Vigilant Love is now accepting applications until Wednesday, Dec. 19, for the Solidarity Arts Fellowship, a program dedicated to engaging young Japanese and Muslim American leaders in creative organizing to resist Islamophobia and deepen their understanding of intercommunity solidarity.
Applications can be found online at tinyurl.com/solidarityarts or on Vigilant Love’s website at www.vigilantlove.org.
Fellows will participate in a free six-month program that includes leadership development, arts-based community organizing, and field trips. These field trips include transformative and immersive experiences into understanding community, including visits to the Manzanar National Historic Site, a SoCal masjid/mosque, the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center’s Aratani Theatre for a special viewing of PULLproject Ensemble’s theater piece called “Tales of Clamor,” and much more.
Fellows will also gain access to facilitation, training, and mentorship from experienced leaders and artists from the Muslim and Japanese American communities.
The Solidarity Arts Fellowship is open to Japanese and Muslim American college students and requires no previous artistic experience to apply. Applicants must be invested in the connections between identity, history and community, as well as in building intersectional relationships and using creative organizing for social change. Applicants must also be available for all of the following dates:
Jan. 19-20: Opening retreat
Feb. 2: Second retreat
March 24: Third retreat
April 27: Manzanar Pilgrimage
May 16: Bridging Communities Iftar
June 30: Closing retreat
Vigilant Love is a Los Angeles-based grassroots network centering communities most impacted by Islamophobia and violence, composed of a multiethnic, multigenerational and interfaith collective. The Solidarity Arts Fellowship emerges from a legacy of bridging Muslim and Japanese American communities by drawing connections between historic anti-Japanese racism and incarceration, and contemporary Islamophobia and state violence.
Vigilant Love’s Solidarity Arts Fellowship is co-sponsored by the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), Nikkei for Civil Rights & Redress (NCRR), the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center (JACCC), the Muslim Anti-Racism Collaborative (Muslim ARC), and the Tuna Canyon Detention Station Coalition (TCDSC).