Last week, VOW lost a major grant due to the Trump administration’s funding cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).
This essential support funded our Storyteller Initiative, an innovative fellowship providing training and stipends for artists, journalists, and advocates from historically marginalized communities to develop their own oral history projects.
Our amazing fellows are working on projects including:
- An audio documentary exploring the impact of water privatization on communities. Blending investigative journalism with firsthand oral histories, this project amplifies the voices of residents, activists, and policymakers fighting for equitable access to clean and affordable water.
- A multimedia storytelling project with BIPOC leaders working toward fisheries restoration, food sovereignty, and fighting environmental degradation. This project is a collaborative effort to document the impact of habitat loss, dams, salmon farms, bycatch from factory trawlers, and the industrial food system that have severed the relationship that communities have to nature and place.
And we know we’re not alone. Organizations across the country have been impacted by federal cuts—threatening community building and well-being, cultural preservation, access to knowledge, the arts, and independent media. It’s a deeply harmful escalation of government divestment.
We believe documenting and amplifying these under-told stories is vital to a healthy democracy and a more just world. We are committed to fighting for community-based storytelling, equity, and dignity for all.
Please continue supporting organizations doing this work and advocate for the full restoration of NEA, NEH, and IMLS funding. Contact your representatives to communicate the real impact these cuts will have on their constituents (email template here).
We’re launching VOW’s Our Stories Are Resistance campaign in response to these cuts. Together, we’ll continue to stand up for storytelling as a tool for resilience and justice
For more advocacy resources, follow:
- National Humanities Alliance
- American Alliance of Museums
- American Library Association
- Federation of State Humanities Councils
- California Arts Advocates
- Protect My Public Media
