2009 GRANT PROJECTS
• MULTI MEDIA STORYTELLING
Our Stories, Our Own Voices • $9,000
Adhikaar, Hamro Katha, Hamrai Aawaz
Adhikaar is a New York-based women-led organization that works with the Nepali speaking community to promote human rights and social justice. Our Stories, Our Own Voices is a multi-media storytelling project for young women (ages 16-25) of Nepali descent. Two South Asian artist activists will lead workshops in a variety of media to explore youth relevant themes, such as migration, home, gender, sexuality, race, love, family.
• ORAL HISTORY
Talk Story: Sharing Stories Across Generations • $10,000
Asian American Writers’ Workshop
Founded in 1991, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop is the largest non-profit devoted to creating, publishing, developing and disseminating creative writing by Asian Americans. Talk Story: Sharing Stories Across Generations is an oral history project pairing elderly and young Asian American women to share the stories of their lives. It aims to bridge inter-generational gaps as well as create a historical archive of personal narrative by Asian American women. The project will take place in Flushing, Queens and in Brooklyn’s Chinatown, led by women writers who reside in those neighborhoods. Stories will be recorded in bilingual self-made chapbooks, on the Workshop’s website and podcast.
• MUSIC FORUM AND PERFORMANCE
Chinese Women’s Music Initiative • $3,000
The Center for Traditional Music & Dance
The Center for Traditional Music & Dance is one of the nation’s pioneering music arts organizations, dedicated to preserving and presenting the performing arts traditions of New York’s immigrant and ethnic communities since 1968. The Initiative provides a forum for young women (ages 12-18) in New York’s Chinatown to meet and study with established female master musicians on selected Chinese instruments that have not been traditionally accessible to women and girls. Weekly classes will culminate in a public performance of Chinese opera scenes, with all roles and instruments played by girls.
• INTERACTIVE PUBLIC ART
Comfort Women Wanted • $8,000
Chang-Jin Lee
Korean-born visual artist Chang-Jin Lee’s public art project, Homeland Security Garden at the World Financial Center Winter Garden, explores our political and psychological insecurity in the post 9-11 world. The grant will help Chang-Jin develop Comfort Women Wanted, a large-scale, interactive public artwork to be placed in a major transportation hub such as Grand Central Station. The piece aims to increase awareness of the 200,000 women who were sexually enslaved in Asia during World War II, connecting this historical atrocity to the continuing sexual exploitation and trafficking of Asian women today.
• THEATER PLAY
So the Arrow Flies • $4,000
Esther Chae
With only a turn of the chair, Esther Chae portrays four strong women of Korean descent. This theatrical, one-woman show explores the ramifications of the War on Terror, identity, national pride and allegiance, through the lens of Asian women characters and their love for one another. The grant will support the NYC premiere of the play. Chae, mentored by Anna Deavere Smith at NYU, is a former TED fellow.
• INTERACTIVE MULTIMEDIA INSTALLATION
Workplace • $10,000
New York Asian Women’s Center
The New York Asian Women’s Center helps battered Asian women to overcome violence and govern their own lives, free of abuse. Workplace is an interactive multimedia installation based on the stories of Asian American women survivors of domestic violence, exploring how domestic violence affects women in the workplace. Collaborators include musicians and artists Woody Pak, Heather Greer and Liubo Borissov. The installation will simulate a workplace environment, including a telephone where visitors may leave their own stories or comments.
• COMMUNITY ART
Lunar New Year for All • $4,000
Q-Wave
This is a collaborative community art project to champion LGBT equality at the 2010 Lunar New Year Parade in Manhattan’s Chinatown led by Q-Wave , a group dedicated to strengthening the voices of lesbian/bisexual/queer women and transgender/gender variant people of Asian descent. The project will incorporated giant puppets, mobile murals, stilt walkers, dancers and musicians and is designed in collaboration with local community organizations. Q-Wave will host art and education workshops, a press conference and sponsored a Lunar New Year for All poster contest.
• STORYTELLING AND THEATER WORKSHOP
Q Up • $3,000
Farah Bala and Nancy Kim of the Rising Circle Theatre Collective
Rising Circle Theater Collectiveis led by theater artists of color committed to producing work that reflects the diversity of the world in which we live. Q Up, a pilot program aimed at Asian American high school girls in Queens, will feature a four-day workshop led by professional Asian American women artists to help the girls build skills and produce their own work. The workshops will be held in the Queens Theatre in Flushing Meadow Park.
• MULTIMEDIA WORKSHOP AND SCREENING
Asian Girls Empowerment Through Media • $9,000
Third World Newsreel
This summer-fall workshop series will train young Asian women (age 14-21) in multimedia production while exploring media literacy and activism in the context of race, class and gender. The goal is to equip young Asian women with the ability to deconstruct the layers of mainstream media messages with which they are bombarded, while empowering them to create their own, culminating in a public screening at Anthology Film Archives and at the Newsreel’s 40th anniversary conference at Hunter and educational materials distributed to thousands of schools and colleges nationwide.
• DOCUMENTARY FILM
Anna May Wong: In Her Own Words • $10,000
Yunah Hong and Women Make Movies
Anna May Wong: In Her Own Words, a documentary film about the groundbreaking Chinese American international movie star and activist Anna May Wong, surveys Wong’s career, exploring the impact she had on images of Asian American women in Hollywood, both then and now.