BANF 2023 Houston Cultural Treasures Announcement

Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Have Their Say

The Houston Cultural Treasures Announcement Event and State of the Network Panel

- Recorded Live on 11.02.2023

- at The DeLUXE Theater.

The BIPOC Arts Network and Fund named the cohort of 11 organizations named as Houston Cultural Treasures. The panel discussion framed learning and hopes from different segments of BANF communities. BANF will invest $5 million over two years (2024-25) in eleven organizations w/ both technical support and unrestricted cash funding.

Houston Cultural Treasures invests in the arts organizations that have anchored our communities of color and shaped Houston’s dynamic and diverse culture that we benefit from today. We honor their survival, persistence, and resilience.

The Houston arts community has celebrated its ability to collaborate and connect. We celebrate that connectedness as a Houston strength and are building a two-year learning cohort of BIPOC organizations and their leadership as an essential part of the experience. To be a Houston Cultural Treasure is to commit to strengthening the Houston BIPOC arts ecosystem. BANF’s vision is an ecosystem that empowers BIPOC artists, organizations, and communities in the Greater Houston Area w/ transformative opportunities to dream, connect, collaborate, and create.

The Houston Cultural Treasures initiative is part of a larger national initiative from the Ford Foundation created to acknowledge and honor the diversity of artistic expression and excellence across the nation.”

The institutions honored today are:

Arte Publico Press

Buffalo Soldiers National Museum

Community Artists’ Collective

Community Music Center of Houston

Houston Museum of African American Culture

Indo-American Association

Multicultural Education and Counseling through the Arts (MECA)

The Nia Cultural Center

SHAPE Community Center

Silambam Houston

Join us in preserving history, building community, and creating the future by supporting these institutions; visit their websites and find out how you can support these Houston Cultural Treasures.

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BIPOC Arts Network & FundBIPOC Arts Network & Fund

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.

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.

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.

BANF is an independent initiative whose programming is funded by the generous contributions of national and local foundations, including Houston Endowment, the Ford Foundation, The Brown Foundation, Inc., The Cullen Foundation, Kinder Foundation and The Powell Foundation.