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A revolutionary arts ecosystem empowering BIPOC artists, organizations, and communities.
BANF is revolutionizing the local funding landscape and breaking down silos within the arts ecosystem to create transformative opportunities where they can dream, connect, collaborate, and create.

About

BIPOC Arts Network and Fund, or BANF, revolutionizes the local funding landscape, breaks down silos within the arts ecosystem, and welcomes everyone to support and learn from BIPOC arts communities. We utilize equity-focused and community-participatory funding initiatives; community-informed evaluation and learning practices; and asset-based network building strategies to inform leadership, advocacy, and action.

BANF was created in a time of crisis to provide resources and networks that support the vibrant Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian American, Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern and other communities of color of Greater Houston in fully displaying their power, values and traditions.

Nominate Community Reviewers

BANF is seeking public nominations for Community Reviewers, or panelists, who will join the organization’s leadership to engage in a peer review process to consider grant applications. Community Reviewers may include independent artists, educators, patrons, community leaders and organizers.

Nominate yourself or someone you know below:

 

Programs

Crisis Relief

At its launch, BANF invested $2 million into BIPOC-founded and led organizations and fiscally-sponsored artist collectives that promote, preserve, and celebrate Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, and other communities of color through arts and cultural programming. This one-time investment was an effort to provide direct and urgent support for Houston’s BIPOC arts ecosystem in the face of the pandemic and compounded crises.

Artist Awards The Artist Award initiative is a $1M, three-year investment directly to artists. Fifty artists, through two rounds of funding (2023/2025), will each receive $20,000 and engage in an eighteen-month learning community.

Cultural Treasures

The Greater Houston regional initiative of the Ford Foundation’s America’s Cultural Treasures will invest $5M of direct resources and technical support in the arts organizations that have anchored our communities of color and shaped Houston’s dynamic and diverse culture that we benefit from today. Applications are open through July 31, 2023.

BANF in the News

Selected coverage of the awards featuring some of our grantees:

Houston Landing

KPRC

Fox26

Houston Public Media

CW39

CW39

Glasstire

Houston Chronicle

Univision

ABC13

Leadership

Sixto Wagan
PROJECT DIRECTOR
Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) Arts Network and Fund

Sixto Wagan is the Project Director for the BIPOC Arts Network and Fund. He leads BANF along with a seven-member Steering Committee and a nine-member Accountability and Advisory Council made up of a diverse group of artists, curators, scholars, organizational leaders and foundation partners, who guide goals and priorities.

Before joining BANF, Wagan was the inaugural director for the Center for Art and Social Engagement (CASE) at the University of Houston. He also led the contemporary art center, DiverseWorks, serving a multitude of capacities including artistic director, co-executive director and performing arts curator.

 

Steering Committee

Kevin Anderson
Founding Chief Executive Officer
The T.R.U.T.H. Project

Eboni Bell-Darcy
Inclusion, Engagement and Training Director
Stages Theatre
Patra Brannon-Isaac
Director of Education and Community Projects
Kinder Foundation

Bao-Long Chu
Program Director – Arts and Parks
Houston Endowment

Ashley DeHoyos Sauder
Curator
DiverseWorks

Tony Diaz
Writer, Activist
and Political Analyst

Nicole Moore-Kriel
Program Officer
Powell Foundation

Roberto Tejada
Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Professor, University of Houston

Kheli Willetts
Principal
Dira Professional Development

Community Consultants &
Accountability and Advisory Council

Anthony Almendarez
Artist and Composer

Sebastien Boncy
Photographer and Educator

Andrew Davis
(aka TAME, The Aspiring Me)
Rapper, Music Producer, and Performance Artist

Eureka Gilkey
Executive Director
Project Row Houses

Torrina Harris
Poet, Organizer, and Educator

Erika Mei Chua Holum
Cynthia Woods Mitchell Assistant Curator
Blaffer Art Museum

Rosa Ana Orlando
Curator

 

Kristi Rangel
Artist and Educator

Lanecia Rouse Tinsley
Artist and Curator

Sophia Torres
Choreographer and Educator

Dr. Michelle Tovar
Director of Education
Buffalo Soldiers Museum

Frances Valdez
Executive Director
Houston In Action

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