Disabled LGBTQ+ Creatives Imagine a Better Tomorrow
The Ford and Mellon Foundations invest in queer disabled cultural creatives. January 29 2021 7:08 PM EST
In the fall of 2020 the Ford Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation announced an 18-month initiative to increase the visibility of disabled creatives and elevate their voices. Developed after the foundations spent a year researching how to better serve disabled artists, writers, filmmakers, and other creatives, the initiative will invest $1 million in supporting 20 disabled creators whose work “advances the cultural landscape,” as the foundations put it.
Through the Disability Futures Fellowship, Ford and Mellon hope to address industry-wide problems in the arts, journalism, and film including a lack of disability visibility, accessible professional development opportunities, and a national grant program that considers the unique financial challenges of disabled creatives.
Kwame Spearman
Villarosa, now ninety years old, says she’s thrilled to be back in Denver. “I love the city,” she says. “I love the people. And I loved being a bookseller. The light in the children’s eyes when they saw the books. They were pretty, they were well-illustrated, and [the characters] looked like them.”
Villarosa’s Hue-Man Experience bookstore had a notable run at the edge of Five Points, at Champa Street and Park Avenue West. That successful store inspired local readers from its inception in 1984 until Villarosa sold it in 2000 and moved to Harlem in New York City to be near her daughters and grandchildren. She opened a new location there under the same name.