Lilla Jewel Awards
Women and folks of marginalized genders have been overlooked, excluded, disregarded, whitewalled from traditional art institutions for centuries. To this day, the vast majority of permanent collections in museums around the world are largely dominated by White-Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy.
The Lilla Jewel Award—named in honor of artist, radical feminist, and suffragist Lilla Jewel—was created to address these inequities by resourcing and amplifying Oregon-based artists of marginalized genders who advance a social change message through their work. Created in 1997, the Lilla Jewel Awards have funded dozens of poets, choreographers, singers, painters, photographers, filmmakers, writers, and other artists embedded in our social justice movements. Meet last year’s awardees Crystal Meneses and Yanely Rivas Maldonado.
The award supports artists with diverse backgrounds, perspectives and experiences.
Eligibility
To be eligible for an award, applicants must:
- Be Oregon residents;
- Be at least 18 years of age; and
- Be of a marginalized gender, including trans and cis women, trans men, nonbinary people, gender non-conforming people, intersex people, and people of all genders that have been historically underrepresented and/or oppressed by structures of power.
Priorities
We are looking for artists whose work is:
- Steeped in social justice, touching on and calling the public to confront and address racial, economic, disability, gender and/or environmental injustice;
- Has strong social engagement and collaboration within their communities;
- Relevant to the struggles of social justice movements and communities most impacted by injustice.
Process
This award specifically seeks to support and recognize artists through an unrestricted and open award, not necessarily a particular art piece or project. We want to reward and invest in artists as activists who contribute to, elevate, educate within, and lend support to Oregon’s social, racial, environmental, economic, disability, and gender justice movements in Oregon.
Each year, the Lilla Jewel Award Committee—composed of former Lilla Jewel Award winners—selects one or more artists to receive an award.
Awards are $10,000 per artist and if selected, artists may serve in the Lilla Jewel Award Committee.
Applications are due Thursday, February 27 at 5 p.m. PST. Awards will be announced by the end of April.
Because this is an award made to an individual, it’s considered taxable income, and will be reported on Form 1099-MISC. If this presents a problem for you, please let us know and we will work with you to find a solution.
Open Opportunities
If there are open opportunities, they will be listed through our Submittable page, below. Make sure to sign up for our newsletter to be notified when they open.
Lilla Jewel Award Application and scoring guide
Frequently Asked Questions
The Lilla Jewel Award typically opens the application cycle each Spring. You can apply for the award via our online platform, Submittable. The first time you apply, you will need to create an account with your email address and a password. If you don’t see the application in Submittable, that means that the application is not open at this time.
Yes. If you’d like to look at the most current application questions, you may download them here.
Please note that we may make changes to the application from one cycle to the next, so make sure you check out the most recent version in Submittable once the application opens.
This opportunity is open to artists of marginalized genders: trans and cis women, trans men, nonbinary people, gender non-conforming people, intersex people, and people of any gender that have been historically underrepresented and/or oppressed by structures of power.
Applicants can can be musicians, performers, filmmakers, dancers, writers, poets, photographers, printmakers, sculptors, and multi-disciplinary and spoken-word artists, among many others.
Applicants do not need to be considered “professionals” or work full time in the arts in order to qualify, but their work must reach an audience in order to have an impact.
Artists must live and work in Oregon and must be at least 18 years old.
The Lilla Jewel Award Committee—composed of former Lilla Jewel Awardees—reads and scores applications after the award cycle is closed and meet to deliberate around June and make decisions.
At this point, only individual artists are allowed to apply.
If you can’t find an answer to your questions in the FAQ, please contact us.
