Nolose is thrilled to announce our most recent grantees! Our team of community volunteers and Small Projects Across the Land committee members from the board recommended funding eight of the fourteen project applications after participating in a collaborative decision-making process, and the board approved their recommendation after review. Nolose has approved grants totaling $4,925 in this round of Small Project Across the Land funding. We’re really excited about these projects–we think that supporting them will help make vibrant, inclusive, and beautiful fat queer and trans culture, community, activism, and healing happen in a lot of really different locations and cultural contexts. Most of the projects are looking for volunteers, community involvement, enthusiastic audiences or participants, or further fundraising assistance, so check them out!
We welcome financial contributions that will sustain future SPAL grants. You can donate here: http://nolose.org/get-
Bi/Black/Body Positive/Bliss: $450
Misia Denéa created the short film “BI/BLACK/ BODY POSITIVE/BLISS,” which Denéa describes as “A choreo-poem that focuses on exalting my queerness, african/indigenous ancestry, my plus sized body and the content that comes from the healing journey of loving the parts of myself that the world often rejects.” Nolose’s funding will help fund part of the costs of creating a live site-specific performance experience that compliments the short film when it debuts at San Francisco’s International Queer Women of Color Film Festival in June 2017. For more information or to support this project, visit www.hathaholistic.com or contact hathaholistic at gmail dot com.
Blancaflor’s Big Black Soundtrack: $775
Kali Ferguson, a Bilingual Cultural Educator and performer, is working with Derrick J. Hines, Musician & Poet/Emcee, to record and distribute a four song EP (Extended Player album) to give to schools, community groups and more in their home communities in North Carolina. Ferguson has a storytelling performance called Blancaflor: La Negra. Blancaflor is a black, fat, feminist retelling of a Latin American fairytale that she tells to audiences of children and adults in the South, primarily in poor, rural, Black and Latinx, multigenerational communities. The funding will make it possible to record and mix and press copies of the EP so that Ferguson can give families and youth copies to take home when she performs. As Ferguson says, “This project’s goal is to promote intersectional fat justice/liberation through loving our fat and/or Black & Brown bodies by providing ‘message music’ that is fun and ‘hip.’ …One song I will record is called ‘Divine Feminine/Femenina Divina.’ It is bilingual, like my telling of the story in English & Spanish, and I sing it at the beginning of the performance. The intersectionality of fatness, blackness, brownness, femmeness and being a Spanish-speaker is woven into the song, which accompanies three other original songs on the CD.” For more information or to support Blancaflor’s Big Black Soundtrack, contact Ferguson at kali at kaliferguson dot com.
Fat, Free & Feelin’ Myself Conference: $650
This will be a one-day conference in Greater Cleveland/ Northeast Ohio, planned for June 2017, dedicated to providing people of size with a safe space to combat the personal effects of body terrorism by exploring ways to be free, present, and grounded in their bodies. Funds will help with some space rental and administrative costs. The lead organizer is Meredith L King, who has over a decade of extensive and large-scale organizing, marketing, management, and theater production experience, as well as ties to fat, Black, queer, disabled, and working class communities and organizations, particularly in the Midwest. They are building up the team of additional organizers and doing initial planning right now! To get involved or support the project, contact F3MConference (at) gmail ((dot)) com.
Intimate Femme Winter Solstice Gathering: $350
This event was a gathering on the 2016 Winter Solstice in the Bay area. It was an event centering BIPOC, Queer, fat, and disabled activist, organized by long-time Nolosers JuanaTango and Margarita Femme-inista, and new-to-Nolose facilitator Bonita. The event was closed for femmes to build relationships and community, with a Black only space in the event. There were dance performances, spiritual rituals, food, art, and bodies of water to rejuvenate activists’ bodies and spirits. The folks who attended are people who experience multiple intersecting forms of oppression, and give back to our communities through writing, performing, healing, and continuing to insist on creating a world where oppression can become obsolete. The funding, in combination with local fundraising, made it possible to pay four healers for several hours’ work, and covered some snacks!
Play N’ Play: $1000
This fabulous project is a performance AND date/singles night for QTPOC fat people and the people of color who admire us, in Atlanta, GA! Play N’ Play will include speed dating, a play reading, and a dance party. Eshe Shukura, who has experience as an organizer in Atlanta with groups including Southerners On New Ground, Solutions Not Punishment Coalition, and as a performer and event producer, is expanding her award-winning play, Fat. Black. & Ugly., which is about her personal journey to fat positivity and liberation, and producing a performance of the event in conjunction with a singles night/dance party night in spring of 2017. Nolose’s funds go toward the costs of putting on the event, including but not limited to space rental and security. Contact eshukura (at) gmail ((dot)) com or call 678.775.8721 to get involved or support the project!
RADCAMP: A Body Positive Bootcamp for Feminists: $400
Members of the burgeoning fat activist community in and around Boise, Idaho will rent a large community retreat cabin in the nearby mountain town of McCall, Idaho, and celebrate diversity, each other, and make plans to mobilize personally, professionally, and as a group. Activities might also include radical artmaking, body positive movie watching, cooking meals together, a book club/article discussion, massage, a Chunky Dunk at the public beach at the lake, and physical activities such as hikes, games, swimming, hot springs, and more. Nolose’s funds are anticipated to go toward space rental costs. Contact the Boise Rad Fat Collective to get involved or email penceamy (at) hotmail ((dot)) com
Real Talk About Self-Image and Self-Love with Fat Trans Men of Color: $600
Louis J. Mitchell, an activist and advocate with over 30 years of experience organizing in queer communities and over 18 in trans communities, is organizing a series of four video calls to discuss: “fat trans men of color’s hyper-visibility/invisibility in society; the ways that trans-masculine visibility has erased and injured us; our relationships with our bodies then and now and that ways that fatphobia impacts both our sense of desire and desirability; organizing to support each other and other fat/large people in general and at specific events.” The calls are an outgrowth of conversations Mitchell has been having with fat trans men of color, where people universally expressed isolation and grief around the fact that there has been an “upsurge in trans masculine visibility and that those ‘poster’ images were all under 30 and very lean and conventionally attractive.” Mitchell is targeting his outreach to people who identify as trans men of color and fat/large/of size, regardless of affectional or sexual orientation or practices, including trans men who are low/no disclosure or not otherwise affilitated with fat communities. Nolose’s funding will support the costs for preparation and outreach, videoconferencing, and video transcription services. To get involved contact nnewrevlouis ((((at)))) yahoo (dot) com.
Thicker: Queer BIPOC Writers and Artists at the Intersection of Fatness and the World: $700
Galadriel Mozee and Carrie Fuentes are leading a collaborative project with Black and Indigenous writers and writers of color in Portland, Oregon. Thicker will be a quarterly reading series that will center the stories of fat queer BIPOC artists and writers as they speak to their lived experiences. Each reading will focus on a different theme and may feature artwork along the lines of the theme; the first reading series, tentatively scheduled for March, is centered on “family,” as defined by participating writers. Nolose’s funding may cover some, but not all, of the costs of renting space, advertising the events, logistics and administrative costs, snacks, and small honoraria for participating writers.
Galadriel Mozee and Carrie Fuentes both have organizing experience and rich and long histories and relationships in intersecting fat and queer and trans and BIPOC communities, and deep roots in Portland, which they bring to Thicker. Galadriel Mozee is a fat black queer stemme writer and artist who walks supported by and in honor of their Wolayta, Gullah, Jamaican and Missourian ancestors. They believe in a benevolent universe that holds them tenderly in the cradle of its heart. You can find their writing published in Kalyani and Curve Magazines, Ambelic Press and The PDX based Women of Color zine “How to live in the city of roses and avoid the pricks”. They write at mypronounisjockey.wordpress.com and tend to the Black Lives Memorial Garden in Portland Or. Mozee is also a former Nolose board member and served as the board co-president. Carrie Fuentes is a Chicana fat femme who grew up on the gritty streets of thin, very white SE Port- land. Fuentes’ writing is a lyrical mix of critique, humor and prayer; she’s contributed to queer indigenous zines and women leader zines. She has worked as an organizer with queer and trans youth ages 12 – 24 at SMYRC (sexual minorities youth resource center) and volunteered as a councelor with queer rock camp for youth in Portland. To support their work or to get involved with Thicker: Queer BIPOC Writers and Artists at the Intersection of Fatness and the World, contact thickerpdx (at) gmail ((((dot)) com.
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