2025 Micrograntees

The Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame & Museum (Owensboro) and City of Morgantown (Morgantown) are planning a festival celebrating the life and memory of Arnold Shultz, a Black musician and influence on bluegrass music.

Community Connection Arts Initiative

We will have two projects under one initiative. The Artist Mixer will provide local artists with the opportunity to connect, network, and collaborate while exploring ways to contribute to the community’s forward progress. The Portrait Project will give a platform to voices in our community that are often marginalized or unheard, celebrating the diversity of people and experiences in Owensboro. Together, these projects will help foster deeper community connection and engagement.

Tapestry Volume 2: Expanding Kentucky Literary Activism Through Rural-Urban Story Collection

Building on our successful 2024 RUX microgrant that produced "Tapestry" zine, we propose "Tapestry Volume 2: Expanding Kentucky Literary Activism Through Rural-Urban Story Collection" - a phased project that deepens relationships with Volume 1 "Tapestry" contributors while collecting new stories across Kentucky's geographic and cultural boundaries. This project follows individuals featured in Volume 1 "Tapestry" as their stories continue to evolve, while simultaneously gathering new voices from diverse Kentucky communities through location-specific events at independent bookstores and community spaces. Using literary activism frameworks and reading circle methodologies, we'll create intimate spaces for story collection that honor both individual narrative and collective movement building. Through regional events from Morehead to Bowling Green, we'll document ongoing social justice work, build rural-urban connections, and create "Tapestry Volume 2" as both artistic product and organizing tool. The project positions zine-making within Kentucky's literary activism tradition while establishing sustainable networks for cross-community collaboration and mutual support.

Stories behind the Quilt

Our project, led by Mary Breckinridge’s Wendover in partnership with the Southeast Kentucky African American Museum and Cultural Center, seeks to build cultural dialogue and creative collaboration through the art of quilting. The Museum, based in Hazard, KY, will present the stories behind African American quilting traditions. Community members will then participate in painting a small quilt block that will be displayed as part of a larger quilt block exhibit.

ADOLESCENCE - Poetry Book & Immersive Event

This Louisville event is an immersive visual experience in celebration of Christa’s first collection of poetry: ADOLESCENCE: edges first. ADOLESCENCE - the book and the event - is about “bringing You home with me.” It’s an invitation to understand my childhood as a first-generation Nigerian Appalachian. The event will have a childhood bedroom simulation, poetry readings, a live vocal performance, local food, and play-centered activities that invite folks to both reminisce and address the hard truths that nostalgia brings up.

Unexpected Stories

We will create a website devoted to the historic African-American community of Elm Bend in South Woodford County and its relationship to the adjacent Johnston Farm and make a video that includes landscape footage and interviews with people who remember the existence of Elm Bend, including members of Kayla's family. Knowing that communities like Elm Bend disappear while historic farms like the Johnston Farm remain motivates us to tell a true and comprehensive story for posterity.

EKY Secular Homeschool Collective Growth

EKY Secular Homeschool Collective was founded in 2024 by a pair of mothers. One, a native Kentuckian residing in Jackson County, the other, a transplant residing in Morgan County. They aim to connect inclusive, secular families and uplift local caregivers. In 2024 and 2025, social and educational meetings were held in 15 different counties. Their 2026 goal is to support all 54 EKY counties by aiding in the creation of localized inclusive, secular cooperatives and supporting their ongoing efforts. To begin, they wish to secure funding for outreach to caregivers to serve on the Collective’s Community Advisory Board through grassroots flier distribution, followed by separate Board Structure and Leadership workshops lead by two female Kentuckians in the non-profit sector, in addition to documenting interviews with established secular, inclusive cooperatives in rural, red states and 3-5 caregivers seeking secular, inclusive community in EKY.

YesWe - Young Engineer Society of the West End

Students in Louisville’s West End will build an environmentally friendly robot designed to clean the community.

River Rhythms: Black Kentucky Narratives in Voices and Verse

Author K.A. Simpson and Adrian Wallace of Bishop and Chase unite two powerful creative forces rooted in storytelling and sound. Simpson, an acclaimed writer and cultural voice, channels lived experience and historical insight into narratives and song that uplift hidden stories and amplify voices too often left unheard. Wallace, through Bishop and Chase, blends historic and contemporary Black soundscapes, creating a bridge of tradition and innovation. Together, they are forging a bold new collaboration: recording music and spoken word drawn from the Black experiences of both rural and urban Kentucky. River Rhythms highlights the cadence of farmland and factory, river and railroad, porch and pavement—spaces where Black Kentuckians have long carved out community, culture, and resilience. By weaving literary craft with musical expression, Simpson and Wallace honor heritage, spark dialogue, and build bridges across geography, memory, and generations.

Student-Led Civic Engagement Across Difference

This project is an intercultural civic engagement workshop series designed for high school and college students in Northern Kentucky. Through a blend of dialogue, storytelling, and action planning, students will examine identity, equity, and their responsibilities within civic life. Participants will collaborate across lines of difference to design community-based mini-projects that encourage dialogue and foster inclusion in their schools and neighborhoods. By combining personal reflection with collective action, the series equips students with the skills and confidence to become empathetic leaders and change agents in their communities.

The Bloodroot Writers Collective

The Bloodroot Writers Collective intentionally centers youth from diverse backgrounds across Rowan County and Eastern Kentucky, providing a welcoming space where stories of different identities and experiences come together through creative writing. By fostering dialogue in monthly workshops, peer critiques, and the Literary Leadership Cohort, participants build empathy and understanding across cultural, socioeconomic, and generational divides.

Belle Townsend (Backwoods Literary Press) & Stacie Fugate (Appalachians for Appalachia): Testament: Diverse Rural Voices in Action

Backwoods Literary Press will host a series of readings and workshop events at local businesses and community spaces across Eastern Kentucky in connection with the release of Testament: A Rural Anthology this November. These gatherings will create space for rural 2SLGBTQIA+ and allied writers, artists, and community members to share their work and deepen dialogue on place, faith, queerness, and resilience. With support from Appalachians for Appalachia, one cornerstone event will feature a panel blending organizers, cultural contributors, and artists, grounding the anthology in lived Appalachian experience. The project ensures financial support for participating artists while strengthening cultural and economic infrastructure in the region.

Beckie Rose-Bowman (WMMT/Appalshop) & John Bowman (Dream.Org): Crafting Legacy, A Calls From Home Project

This project will initially produce an online album/collection of music from folks incarcerated in Appalachia. This will be one of a three part production and ongoing endeavor to provide incarcerated folks with an opportunity to create and share their work and legacy despite the circumstances.

Brittiney Griffin (Junior Black Campers) & Taylor Ryan: Renew The Canoe

Based in Louisville, we are renewing the canoe that was gifted to us for youth outdoor recreation.

Watershed Watch Habitat Assessment Video

KY Watershed Watch (KWW) is responsible for training the citizens of Kentucky on how to monitor the water quality of their local streams. This project partners a professional videographer with KWW in order to produce a training video on stream habitat assessment. The completed video will be used as a training module for KWW's water sampling training program. The training is freely offered to any interested volunteers across the Commonwealth.

Co-Creating Cecil

We are co-creating a vacant lot into an edible educational space memorializing Glady Grimes on Cecil in the West End of Louisville.