Asian Arts Initiative Welcomes the Velocity Fund

The Velocity Fund, which provides artists direct funding for new projects, will now be hosted at Asian Arts Initiative. Beginning its seventh year of regranting, the Velocity Fund will work within the organizational home of AAI — expanding the depth of its support in alignment with AAI’s mission to create and protect pathways for artists to work within their integrity, towards their vision.

Each year, the Velocity Fund offers twelve Philadelphia-based artists and collectives $5000 to develop and present new projects — particularly those that are experimental in genre, collaborative in practice, grounded in their communities, and thoughtful in impact. Independent artists, collaborative groups, and non-incorporated collectives are welcome to apply.

The Velocity Fund intends to directly support artists and arts-based cultural organizers who conduct their practice outside the studio, and who present them outside traditional art spaces. A Regional Regranting Program of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Velocity has funded multidisciplinary and varied work that use visual arts — including (but never limited to) printmaking, performance, video, puppetry, sculpture, and curation — to expand, archive, learn with, and lift up their publics.

The Velocity Fund was established in 2018 with support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, as one of thirty-five Regional Regranting Programs. Begun by Robert Blackson at Temple Contemporary, the Velocity Fund moved to Philadelphia Contemporary in 2021 under his guidance, until his departure from the organization at the end of 2023. Since its start, the Velocity Fund has supported seventy-six dynamic projects around Philadelphia, including Batikh Batikh, a pop-up cinema and gallery that supports SWANA artists; Sensory Devised Theater Production, a touring immersive theater production for children with disabilities; Cathode Ray Tapestries, a six-week experimental video synthesis workshop led by members of Sound Museum Collective; Our Fishing Log, a storytelling project about local fish and the people who love, source, and gather around them; and many other collaborative visual arts projects that attended to intergenerational and cultural memory, reentry from incarceration, queer love and sanctuary, neighborhood documentary, and arts education outside institutions.

In this next regranting cycle, the Velocity Fund will continue to offer grantees tools for financial literacy, and resources for developing more accessible public programs. Additionally, the Velocity Fund will devote opportunities for grantees to meet each other, and to share their knowledge and experiences.

The Velocity Fund application will open again in Fall 2024, with a free Submittable application, and several public in-person and virtual information sessions.