
Ida B. Wells Fund
The Ida B. Wells Fund partners with artist-activists across a spectrum of creative disciplines. Last year the fund was capitalized with $100,000 for direct investment in ten filmmakers and an additional $100,000 in coaching (producing) legal support, audience development, marketing, and communications. The program is administered by chromatic black™ and is designed as the beginning of a long-term partnership between Chromatic Black, the artist-activist, and the broader chromatic black collective. This season the fund expands to offer awards ranging from $500 to $25,000 in three categories—short-form filmmaking, creative placemaking, and visual arts. The award recipients are chosen by an interdisciplinary panel composed of expert curators, filmmakers, producers, other arts professionals, and scholars through a multi-step review process. This group provided three functional areas of support: strategic counsel, review, and jury. Chromatic Black support projects that are reflective and illustrative of the theme of disrupting the master narrative. We understand the master narrative to be structural violence and all of its mutations.