We Got the KFW Grant!
$10,000 in funding will support peer-led arts events, a new literary publication focused on recovery, and our push to make SLAC a nonprofit
I’m excited to share that we’ve received Year Two funding from the Kentucky Foundation for Women!
This $10,000 Radical, Timely & Urgent (RTU) grant will help us keep growing the dream we’ve all been building together—especially through the Arts Leadership Program (ALP), which has become something really special.
A little backstory: this same grant funded the creative writing workshop that former inmate Crystal Miller and I were leading at the Bullitt County Detention Center. When we lost our spot at the jail last October, I was stressed. Like, full-on panic. We had to scramble to come up with a new program—and somehow recruit people to participate with almost no lead time. What came out of that scramble has been truly transformative.
We created the Arts Leadership Program, which brings people in recovery into the heart of what we do—through writing, art, performance, and leadership. ALP participants have been the force behind the Salt River Local Arts Collaborative’s monthly Artists’ Socials, and they’ve helped create such a warm, welcoming vibe that we had a record-breaking crowd at our Pride-themed social last Saturday.
Now, in Year Two, we’re ready to level up.
Here’s what this new round of funding will support:
Training & stipends for ALP mentors to plan, promote, and facilitate events
A publishing consultant to help us launch a literary publication centered on recovery, mental health, trauma, and healing
Work toward officially establishing SLAC as a nonprofit so we can expand access to the arts for everyone—especially those who’ve been historically excluded
At its heart, this grant project is not just about giving voice and visibility to people impacted by addiction, incarceration, and mental illness, but also giving those people the opportunity to lead. To create. To shape the narrative. To shift the conversation.
The literary publication we’re launching will be a big step toward that. It will give creative folks the platform to tell their stories on their own terms, with honesty, beauty, pain, humor—whatever they need it to be. And by sharing those stories publicly, we hope to eliminate stigma, build empathy, and showcase recovery through the humanizing power of art.
Thank you to everyone who’s supported this work. Whether you’ve shown up for an Artists’ Social, participated in the open-mic, brought a friend, or otherwise helped spread the word, this wouldn’t be happening without you.
Thanks, also, to the Kentucky Foundation for Women for generously supporting our work.
Stay tuned for info about a writing contest and our July Artists’ Social, featuring G. Wesley Houp, winner of the James Baker Hall Book Award, and Amy Roblero-Perez, who served as Kentucky’s first Youth Poet Laureate in 2023-24. For now, just know that we’re funded, we’re growing, and we’re not stopping
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🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉