Art and Change Grant and Leeway Transformation Award

Overview

The Leeway Foundation is a Philadelphia-based grantmaking organization that funds women, trans, and gender nonconforming artists and cultural producers whose work engages with social change. The foundation operates two primary grant programs for individual artists: the Art and Change Grant (ACG) and the Leeway Transformation Award (LTA). Both programs support work across a wide range of artistic disciplines, including film, documentary, video, and media arts, that uses creative practice to advance social justice and community change.

In 2025, the Leeway Foundation awarded $180,000 in Transformation Awards to 12 artists and $65,000 in Art and Change Grants to 29 artists, for a combined annual distribution of $245,000 directly to individual artists in the Greater Philadelphia region.

Art and Change Grant (ACG)

The Art and Change Grant provides $5,000 grants to women, trans, and gender nonconforming artists and cultural producers living in Greater Philadelphia who are creating art for social change. As of 2026, the grant amount increased from $2,500 to $5,000. The grant is intended for projects at active stages of development or production rather than for completed works.

2026 ACG Details

• Grant amount: $5,000 per project
• Deadline: August 1, 2025 (2025 cycle); 2026 deadline to be announced
• Geographic eligibility: Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, or Philadelphia County
• Age requirement: At least 18 years old
• Identity requirement: Identify as a woman, trans, and/or gender nonconforming person
• Project requirement: Must be an art-for-social-change project with a defined start and end date. Leeway does not fund retroactively - project start dates must be after the notification date (approximately October 26, 2026 for the 2026 cycle)
• Social change categories: Applicants must identify 1 to 3 social change categories that represent their work, including cultural preservation/restoration, decarceration, disability justice, economic justice, environmental justice, feminism, housing justice, immigrant justice, Indigenous sovereignty, LGBQA social movements, racial justice, and transgender justice/gender self-determination

ACG Restrictions

Applicants may not apply if they:

• Are a full-time student in an arts degree program
• Have an active Art and Change Grant project
• Have received a 2025 Leeway Transformation Award
• Have received a 2025 Media Artist + Activist Residency
• Have outstanding reports due from previous Leeway grants

Applicants may apply for and receive an Art and Change Grant and either the Transformation Award or the Media Artist + Activist Residency in the same year. The Change Partner form is no longer required as of 2026, but applicants may include an optional Letter of Support from a community member, collaborator, or project partner.

Application Materials

The ACG application requires:

• Pages 1-3: Artist/Project Information
• Page 4: Experience
• Pages 5-9: Project Description
• Page 10: Project Budget
• Page 11: Application Checklist and Verification

Applications are evaluated by an independent peer review panel. The 2025 review panel consisted of singer and composer Emily Bate, curator and educator Imani Roach, and film producer and program manager Sydney Alicia Rodriguez.

Leeway Transformation Award (LTA)

The Transformation Award provides unrestricted annual awards of $15,000 to women, trans, and gender nonconforming artists and cultural producers living in Greater Philadelphia who create art for social change and have done so for the past 5 years or more. Unlike the Art and Change Grant, the Transformation Award recognizes a career trajectory rather than a specific project.

2026 LTA Details

• Award amount: $15,000 (unrestricted)
• Deadline: May 15, 2026 (Stage 1)
• Geographic eligibility: Must have lived for the past 2 or more years (since April 2024) in Greater Philadelphia: Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, or Philadelphia County
• Age requirement: At least 18 years old
• Identity requirement: Identify as a woman, trans, and/or gender nonconforming artist
• Experience requirement: Must have been creating art for social change for the past 5 years or more, demonstrating a long-term commitment to social change work

Two-Stage Application Process

The LTA uses a two-stage review:

Stage 1 (open to all eligible applicants): Due May 15, 2026. A panel of community-based artists and cultural producers reviews applications and invites up to 30 applicants to submit work samples for Stage 2. Panel decisions sent to all applicants in August 2026.

Stage 2 (by invitation only): All invited applicants receive an application stipend to help cover the costs of preparing work samples. Leeway offers in-person meetings and application feedback as needed. Stage 2 deadline announced to finalists only. Final awardees announced in December 2026.

LTA applicants may apply for and receive the Art and Change Grant and/or Window of Opportunity Grant in the same year. LTA applicants may not apply for the Media Artist + Activist Residency in the same year.

2025 LTA Recipients

The 2025 Transformation Award cohort of 12 recipients represents a range of disciplines including dance, theater, performance, film, literature, folk and traditional arts, culinary arts, social practice, and multidisciplinary work. Recipients range in age from their mid-20s to early 70s. Their practices engage with immigrant and refugee justice, cultural preservation, racial justice, environmental justice, prison abolition, Palestinian liberation, gender justice, mental health and community healing, and Black, queer, and trans liberation. Each recipient received $15,000 in unrestricted support.

Eligibility Summary

Both grants share core eligibility requirements:

Film, documentary, and media arts work is eligible alongside all other artistic disciplines. Artists must be creating work that engages with social change - art intended primarily for commercial entertainment or without a meaningful social justice dimension is unlikely to be competitive.

Historical Context

The Leeway Foundation was established to support women and trans artists in the Greater Philadelphia region. The foundation's grantmaking is rooted in the belief that art is a tool for social transformation and that artists working at the intersection of creative practice and social justice need direct financial support to sustain their work.

The Art and Change Grant has been operating for over two decades, providing project-based grants to artists at various stages of their careers. The Transformation Award was created to recognize artists with a sustained, long-term commitment to art for social change - addressing a gap in the funding landscape where career-level recognition for community-engaged artists is rare.

In 2026, the ACG grant amount doubled from $2,500 to $5,000, reflecting the foundation's response to rising costs and the need for more substantial project support. The foundation also eliminated the required Change Partner form in favor of an optional Letter of Support, streamlining the application process.

Who Should Apply

Women, trans, and gender nonconforming filmmakers and media artists in the Greater Philadelphia area (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, or Philadelphia County) who are creating documentary, film, or video work with a social change dimension.

• For project-stage support: Apply for the Art and Change Grant ($5,000) when you have a specific project at an active stage of development or production with a defined timeline.
• For career recognition: Apply for the Transformation Award ($15,000) if you have 5 or more years of sustained art-for-social-change practice and want unrestricted support to continue your work.

Artists outside the Greater Philadelphia region are not eligible. Artists whose work does not have a social justice dimension are not competitive applicants.

See Also

For documentary filmmakers building a social impact campaign alongside their film, see Documentary Financing: Building Your Stack. For production planning tools, use the Production Schedule Calculator. For modeling revenue projections for your project, use the Revenue Forecast Calculator.