Deadline: April 13, 2026
Applications are open for the We Are Family Foundation Youth to the Front Fund: “The Creatives” Frontliners 2026. At this moment, when so many communities are navigating uncertainty, harm, and erasure, creative leaders are stepping forward as caretakers and catalysts. Through imagination, storytelling, and collective practice, they are grounding their work in community, challenging injustice, and helping shape paths toward dignity, healing, and equitable futures.
In landscapes marked by extraction and loss, they practice restoration as a creative and civic intervention: replanting, rebuilding, and reimagining what has been damaged. Recovery becomes a collective process. Preservation becomes an investment in continuity, belonging and long-term resilience.
They also embrace joy not as escape, but as intention. In gathering, performance, and shared cultural practice, they nurture connection and mutual care. They treat cultural heritage not as nostalgia, but as living knowledge that sustains languages, craft, music, and intergenerational wisdom while evolving with changing realities.
In 2026, Youth to the Front Fund is continuing their commitment to support young leaders whose work is creating real, measurable impact in the moment. They are calling in creatives and collectives who are shaping culture, shifting narratives, organizing communities through creativity, and strengthening the ecosystems, human and environmental, that sustain us all.
Eligibility
- You should be a founding leader under 30 years old, whose work centers BIPOC communities and actively challenges systemic racism, inequality, inequity and injustice.
- You should be working across:
- Visual & Material Arts: Painting, sculpture, photography, film, installation, design, fashion, craft, and material-based practices across physical and digital mediums.
- Performance & Embodied Practice: Dance, theatre, live and interdisciplinary performance, movement-based work, and contemporary or ritual-informed embodied expression.
- Music & Sound: Composition, production, DJing, sound art, and community-based audio storytelling across live and recorded formats.
- Writing & Literary Arts: Poetry, prose, spoken word, journalism, publishing, archival work, and narrative storytelling across platforms.
- Film, Media & Cultural Documentation: Documentary, short-form film, community journalism, archival projects, and media practices that preserve and amplify cultural narratives.
- Design, Architecture & Spatial Practice: Architecture, urban and landscape design, public art, installation, product and social design, and community-led placemaking.
- Digital & Creative Technology: Creative coding, immersive media, gaming, XR/AR/VR, web-based art, and technology-driven cultural experimentation.
- Creative Changemaking & Cultural Strategy: Curation, creative organizing, cultural storytelling, culinary and folk arts, and interdisciplinary practices bridging art and civic engagement.
- Holistic Healing, Community Spaces & Sport: Wellness practices, restorative and integrative healing, youth and community sports, shared spaces, and movement as cultural practice.
Application
For more information, visit “The Creatives” Frontliners.
