challenge

• For many BIPOC artists and entrepreneurs, the prospect of funding a radical idea to scale is seemingly out of reach. The vetting systems designed to delegitimize BIPOC innovation, experimentation and excellence are many, as are the gatekeepers that uphold an inequitable and inaccessible system

• Communities are often denied access to the spaces where decisions get made about their needs, public space, and how their tax dollars are spent. Due to a lack in transparency around civic processes, communities are often invited to the table only after these important decisions that impact them have been made, leading to resentment and civic disengagement

• Neighborhoods are defined along geographic lines rather than celebrated as social, cultural and political constructs rooted in notions of belonging and home. In this privileging of space over place, so-called site-responsive projects respond more to the physical environment than they do the emotional landscape of a community

With rampant competition for limited resources, and the overall decline of genuine collaboration, the time for a new creative production model is now! bldg fund does not underestimate the arduous work that lies ahead in democratizing access to creativity as a language for self determination, community leadership, and social impact. Forging a more accessible art world and dismantling the long held silos of work and life will take time. Fortunately, artists and communities are uniquely poised to lead this conversation and the movements it will produce. bldg fund is a collaborative engine to ideate, create and achieve radical ideas with longevity and sustainability in mind—ideas that are for, by and of the communities from which they emanate.

opportunity