The Luminary Announces Recipients of 2024 Futures Fund

The Luminary is Pleased to Announce the 2024 Futures Fund Grantees

6.04.2024

Guests toast the 2024 Futures Fund Grantees at the 2701 Party May 17th, image courtesy of Alex Vanderhayden

After a successful open call and thorough review process with judges Mikayla Nicholson, Kentaro Kumanomido, and Marianne Laury, we are thrilled to announce the sixth cohort of Futures Fund grantees. Awarded projects were unveiled May 17th at the 2701 Party. 

We congratulate the 9 awarded projects and the humans behind them:

The Green Book Trail Guide | $4600

Norman Spencer

The Green Book Trail Guide project is a website that will showcase virtual guided hiking tours accompanied by zines (one per hike) featuring Black people in the outdoors. This project will be a resource for Black people enjoying the outdoors with the goal of demystifying green spaces and providing advice on how to maximize outdoor experiences, increasing accessibility and therefore diversity of green spaces around St. Louis city, county, and the state of Missouri.

The Big Soup Initiative | $4500

Campbell Harvey, Clarke Taylor, Alia Holland, Jordan Hawkins

The Big Soup, an arts focused publication, spotlights artists from the St. Louis area while tackling the hunger crisis within the city. This initiative produces visual art and written content with a second purpose to feed residents and stock food pantries in areas in need. The Big Soup takes its shape in the form of food-drive art events, collectible soup cans, and an online publication providing research aimed at tackling food insecurity.

The Combahee Collection: Convergences of Liberation Beyond the Institution | $8000

Glyneisha Johnson and Mary Lawson

The Combahee Collection is a series of workshops, communal discussions, and a living archive forging conversation on transformative healing justice within and outside of institutional art settings, alongside Black feminist scholarship. By cultivating a sense of communal care as a tool for self expression, creative healing, and resistance, the Combahee Collection will draw from past present and future alternative models that respond to our urgent demands for more equitable organizations and artists rights.

Lead and Coal: A Sounding | $8000

Nathan Cook, Joshua Levi, Nokosee Fields, and Gavin Kroeber

St. Louis is the product of violent settler-colonial geologies. The city was arguably built in order to dig up coal from Illinois, melt lead from Missouri, and provision the genocidal military forces at Jefferson Barracks. “Lead and Coal: A Sounding” (working title) is a sound art and critical spatial practice project exploring the entanglement of settler-colonialism, ecocidal extraction, and whiteness in St. Louis’ defining hinterlands: Missouri’s lead belt and Southern Illinois’ coal belt.

A Gathering Place: Oral Histories and Photographic Views in Brooklyn, Illinois | $8000

Jennifer Colten, Roberta Rogers, and Robert White III

This project gathers historic and lived knowledge of Brooklyn, Illinois elders with audio recorded interviews and accompanying photographic portraits. Current-day photographs of Brooklyn are also being made. Linking the past and the present is an important part—creating space for knowledge sharing across generations. This work builds an important narrative, archiving the memories of those who have direct ancestral connection to the first families to settle in the African American “Free Village” of Brooklyn, Illinois.

Unseen On Screen | $8000

Noel Spiva and Alexis Creamer

Unseen on Screen, a community digital public art gallery, elevates multifaceted artists by providing access to cutting-edge exhibition spaces. Experience sensory driven and diverse mediums in Grand Center Art District as artists’ featured showcase their work on LED billboards in St. Louis for the first time. St. Louis experiences a newfound sense of artist empowerment and visibility. Unseen on Screen, a digital mural and online archived platform amplifies the artists' reach and fosters connections.

What’s at the Bottom of the Pond | $6700

Lynne Smith, Kasey Fowler-Finn, and Samantha Pounders

‘What’s at the Bottom of the Pond?’ is an interdisciplinary, artist-led project at the former Sterling Steel Company site (now National Building Arts Center) in Sauget, IL. The foundry’s cooling pond is a void below the horizon that mirrors the Cahokia mounds above. This site within a site contains evidence of corporate occupation and harm, as well as ecological resilience. Uncovering material histories is the first step toward awareness, decolonization, and healing.

Barn Quilts: A rural Midwest Tradition for the City | $5000

Janie Stamm and Melissa Bauer

We will produce and hang barn quilts with the permission of property owners on fences, garages, and other structures tol be visible to anyone passing by. A barn quilt is a piece of wood painted to look like a quilt and hung on the exterior of a barn, house, garage or other building. We aim to bring a bit of warmth and love that is often associated with quilts to anyone who views them.

Reverb: Curatorial Activation of Tyson Research Center | $7200

Sophia Hatzikos and Carmen Ribaudo

Reverb, is a three-month curatorial and programming initiative at Tyson Research Center. Two regional artists will be invited by the project’s co-organizers, Sophia Hatzikos and Carmen Ribaudo. Artists will be supported in a cohort experience to install site-responsive artwork in a 3,200 square-foot bunker within the ecology-focused field station. An open call for hands-on workshop proposals will offer additional opportunities for engagement and participation with Reverb, a theme that inspires land-responsive storytelling.

Futures Fund is a regranting initiative organized by The Luminary and funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts in order to support innovative, experimental and forward-focused artistic projects throughout the St. Louis region. The fund was established in 2019 to provide essential support to creative projects that exemplify the unique possibilities of St. Louis, deeply engage its past, present, and possible futures, and model new ways of working within our region. The fund exists as one of the few opportunities for direct project support for artists in St. Louis. This year, a total of $60,000 in grants was awarded, with individual grants ranging between $2,500 and $8,000.