participate in development opportunities designed to foster community relationships through arts and culture.
CFC Objectives
- Provide seed funding for solution-oriented ideas that address racial injustice and other forms of oppression through artmaking and cultural practice.
- Build the capacity of Latinx/é artists/cultural workers and their practice at the intersection of artmaking or cultural practice, cultural strategy, civic engagement, racial justice, and equity.
- Cultivate and empower artistic/cultural leaders and networks working—directly with community members and leaders—towards equity and just change at the local or regional level.
- Strengthen cultural power and collaboration with Latinx/é communities across the United States, including Puerto Rico.
- Lift up tangible and intangible cultural expressions as foundations for community development and policy making.
