The Laundromat Project, the New York–based nonprofit founded by Risë Wilson in 1999 to encourage artmaking and community building among artists and their neighbors, has announced the recipients of its flagship development program Create Change. In 2020, ten fellows and four artists-in-residence will work to enact social change through creative projects, which will each receive up to $20,000 in support.

Artists-in-residence Ariana Faye Allensworth, Sydney Baloue, ​​and Jaclyn Reyes ​and​ Xenia Diente ​will each collaborate with different communities and local partners to develop creative solutions for social issues. Allensworth will work with the New York City Housing Authority to document and archive the experiences of residents in public housing. Baloue will engage with the city’s ballroom-dancing community to create a series of events as well as an oral history archive of black, Latino, and LGBTQ culture. Reyes and Diente will organize a series of community conversations and a public art festival celebrating the Filipino diaspora in Woodside, Queens.

The Create Change Fellows will develop and practice strategies for making community-oriented art related to the theme of abundance over a six-month period. The fellows are Sariyah Benoit (the Bronx), Sackona Fitts (Manhattan), Laura Bustillos Jáquez (Manhattan), Terry Marshall (Brooklyn), Simone?! Satchell (Queens), Aisha Shillingford (Brooklyn), Rochelle Jamila Wilbun (Brooklyn), Selamawit Worku (Brooklyn), Kayva Yang (Brooklyn), and Gisela Zuniga (Brooklyn).

The cohort was selected by the Laundromat Project’s 2020 artist and community council comprising Novella Ford, the manager for public programs at the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; Emma Osore, the director of community at the New Museum incubator NEW INC; artist Tattfoo Tan; and Lauren Zelaya, the director of public programs at the Brooklyn Museum.