Wow!
A team of community members and two board members reviewed the submitted proposals and made funding recommendations to the Nolose board. The board adopted the review team’s recommendations.
These grants have been awarded to our community members to organize fun amazing projects!
There will be a fully accessible fat pool party, fat and disabled doula service training, a fat studies lecture and symposium, and several multimedia fat liberation art projects.
We love being able to give back to our community!
Thank you so much for your help in keeping amazing projects like these funded! If you’d like to donate to support the next round of community grants, you can contribute here: http://nolose.org/get-involved/donate/
Here is a summary of each SPAL grant recipient’s project:
Body Sovereignty: Fat Politics and the Fight for Human Rights
The book, “Body Sovereignty: Fat Politics and the Fight for Human Rights,” will be an exploration of contemporary fat politics from critical legal, cultural, and historical perspectives, informed by an intersectional analysis of fat as it relates to race, class, disability, and late capitalist bodies struggling for equal rights. The $1,000 SPAL grant will be used to pay BIPOC folks who are interviewed about their experiences as fat activists.
Devoted Deviant Doulas: Queer, Fat, Disabled, Full-Spectrum Doula Collective
The organizers are creating a fat, disabled doula collective. This collective will offer sliding scale doula services to the most marginalized communities within their reach in Hampden County, Mass. The $1,000 SPAL grant will be used for doula training, childbirth classes, and supplies.
Fat Pool Party
The organizers are creating a space for queer, fat folks in Ankeny, Iowa, to get to know one another by holding an accessible, family-friendly pool party in June 2020. The $450 SPAL grant will be used for pool rental and advertising.
Insides on the Outside: Fat Performance/Video Project
Artist Naima Lowe performs in a video as a ghostly figure clad and lit in various shades of pink. Pink represents vulnerability, femininity, and is the literal and figurative color of our insides. The video is meditative and visceral, offering a series of vignettes and images accompanied by an original sound score and poetic voice over. Her fat body is featured heavily in the work, and appears as an apparition, a substance, and a site for pleasure and ecstatic expression. The $500 SPAL grant will be used to increase the project’s reach.
Reclaiming Your Confidence with Curves
Have you had enough of others telling you that you not are a sexy beast and deserving of loving yourself simply because you are fat, queer, of color, or living with a disability? This free symposium will assist in the quest to discover self worth, self-love, and building an inclusive body positive community in Nashville. The $800 SPAL grant will be used to provide honoraria to the speakers, an online ticketing platform, box lunches catered by a queer, Black-owned busineess, and printing supplies.
This Little Light of Mine Film: Screening and Sing
Organizers are seeking to fatten the conversation around worker justice and queerness through a film screening, talk back, and community sing. “This Little Light” tells the story of Wendi Moore-O’Neal, a Black feminist freedom singer from New Orleans. The documentary recounts how Wendi was fired from her job as a community organizer when she married her wife, Mandisa. “This Little Light” is a self-determined portrait about the power of love, community, and the living legacy of the Black Southern Freedom movement. The $1,000 SPAL grant will be used to cover the travel and accommodations for the filmmaker facilitators.
Dr. Stephanie Snider Guest Lecture
Art historian and fat studies scholar Dr. Stefanie Snider will give a guest lecture and workshop at Nebraska Wesleyan University. Following the talk, Dr. Snider will offer a conscious-raising workshop that encourages participants to consider how they can support their local queer/trans fat community. The $200 SPAL grant will be used as an honorarium for Dr. Snider.
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