New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) and NYC Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) Announce $493,350 in Grants for 129 Queens-Based Artists, Artist Collectives, and Small Nonprofits through the Queens Arts Fund (QAF).

2026 Grant Program Funded by DCLA and Administered by NYFA.

The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) and the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA), have announced the 129 recipients of the 2026 Queens Arts Fund (QAF). The annual City-funded program offers project grants to Queens-based artists, artist collectives, and small non-profit organizations of all artistic disciplines to support the local production of artwork and cultural programs that highlight, engage, and bolster the cultural community of Queens. 

The awarded projects will be supported by $493,350 in total funding, and span creative disciplines including dance/choreography, playwriting/screenwriting; social practice; music/sound; video/film; and textile, installation, multidisciplinary, and visual art. The projects create spaces for community-building, engagement, art-making, exploring topics ranging from home and immigration, how environment shapes identity, and imagining just futures to honoring and celebrating our ancestors, community storytelling, and more.

All have strong community tie-ins, as the Queens Arts Fund requires a public component—held in-person, virtually, or combination of both—that takes place in Queens within the 2026 calendar year (January 1-December 31, 2026) and provides Queens community members with the opportunity to experience dynamic, affordable, and accessible arts and cultural events. As such, the QAF represents a significant investment in the cultural community that is essential to the economic and social vibrancy of communities across Queens and all of New York City. The QAF provides support to local artists and organizations through two grant programs. 

Together, the projects present a multi-faceted reflection of Queens—one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse urban areas in the world—and the remarkable creative community that calls the borough home.

Click here for a full list of 2026 recipients and panelists.

“The artists and cultural workers who live, work, and create in neighborhoods across Queens fuel the energy, vibrancy, and cultural offerings of this international borough,” said NYC Cultural Affairs Commissioner Diya Vij. “We’re so proud of this public investment in the work of dozens of individual artists and grassroots arts and cultural organizations, which will give them the resources they need to bring free programming to residents across Queens.”

Michael Royce, NYFA CEO, continued: “Queens Arts Fund supports and activates the work of artists and organizations across Queens. The public component lights up Queens with arts of all disciplines throughout the year, making an already vibrant and bustling borough even more exciting. We’re grateful to our partners at NYC Department of Cultural Affairs for funding this program and investing in the arts in NYC.”

In the application and review process, inclusivity and representation that reflects the diversity of Queens communities was a strong consideration for the selection of panelists and recipients. Nearly 80% of the panelists who chose to self-identify identified as People of Color, and 66% identified as women or gender non-conforming/nonbinary. Among New Work recipients, more than 75% chose to self-identify as People of Color, and 64% identified as women or gender non-conforming/nonbinary. NYFA also ensured that language access was a considered part of the application process, making materials available in Spanish and Chinese, alongside English. 

The Department of Cultural Affairs invests in the city’s artists and small organizations in all five boroughs in partnership with local regrant partners in each borough including NYFA. These investments—which have been sustained at robust levels despite the fiscal challenges facing the city—support hundreds of creatives across the city, who in turn engage New Yorkers with free and affordable arts programming that ensures all New Yorkers have opportunities to experience the wide ranging benefits of the arts.  

QAF offers Arts Access Grants of $2,500 to $5,000 to Queens-based small-budget 501c3 nonprofit organizations or unincorporated artist collectives. These grants support community-based organizations and collectives in their efforts to produce public arts and cultural programs in the Queens communities and neighborhoods where they are located and operate. 

QAF also offers New Work Grants of $2,500 to $5,000 to Queens-based individual artists, unincorporated artist collectives, or collaborations between multiple artists of all disciplines to support the creation of new work. “New Work” is defined as work that has not been produced or presented to an audience before.

2026 QAF projects include:

• Ah-Molla Dance Collective (QAF New Work ‘26)’s ‘역마|Wanderlust’, an interdisciplinary performance project that invites audiences into an immersive world inspired by the Korean folklore of 역마살, the curse of perpetual wandering. This immersive interdisciplinary project will incorporate writing, film, dance, and set design to invite audiences into a world where we are forever wandering and redefining what it means to belong.
  
• Cayena Press, Inc. (QAF Arts Access ‘26)’s 2026 Hispanic Heritage Month: Celebrating America250, a grassroots cultural program designed to honor the contributions of Hispanic communities to the history, culture, and future of the United States, as timed to coincide with the nation’s 250th anniversary. Running September 15-October 15 and centered on family‑friendly events, this program will include performances, bilingual storytimes, and live music and dance presentations that promote bilingual literacy, cultural pride, and intergenerational learning.

• Anjali Kamat and Rehan Ansari (QAF New Work ‘26)’s The Believers, a documentary film on democracy, immigration, and social caste in New York City as seen through the eyes of Queens-based Bangladeshi-American teens who became friends while canvassing for the city’s first South Asian Muslim mayor.

• Medusa (QAF New Work ‘26)’s Vatra Diaspora, a free outdoor event where people of all backgrounds learn and sing Carpatho-Rusyn folk songs against electronic arrangements by Medusa and around a simulated bonfire. The Vatra tradition began in 1983, when Lemko activists in the Carpathian mountains built a fire and reunited communities scattered by decades of forced displacement.
  
• James Petrozzello (QAF New Work ‘26)’s will use the 19th Century tin type photo process to create and exhibit a series of portraits of members of the Queens Caribbean Carnival community titled Carnival: A Portrait in Silver. The slow, handmade process invites an exchange rooted in presence and respect, allowing participants to see themselves rendered with the depth and dignity often reserved for historical subjects. Along with the exhibit, Petrozzello will host a free workshop on the tintype process.

• Eunwoo Nam(QAF New Work ‘26)’s “The Things They Carried” a sound-based project that transforms the personal archives, memories, and migration stories of Queens residents into a compelling long-form audio work. The completed piece will be shared through free public listening events and artist talks at local venues, including the Queens Public Library and Queens Museum.

• Chloe Seibert(QAF New Work ‘26)’s Twin Urns features two large-scale ceramic urns—one called the Manifestor and the other the Incinerator—installed on the footpath of the Queens Botanical Garden that transform visitors’ inner thoughts into fertilizer for the plants.At the end of the summer, the urns will be burned in a public ceremony, and the ashes incorporated into the garden’s compost program.

• Sheep Meadow Dance Theatre (QAF Arts Access ‘26)’s Works in Progress – Conversations with the Artists, a studio performance and open rehearsal where Sheep Meadow Artistic Director Billy Blanken will debut ballet to an original score by Nick Virzi, performed with live music. After the showcase, the audience will be invited to stay for a roundtable discussion with the artists, featuring the dancers, musicians, costume designer, choreographer, and composer.

• sTo Len (QAF New Work ‘26)’s A History of Objects will respond to the objects the artist encounters during a residency at Materials for the Arts by creating a new series of works to be exhibited at Socrates Sculpture Park that engage with their past uses, and re-imagined potential futures. Embodying an in-the-field approach, sTo Len will embed in both locations and consider the intersections between MFTA ’s diversion of materials from the landfill and Socrates’ transformation of a landfill itself.
  
• Queens Poetry Symposium (QAF Arts Access ‘26)’s Poetry on Kissena, a Bilingual English-Chinese Reading at the Queens Public Library at Flushing and a full-day Poetry Symposium on poetics at the Queens Botanical Garden. In celebrating the most diverse borough, the Queens Poetry Symposium offers the community, many of whom are Chinese-speaking immigrants who are not fluent in the English language, an opportunity to celebrate poetry together with other English-speaking general audience members. 

Upcoming Queens Arts Fund events, exhibitions, and film screenings include:

• April 12, 6:00 PM ET at The World Borough Bookstore  | Alma Herrera-Pazmiño and Keely Sanchez (QAF New Work ‘26) will screen their film, Reciprocity, which explores the Andean diaspora in New York City through participants who embody different seasons, reflecting on migration, ancestry, and reconnecting with the earth. The screening will be followed by a guided writing exercise that will ask the audience to sit with the main question of the film: “How do you reconnect with your indigenous roots?”
  
• May 25, 12:00 PM-5:00PM ET at WHAM! Woodside Heights Art Museum | Harley Spiller (QAF New Work ‘26)’s “Curly, Wavy & Straight: Hair Salons & Barber Shops of Woodside Heights” will be exhibited alongside a block party that inspires civic pride and intercultural exploration.
  
• May 30, 7:30PM – 9:30PM ET at Zukor Theater, Kaufman Astoria Studios | Nina Fiore-Bogdanov (QAF New Work ‘26)’s Queens Stories (formerly The Grandparent Film Project) will premiere at the Astoria Film Festival. The project follows a group of first-generation filmmakers in Queens who work together to help each other make short documentaries about their families’ immigrant stories.

“Queens is unquestionably home to the most dynamic and engaging arts and culture scene New York City has to offer. These 129 recipients of the 2026 Queens Arts Fund represent 129 reasons why that fact is indisputable,” said Queens Borough President Donovan Richards Jr. “To the winners of this vital funding, your incredible art not only entertains and excites us—it inspires us to act, propels us forward as a society and makes us a can’t-miss destination for visitors from around the world. Thank you to the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York Foundation for the Arts for your steady partnership in growing the already unparalleled arts and culture scene here in Queens.”

Said New York City Council Deputy Speaker and Chair, Cultural Affairs and Libraries, Nantasha Williams, who represents the 27th Council District in Queens: “Dedicated investments like these are important because they recognize the depth of creativity that exists across Queens and the role artists play in shaping how communities connect, express themselves, and see one another. I appreciate the continued partnership of the Department of Cultural Affairs and NYFA in supporting this work and making this level of investment possible. I’m also glad to see more dollars being directed to Queens artists, given how often the borough has been underfunded compared to others. Artists across Queens are building community, telling stories, and creating spaces for connection, often while working across multiple jobs and navigating funding structures that don’t always align with how that work actually happens. Investments like this help address the gaps we heard in our hearings around affordability and sustainability by providing support that meets artists where they are and allows their work to continue to grow and remain accessible in the communities it comes from.”