Assembling Voices Resident Fellows Program
Look out for a new call for applications in 2022!
About Assembling Voices
The American Assembly (TAA) was founded to convene expertise to address the nation’s increasingly complicated social and political problems. Today it remains committed to supporting the structures of social life that build and sustain the trust on which modern democratic societies depend.
In honor of The American Assembly’s 70th anniversary, we are launching the Assembling Voices Resident Fellows Program, starting in September 2021. This up-to two-year program creates an opportunity for artists, writers, scholars, journalists, performers, activists, workers, and others with a compelling idea to conceive, develop and put into place public initiatives that bring people together. Preference will be given to initiatives that address pressing social justice and human rights issues of our time, especially those relevant to Black, Indigenous, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and other historically marginalized groups.
The proposed initiative should be conceptualized around the theme of Democracy and Trust, a cornerstone of The American Assembly’s work. We seek initiatives that facilitate discourse and aim to improve public understanding of — and engagement with — the problems we face, the opportunities we have, and the institutions that shape our lives. In the broadest sense, initiatives developed by our fellows should bring people together and break down walls that exclude people from institutions and knowledge production.
Specifically, Assembling Voices Resident Fellows will design initiatives that bring people together to share their expertise and to promote engagement, dialogue, and discourse around social justice issues. We recognize that expertise exists in multiple forms, for example: among communities who shape and are shaped by major events, among researchers who study the drivers of those events, and among the artists, writers, thinkers, and activists who process and articulate such common experiences. Our scope is deliberately broad, to allow for proposals that are innovative, unexpected and that pioneer creative ways to enhance social life and dialogue among and between communities and institutions.
Assembling Voices Resident Fellows will have the creative freedom to conceive and execute public programming as they envision, especially addressing communities and topics that are under-explored or have historically been excluded from dialogue with academic institutions. At the same time, fellows will work alongside Assembly and Columbia University staff, who will provide support from the initial phases of project conceptualization through the initiative’s public launch. We are particularly interested in proposals that: (1) are innovative in their design and presentation, such as those that mix interactive modes and activities; (2) reach diverse audiences; (3) address community-identified and community-specific needs, and (4) have a lifespan beyond a single event or multimedia series. In short, we hope that Assembling Voices—our fellows and their initiatives—amplify and engage with the talents, abilities, aspirations, hopes, and needs of the communities that comprise our democracy.
Public programming initiatives can occur in-person, online, or through any other mode or platform. They could include, but are not limited to, event series, hackathons, town halls, exhibitions, interactive media, gamer livestreams, public performances, and facilitated online spaces. Ideally, the proposed set of activities will maximize impact by including a half-dozen events or their equivalent over the course of a year.
Our inaugural cohort will include up to three Assembling Voices Resident Fellows. Residence in the program starts on September 1, 2021.
Current Fellows
J. Khadijah Abdurahman is the founder of We Be Imagining, an initiative applying the Black radical tradition to developing public interest technology. Through the Assembling Voices fellowship, Khadijah will continue to bridge siloed disciplines and activists, using art, technology, and community networks to combat harmful systems of surveillance, exclusion, and exploitation. Khadijah will organize a series of events in Brownsville, Brooklyn to support political education, organizing, and mutual aid with those most impacted by the New York City Administration for Children’s Services (NYC ACS). These events will support a community-designed mural celebrating Black family life and abolition of the Family Regulation System.
Asha Boston, a filmmaker, and storyteller from Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, has spent her career exploring and documenting the history of Black neighborhoods struggling to retain their culture and self-sufficiency amid gentrification through her film project, A Time Before Kale. With support from Assembling Voices, she plans to expand on this work through a series of peer-to-peer storytelling workshops that teach residents of Bedford-Stuyvesant to digitally collect, preserve, and archive pictures, oral histories, and artifacts of their life in this neighborhood. By gathering residents in trusted spaces, the workshops also provide sites to coordinate resistance against rising rents, predatory development, and other threats to neighborhood stability.
Through the Winston-Salem Portrait Project, JCKB Studios (artist/organizer Jasmin Chang and photographer/ storyteller Kisha Bari) developed a new model for intercommunity exchange: they brought together activists and leaders from across Winston-Salem to participate in workshops, and placed them into pairs to learn one another’s stories and take portrait photographs of each other, which were then displayed in public art installations around the city. Chang and Bari now seek to expand on that model in New York City, by systematically identifying and connecting community activists and representatives across boroughs and issue spaces, creating pathways through which skills, experiences, and resources may flow.
Program Benefits:
Income support* ($25,000/year)
Initiative support up to $10,000/year
Intellectual support from TAA research staff
Access to event and workspace
Mentorship (from Columbia University faculty and/or TAA staff)
Administrative and logistical support
Professional development and capacity building workshops and networking opportunities
*For Columbia university affiliates, the form financial support takes may vary
Who is Eligible?
This program is for artists, writers, scholars, journalists, activists, workers, humanists, organizers, performers and for any other person with a compelling idea for social change. We encourage people of all generations and nationalities to apply. Collectives will be considered. Participation has no minimum educational requirement, nor do we require a minimum number of years of experience. If you have questions about eligibility based on your visa or immigration status, please contact Michael Falco (mf2727@columbia.edu).
There is no geographic constraint, however preference will be given to New York-based fellows and initiatives.
Officers and students of Columbia University are also eligible to apply, though financial support will vary depending on appointment type or student status.
Program Requirements:
Executing the public initiative you propose
Participating in a handful of training and capacity-building activities
