Please Note: Vigilant Love sunsetted on March 31, 2025. This program is no longer active.

See Our 2024 Artist Activist Fellows in Action!

Credit for this short film goes to Melba Martinez at Frutamala Productions

💌 You’re Invited! 💌

Pathways to Liberation: Artwork of Struggle, Joy, and Resistance

After 6 months of dedicated work, one-on-one sessions with mentors, and peer support during monthly creative co-working sessions, we’re excited to invite our community to "Pathways to Liberation: Artwork of Struggle, Joy, and Resistance," a showcase of all the creative work and talent from our first-ever Artist Activist Fellowship program.

In June, Vigilant Love welcomed an incredible cohort of 10 young, emerging artists from BIPOC communities with a desire to create art that connects to abolitionist movements, community care, and healing justice. Through the Artist Activist Fellowship, we paired each fellow with an Artist Activist Mentor, a phenomenal group of BIPOC singers, songwriters, filmmakers, visual artists, painters, crafters, and more who believe in the power of strengths-based mentorship and political art.

Join us for a powerful evening with hors d'oeuvres, drinks provided by Saffron Cowboy Coffee, and a program showcasing a wide range of political themes including:

• Longing for home in diaspora

• Preservation of Black lineages and familial archives

• Resource theft from the global South

• Violence and liberation within the university encampments for Palestine

• The joy, stories, and meaning found in cultural objects

• Lived experiences of border violence, Indigeneity, and self-and-ancestral discovery

• Historical foraging practices of Black Americans and indigenous peoples in Tongva and Chumash lands

• The intersections of mass incarceration and colonialism

• The war in Sudan through the lens of familial grief

• Struggle and resistance from Turtle Island to Palestine

• & much more

Vigilant Love’s Artist Activist Fellowship

The Vigilant Love Artist Activist Fellowship is a six-month program for young, emerging artists ages 18-24 from Muslim, Black, Indigenous, and/or POC (BIPOC) communities who have a desire to create political art that connects to abolitionist movements, community care, and healing justice. We believe that artist activists play a critical role in disrupting systems of violence and dehumanization and building pathways to liberation and healing – the Artist Activist Fellowship honors and resources this important work by ensuring young artists have the resources and deep, intergenerational, and cross-communal relationships needed to sustain this work for the long haul.

All Vigilant Love Artist Activist Fellows will receive one-on-one mentorship and coaching from values-aligned Muslim and BIPOC artists in community, peer support from their 10-person fellowship cohort and the broader Vigilant Love community, and resources to hone their identities and voices as artists activists. Fellows will also receive a $1000 participation stipend and an additional $500 to support the creation of artwork to showcase at a community exhibit at the end of the program. 

Young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 who identify as Muslim, Black, Indigenous, and/or a Person of Color/racialized person are invited to apply to the Artist Activist Fellowship. Ideal candidates include artist activists who:

• Are engaged with an artistic medium they would like to further develop in community with the support of a seasoned artist activist mentor 

• Have a desire to learn and create art that connects to abolition, community safety, surveillance, healing justice, gender justice, racial justice, disability justice, transformative justice, anti-Zionism, indigenous & land sovereignty, the War on Terror and intersecting themes

• Live in Southern California, with a preference for folks who are Los Angeles-based

Meet The Artist Activist Mentors

All Artist Activist Mentors identify as BIPOC/racialized people and/or Muslim and BIPOC. Artist Activist Mentors have a strong artistic practice or career that reflects, honors, and uplifts the importance of political art, and have a desire to mentor and support emerging artists through a relational and strengths-based approach. Click through the photos to learn more about each artist!