Fifteen community-based organizations across the country join a three-year cohort using culture and creativity to drive long-term community transformation

The Kresge Foundation’s Arts & Culture Program, in partnership with the Movement Strategy Center, today announced Culture of Justice 2.0, a three-year, $6 million initiative that invests in and collaborates with 15 community-based organizations that contribute to cultural and community resilience in neighborhoods across the country.

The Kresge Arts & Culture Program’s strategy positions culture and creativity as drivers of more just communities. Culture of Justice 2.0 supports a cohort of community-based organizations through general operating grants and additional programmatic support, including peer exchanges, wellness, co-learning and knowledge-sharing engagements. The Kresge lead for the initiative is Inés Familiar Miller, program officer with the Arts & Culture Program.

“The Arts & Culture Program focuses on the role that culture and creativity play in advancing community power-building and justice movements,” said Regina Smith, managing director of Kresge’s Arts & Culture Program. Launched in February 2026, the three-year investment builds on the foundation’s original Culture of Justice initiative, as well as the program’s experience supporting learning communities and developing new approaches to advance community-driven priorities.

This new phase explores additional ways place-based community organizations contribute to the preconditions for long-term systems transformation by mobilizing directly impacted residents through cultural and creative practices.

The trailblazing organizations selected for the Culture of Justice 2.0 cohort are:

• AgitArte, Santurce, PR
• BECOME, Chicago, IL
• Cooperative Community of New West Jackson, Jackson, MS
• Marian Cheek Jackson Center, Chapel Hill, NC
• Maverick Landing Community Services, East Boston, MA
• Mixed Blood Theatre, Minneapolis, MN
• Music and Culture Coalition of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA
• One Square World, Boston, MA
• Prismid Sanctuary, Portland, OR
• RE:Frame Youth Arts Center, Phoenix, AZ
• Richmond LAND, Richmond, CA
• Sins Invalid, San Francisco, CA
• SoHarlem, New York, NY
• University of Orange, Orange, NJ
• Wisdom Institute Detroit, Detroit, MI

“This cohort of culture and community practitioners represents bright spots in how cultural and community resilience manifests in place and across generations,” said Smith. “The work of these organizations highlights the power of people and place and their role in long-term community transformation.”

The initiative is anchored in three pillars:

• Strengthen community-based partners: Support and strengthen organizations using culture and creativity as an essential dimension of long-term systems transformation.
• Deepen connections across place: Expand access to networks working to advance culture and community resilience, connecting organizations across cities and regions.
• Collectively envision thriving futures: Create space for partners to envision a future where people living with low incomes can thrive and lead holistic, joyful and self-determined lives.

In its new iteration, Culture of Justice 2.0 aims to address power dynamics, promote community-led solutions and support cohort members in leading the initiative. Collaborating with an intermediary is a direct and strategic investment in shifting power and strengthening an ecosystem approach. One cohort participant shared that “working with Movement Strategy is exactly the type of support our community needs at this time.”

Grounded in grantee experience, transformative movement praxis and creativity, Movement Strategy Center is curating the three-year cohort, which began with the design and facilitation of an expansive five-month co-design process with cohort participants. That process shaped, and will continue to shape, learning opportunities, peer exchanges and wellness offerings throughout the next three years.

“[This is a] Cohort based on deep listening and implementation of ideas […] for a shared vision and future building.” The Movement Strategy Center leads for the initiative are Sophie Lan Hou, vice president of ecosystem and innovation; Anastasia David, senior director of grants and capacity building; and Christine Juang, project and partnership steward.

“In this monumental time of transition, these movement and community leaders are doing essential work,” said Lan Hou. “They are collectively envisioning a thriving and equitable future through creativity, reimagination and culture while building the relationships, capacities and conditions needed for that future to emerge.”

In June, the cohort had its first in-person retreat in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on the island known by its Taíno name, Borikén. The gathering focused on deepening relationships among cohort members, grounding visions for the future in shared analysis and collective practice, and enabling restorative wellness to support leaders and sustain movements through the long-term work of cultural change and systems transformation.

“Being in space with a funder in a way that the power dynamic did not overshadow the purpose of the retreat was new,” one cohort member said in an anonymous survey. “Having Regina and Inés present added so much. I’ve never engaged with funders in this way before, and it was very refreshing.”

The retreat included an opening ceremony with Taíno elders, workshops with traditional knowledge keepers and site visits to Corporación Piñones Se Integra and host grantee AgitArte. Ancestral knowledge, cultural traditions and creative practice are at the heart of social change and help communities create powerful societal transformation.

Grantees shared they left the retreat “feeling energized and looking forward to the next session” and “felt as invested in the cohort’s missions as their own because of how [the cohort was] able to connect.”