Announcing the 2025 Media Artist + Activist Residencies

• 
• 
• 

PHILADELPHIA, PA — Leeway Foundation is proud to announce the 2025 recipients of the Media Artist + Activist Residency (MAR), awarding $125,000 in funding to five powerful collaborations between women, trans*, and gender nonconforming media artists and social justice organizations across the Greater Philadelphia region.

Now in its fifth year, this residency supports deep-rooted, community-rooted residencies that document, amplify, and mobilize cultural and political movements through the transformative power of media and storytelling. This year’s cohort of awardees share a focus on the importance of preservation and documentation as tools for liberatory practices addressing social issues impacting communities on local, state, and global levels. The proposed projects respond to a range of pressing concerns — from housing insecurity and immigrant justice to cultural erasure and divestment from systems of harm — while centering the leadership and lived experiences of Black, immigrant, trans, and LGBQ+ communities.

The 2025 residency projects span a wide range of media forms including documentary film, video projection, multimedia installations, and digital resource campaigns. Together, they spotlight Philadelphia as a site of visionary organizing and community-rooted care.

THIS YEAR’S AWARDEES ARE:

Aisha Mershani will collaborate with Amistad Law Project to produce In the Streets, a public art and storytelling campaign, using wheatpaste photography and audio testimonies to draw powerful connections between resistance movements in Palestine and Philadelphia’s fight for decarceration.

angel shanel edwards will partner with Black Spatial Relics to expand and document Black I.O.N (It’s Ours Now!), a public performance and drama therapy program uplifting court-involved Black youth, by reclaiming city streets as spaces of joy and belonging through video vignettes and public projections.

Bryheem Hawkins will work with Ark of Safety, Philadelphia’s first trans-focused TLGBQ+ safe haven, to create a documentary and multimedia archive honoring the lives, brilliance, and resistance of unhoused queer and trans Philadelphians.

Gabriela Watson-Burkett will join forces with Centro Integral de la Mujer Madre Tierra to launch Empowering Madres Latinas, a multilingual media campaign centering immigrant mothers’ stories and organizing power as a force for feminist immigrant justice.

Melissa Beatriz will collaborate with People’s Budget Office on Participatory Art and Budgeting, a short film and digital resource campaign that demystifies Philadelphia’s budget process and inspires everyday Philadelphians to engage in civic life through art and protest.