Announcing the 2025 Art and Change Grant Recipients

• 
• 
• 

PHILADELPHIA, PA — Leeway Foundation is proud to announce $65,000 in funding to 29 artists and cultural producers through its Art and Change Grant (ACG) program. For over two decades, these $2,500 project-based grants have supported women, trans*, and gender nonconforming artists and cultural producers creating art for social change in the Greater Philadelphia area.

Selected from over 100 applications, the 2025 ACG grantees represent a wide range of disciplines, including film, poetry, visual art, dance, music, fashion, theater, and multidisciplinary practices, engaging urgent themes such as immigrant and refugee narratives, racial justice, environmental justice, economic equity, cultural preservation, gender justice, disability justice, and LGBTQ+ advocacy. Across mediums and movements, this cohort demonstrates how art can foster collective imagination, community engagement, and social transformation. Their practices draw on ancestral knowledge, interdependence, and care to envision new possibilities for the Philadelphia region and beyond.

The 2025 cohort includes, but is not limited to: an intergenerational dance and costume project uplifting Mexican migrant families; a series of free hair-braiding and mending circles teaching sustainable care practices; bilingual youth empowerment workshops blending storytelling, zine-making, and seed-planting in North Philadelphia; a queer youth concert and art mart centering joy and belonging in Bucks County; a multimedia oral history project preserving queer and trans practitioners of African Diasporic Religions; a collective zine retreat for trans writers; participatory workshops reimagining U.S. currency through land-back and reparations dialogues; a multimedia playbook documenting Chinatown’s No Arena campaign; a solo play examining Black trans masculinity and survival; a sound-based exploration of displacement and belonging for adoptees and immigrants; and a participatory performance connecting Black musical traditions to urban agriculture.  Together, these projects affirm Leeway’s ongoing commitment to supporting artists whose creative practices spark dialogue, deepen community connections, and advance movements for justice and collective liberation.

The 2025 Art and Change Grant recipients are (in alphabetical order):  

Alison of Media, Multidisciplinary, $2,500

Alyssa Reynoso-Morris of North Philadelphia, Literary Arts/Visual Arts, $2,500

Andrea Espinal of Northeast Philadelphia, Multidisciplinary, $2,500

angel shanel edwards of Southwest Philadelphia, Crafts & Textiles, $2,500

April Lee of North and Northeast Philadelphia, Multidisciplinary, $2,500

Asake Denise Foye Jones of West Philadelphia, Crafts & Textiles/Media Arts, $2,500

Cindy Lozito of Bella Vista, Visual Arts/Folk Arts, $2,500

Dani Levsky of West Philadelphia, Performance/Literary Arts, $2,500

Fiona Boyd-Clark + CJ Weintraub of Doylestown Borough, Performance/Music, $2,500

Ivy McLendon of Norris Square, Multidisciplinary, $2,500

Julian Shendelman of Lansdowne, Literary Arts, $2,500

Kaitlin Pomerantz of Germantown, Visual Arts/Literary Arts, $2,500

Lily Xie of Fishtown, Multidisciplinary, $2,500

Mama Carla Wiley of Olney, Crafts & Textiles/Visual Arts, $2,500

Michelle Anne Harris + Kim Altomare of Olde Kensington/West Philadelphia, Crafts & Textiles/Visual Arts, $2,500

Mieke D of West Philadelphia, Folk Arts/Performance, $2,500

Phoebe Bachman + Christina Morton of Queen Village/Washington Square West, Multidisciplinary, $2,500

Rachel O’Hanlon-Rodriguez of Kingsessing, Folk Arts/Performance, $2,500

Rayne of Center City, Performance/Literary Arts, $2,500

Sai Of Relief of Kensington, Visual Arts/Crafts & Textiles, $2,500

Salina Kuo of West Philadelphia, Music/Folk Arts, $2,500

Shevaun Brannigan of Center City West, Performance, $2,500

Tough Gossamer (Yarrow) of Kingsessing, Performance/Music, $2,500

Trapeta B. Mayson of Germantown, Literary Arts, $2,500

Yuri Seung of Logan Square, Media Arts/Performance, $2,500 

Zach Ozma of Lansdowne, Visual Arts, $2,500

***

ABOUT THE ART AND CHANGE GRANT

Art and Change Grant applications are evaluated by an independent peer review panel. Grantees were selected through a process that values lived experience, artistic excellence, and commitment to social transformation. The 2025 review panel consisted of singer, composer, and songleader, Emily Bate (WOO ‘22; ACG ‘19); curator, educator, and director of the Brind Center for African and African Diasporic Art at the Philadelphia Art Museum, Imani Roach; and film producer, cultural worker, and program manager at BlackStar Projects, Sydney Alicia Rodriguez.