Seven artists and six nonprofit organizations are finally getting the chance to tell their story, funded by a grant from the Asian Community Fund at The Boston Foundation, a community foundation.
The Asian Community Fund, or ACF, and its Asian American Pacific Islander, or AAPI Arts and Culture Collaborative announced April 6 the 13 winners of the first-ever Narrative-Change Grants, which provide $115,000 to be split among the awardees in an effort to uplift AAPI stories.
After identifying the need to support the arts community in greater Boston, ACF worked with community partners and leaders to make the grant possible after two years of planning.
“We decided that the narrative change grants were a strong opportunity to be a resource to AAPI storytelling around the state, to uplift our stories and deepen belonging for the AAPI community,” said Jobelle Mesa, senior manager of the ACF at The Boston Foundation.
With nearly 150 applications, the selection process was highly competitive. Danielle Kim, executive director of the ACF, said that she and Mesa were looking for projects that “showcased the full breadth of the AAPI experience.” To Kim, it meant confronting the stereotypes that have been put onto Asian-Americans, including the “model minority” myth and perceptions of Asian Americans as monolithic or perpetual foreigners.
“In greater Boston, one-third of all residents who are of Asian descent live below the poverty line. There’s a perception that all Asian American residents are affluent and extremely successful in every metric,” Kim said. “But we know there are also stories of resilience and strength in our community.”
The theme for the grant was “Building, Becoming, and Belonging.” By providing financial support through the grant, ACF gives AAPI-identifying awardees a platform and capacity to share their stories with others. Some of the projects that the grant supports include narratives around the transnational adoptee experience, being a multiracial Asian in Massachusetts and disability justice.
Brian Lim, one of the grant’s awardees, is the founder of The Flavor Continues, a nonprofit driving social impact through street and club dance programming. With the grant, Lim plans to create a video documenting the experiences of first and second-generation Asian American dancers in historically Black and brown-dominated street and club dance communities.
“When I started dancing in the early 2000s, there wasn’t a lot of Asians in the street and club dance space. Now, if you go to a street or club dance event, I wouldn’t be surprised if Asians were more than half the room,” Lim said, “and I think it really speaks to the Asian experience in America.”
Straddling two cultures and often perceived as neither fully American nor fully Asian, Lim found a sense of belonging in the world of street dance.
“This space of street and club dance is a space for you to just be boldly who you are,” Lim said.
That isn’t to say there haven’t been struggles. In the early years of his career, he remembers debates over whether Asians could be “legitimate practitioners” of club and street dance, given that many were introduced to the practice much later in life than their non-Asian counterparts.
But after more than 20 years in the field, he founded a nonprofit organization with Asian people in leadership roles.
“I’m really excited to document [these particular generations] of practitioners, stories and histories, Lim said, “I’m a slice of that pie, but it is so much larger than that. This is a larger story of collective solidarity of not just the Asian folks but other Black and brown folks on a street level.”
The projects funded by the grant are set to continue until March 2027, when they will then be shared through a showcase.
“The more the general public understands and can relate to the idea of belonging and what it means for the AAPI community, the more people will feel the richness of arts and culture around our state — how that’s a strength,” Mesa said.
