Image Description: Repeating curvy long and sometimes wide shapes float in a wavy blue and white watery background. Now and then the curvy shapes meld together. Their colors are shades of light yellows, greens and browns speckled with darker browns and greens. One rounded pouf shape is solid white. Each shape is outlined in black. The shapes together make a world map. A black banner sits in the center of the map and says in green text: Climate Justice Fellowship.
Our Climate Justice Fellowship applications will resume next fall.
Starting 2024, we're streamlining our application process to once a year, in the fall. This year, in addition to the Fellowship for Utopian Practice and the Black Utopian Fellowship, we are excited to announce our new Disability Arts Curatorial Fellowship!
Climate Justice Fellowship 2024
For the SPRING 2024 Cycle, we dedicated one of our three Fellowship slots to the fourth Climate Justice Fellowship.
This year's Climate Justice Fellowship was centered around the theme of "Points of Contact, Conflict and Convergence". This is a call to examine the often contrasting ideas about environmental stewardship and resilience, emphasizing the complexity and urgency of addressing climate change impacts on both land and people.
We invited projects that range from from specific land use conflicts in New York City to more elemental explorations of natural convergences, such as where land meets water, and how our bodies mediate our experience with place-based climate change. We welcome diverse viewpoints on climate crisis solutions, whether they involve architectural barriers, natural defenses, innovative technology, or adaptive strategies like relocation.
Theme provided by Nora Almeida, Climate Justice Fellow 2023.
Please check our General Fellowship Guidelines before applying.
Applicants are encouraged to review our organization’s mission before submitting materials. Our Mission is HERE.
As with each of our Fellowships, the Climate Justice Fellow will also be supported for a full year with communal resources, consultation, project development, access to our online publication, online tools, social media, institutional representation, and a stipend of $2000. Any proposals should keep community and solving common human problems through hands-on civic participation and imagination at the forefront. We are excited to see your ideas!
For the first two years of the Climate Justice Fellowship, the Fellowship was water-based, and was part of a collaboration between Culture Push, arts organization Works on Water, and the Waterfront and Open Spaces Division of the NYC Department of City Planning. The two projects, Walking the Edge and Tending the Edge, served as a catalyst for waterfront exploration, artistic research, and community activation, and were part of the research and outreach process for the Comprehensive Waterfront Plan.
Timeline For Other Fellowships:
October 4, 2024, 11:59 PM ET: Open Call deadline
October 2024: Fellow is informed
November / December 2024: Initial project discussion
October 2024 - October 2025: Continuing support and strategizing
Spring 2024 Information Session Recording
Applicants will be notified of our decision by late April or early May, and should be prepared and available to begin working with Culture Push shortly thereafter.
Any questions should be addressed to cp@culturepush.org with the subject line “Climate Justice Fellowship Question”
our CLIMATE JUSTICE FELLOWS 2020-23
Nora Almeida
CLIMATE JUSTICE FELLOW 2023
PROJECT : OPEN WATER
Nora is an urban swimmer, writer, performance artist, educator, and activist based in Brooklyn / Lenapehoking. Her art explores intersections of archiving, environmental investigation, and spatial disruption. Recent public artworks—Last Street End in Gowanus (2021), Land Use Intervention Library (2022), and Open Water (ongoing)—focus on relationships between people and environmentally disturbed, post-industrial waterfront spaces.
Learn More.
Alicia Raquel Morales
CLIMATE JUSTICE FELLOW 2022
PROJECT: CROWNING IN OCTOBER, OR HOW TO CHANGE SHAPE WHILE REMEMBERING YOUR NAME…
I am a dancer, interdisciplinary artist, and cultural organizer. My aesthetic is quirky, queer, “spanglish,” Boricua, urban, nerdy and working class. I grew up building altars, listening to and making up stories that straddle "real" and unseen worlds, and watching formal and informal ritual work. I am a child of street dance. These practices shape my world view and style. In pandemic times, I have brought my dance practice back outdoors.
Learn More.
Cody Herrmann
CLIMATE JUSTICE FELLOW 2021
PROJECT: FLUSHING WATERWAYS BOATHOUSE
Cody Ann Herrmann is an artist and community organizer based in Flushing, Queens, NYC. Guided by her interest in public space, participatory design methods, and urban resilience Cody’s work often explores urban planning processes while applying an iterative, human centered approach to ecological problem solving. Since 2014 her work has focused on her hometown of Flushing, creating projects critiquing policy related to land use and environmental planning in areas surrounding Flushing Bay and Flushing Creek.
Learn More.
Simone Johnson
CLIMATE JUSTICE FELLOW 2020
PROJECT: Shades of Blue
Experiment Shades of Blue explored policy, law, design and storytelling as tools of world-building for earth-centered water futures. Simone focused on researching The Rights of Nature, the emerging field of law called Earth Jurisprudence, and the movement to revitalize Indigenous laws in Canada, as well as other intersecting interests.
Learn More.
Von Bl3ssing
CLIMATE JUSTICE FELLOW 2020
Project: Green Afrofuturist Project
Concentrating on the racial and class politics of climate change, and their uneven affect on communities of color, Von Bl3ssing seeks ways to transport marginalized people into radical visions of environmentalism, to create stories and studies of and strategies to resist ecological crisis through a 'Green Afrofuturist Project.
Learn More.