The Building Fund is an innovation platform that scales creative ideas into community projects, and community projects into cultural movements—brick by brick.

BLDG FUND, LLC is an arts accelerator, cultural engine, and strategic consultancy serving creative entrepreneurs, neighbors, and cultural organizations in Greater New Haven.

With over two decades of experience in the nonprofit and commercial sectors, we serve artists through advocacy, mentorship, professional development, and career strategy services, while supporting their cultural production and connecting them to exhibition, networking, and engagement opportunities.

Within our space and the spaces we co-build with our partners, we serve our neighbors by convening communities of practice to collectively reflect on shared opportunities and challenges within our arts and culture ecosystem, envisioning creative solutions and mobilizing art as a catalyst for community impact and social change.

We serve local arts, culture, and community organizations through inclusive growth and engagement strategies, stakeholder analysis and mobilization, and art advisory services, including art acquisitions, collection management, exhibition design, curation, site-specific-installation, and arts writing.

  • “The Building Fund is the first arts organization to address the needs of Black artists in New Haven in my 25 years of being an artist here.”

    — Anonymous 2025 Artists’ Needs Assessment Respondent

Team

  • A woman with slicked-back black hair, dressed in a black leather jacket with a gold chain necklace, standing in front of green plant leaves.

    nico w. okoro

    FOUNDING CEO

    Over the past two decades, nico has worked both independently and as a nonprofit arts leader to drive cultural strategy and community engagement within museums and artist-founded nonprofits. A celebrated cultural strategist, curator, educator, and writer, nico works across sectors to build equitable representation within the canons of modern and contemporary art.

    nico is the author of Museum Metamorphosis: Cultivating Change Through Cultural Citizenship (2022), which platforms critical perspectives from across the arts and culture ecosystem, offering tools to reshape cultural institutions into cooperative sites of collective impact and social change.

    nico is a former Board Member of The Arts Council of Greater New Haven. In recent posts, she served as a visiting critic at the Yale School of Art (2021-2024); Inaugural Executive Director of NXTHVN (2019-20); Director of Public Programs and Community Engagement at the Studio Museum in Harlem (2014-19); Curatorial Director of Rush Arts Gallery (2007-10); and Curatorial Assistant at The Studio Museum in Harlem (2006-07). nico holds an MA in Creative & Cultural Entrepreneurship from Goldsmiths, University of London (2011), and a BA in Art-Semiotics from Brown University (2006).

    LEARN MORE

Grants & Awards

2024, Sponsor, Office of Arts, Culture & Tourism, City of New Haven

2023, Community & Alumni Award, Yale University Faculty Grant

2023, Neighborhood Cultural Vitality Grant, Office of Arts, Culture & Tourism, City of New Haven

CV

2025

  • Curator, Liminal Landscapes, Orchid Gallery, The Lab at ConnCORP

  • Curator, Beholder, Orchid Gallery, The Lab at ConnCORP

  • Curator, In Our Hands, Orchid Gallery, The Lab at ConnCORP

  • Curator, Shaunda Holloway: Abstract Rebel, The New Haven Free Public Library, Mitchell Library

  • Curator, Mythmakers, Orchid Gallery, The Lab at ConnCORP

2024

  • Guest Curator, Gather, A Better Way Foundation

  • Curator, Origins, Orchid Gallery, The Lab at ConnCORP

  • Curator, Gather, Orchid Gallery, The Lab at ConnCORP

  • Development Consultant & Curator, The Lab at ConnCORP

  • Judge, Yale Innovators Prize, Tsai CITY

2023

  • Curatorial Consultant, Cornell Scott-Hill Health Center 55th Anniversary Gala, Bloom

  • Guest Curator, Erector Square Open Studios

  • Panelist, Museum Metamorphosis: On Public Art & Cultural Citizenship, Possible Futures Books

  • Judge, New Haven Civic Innovation Prize, Dwight Hall at Yale

  • Co-Host, Douglass Day, New Haven Free Public Library, Stetson Branch

  • Guest Curator, Embodied Knowledge, The Ely Center of Contemporary Art

  • Guest Curator, Made Visible: Freedom Dreams, Creative Arts Workshop

  • Juror, Yale Innovation Summit ePoster Competition, Elm Street Ventures

2022

  • Strategic Consultant, Community Cabinet Research & Development, Our Path Forward, Long Wharf Theatre

  • Visiting Critic, Yale University School of Art

  • Panelist, Creative Expression: The Art of Writing it Down for Yourself, Open Source Festival, Artspace

  • Speaker, The Studio Visit, Open Source Festival, Artspace

  • Curatorial & Educational Consultant, 30 Americans, New Britain Museum of American Art

  • Moderator, Curator’s Talk, 30 Americans: Arts on the Block Symposium, New Britain Museum of American Art

2021

  • Speaker, The Studio Visit, Open Source Festival, Artspace

  • Panelist, Unapologetically Radical: Truth and Reconciliation, New Haven's Department of Arts & Cultural Affairs in partnership with the International Festival of Arts & Ideas

  • Panelist, Monuments and Collective Memory, The International Festival of Arts & Ideas

  • Speaker, A Ripe Moment to Make a Change, Antiracist Artist Podcast

  • Panelist, Artists Are Lethal, The Lab at Long Wharf Theater

  • Speaker, LoveBabz LoveTalk, WNHH Community Radio

2020

  • Project Development Consultant, Allison Minto’s Black New Haven Archive: A Collective Memory Project, Artspace

  • Panelist, William Lanson Memorial Selection Committee, New Haven City Plan Department