Do you remember what life was like one year ago? Let’s travel back in time: People around the world were just beginning to process the trauma, grief and loss created by a multiyear pandemic. A coordinated attack on the bodily autonomy and human rights of women, transgender and gender expansive people was gaining momentum. The white nationalist cultural movement’s systematic efforts to erase racial history, queer studies, and social-emotional learning from public education was underway. And a(nother) contentious election season was taking shape. We’ve been through a lot—and real talk—we’re st ..read more

In 2022, the Pop Culture Collaborative proudly made $2.2 in narrative infrastructure grants to 27 inspiring field partners. Since our launch in 2016, the Pop Culture Collaborative has prioritized support for both Narrative Infrastructure, the research, leadership, core capacity, pipelines, networks, and gathering spaces that enable a field or network to operate effectively and in deep coordination; and Narrative Immersion, when millions of people are immersed in a narrative ocean of content and experiences that normalize new realities, behaviors, and identities. Since then we have invested alm ..read more

After the early leak of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn fifty years of legal precedent around abortion access, the Pop Culture Collaborative, with support from an anonymous donor, activated our Becoming America Fund’s narrative-focused, rapid response grantmaking capacity. The Collaborative is honored to support the critical work of artists, media makers, cultural leaders, and movement organizers that will help tens of millions of people make meaning of what’s next in a post-Roe world, find care and connection amidst ongoing trauma, and ultimately, step into the fight for reprodu ..read more

The Pop Culture Collaborative is delighted to announce the 2022 Becoming America Fund narrative network, over three dozen grantee partners and Pluralist Visionaries who will work together to build the yearning in tens of millions of people for a just and pluralist future.   First launched in 2020, the Becoming America Fund supports pop culture for social change practitioners to immerse millions of Americans in narrative oceans of pop culture content that ignite passion, curiosity, and faith in our ability to create something truly visionary, together: a just and pluralist society ..read more

The COVID-19 pandemic has made it clear that the survival and design strategies that serve Disabled populations can actually serve everyone. These are strategies such as working from home, being vigilant about germs, pacing yourself, and the use of digital systems to organize and communicate remotely. So we must also pay attention to lessons and leadership of the stories, artwork, innovations, and transformations that come from art, culture and design that is Disabled-centered and -empowered. The problem is by no means a lack of Disabled artists. The challenge is a consistent lack of access, u ..read more

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Everyday, the Pop Culture Collaborative team works with our partners to move closer to our North Star: a robust, well-resourced pop culture for social change field that has the resources they need to unleash abundant thinking, inspire deeper bonds across our differences, and spark deep yearning in millions of people to co-create a just and pluralist society. When we launched the Becoming America Fund in 2020, we knew that philanthropy could do more to support the pop culture for social change field to proactively work towards this vision. Our grantees, funding partners, and staff also recogniz ..read more

We’re pleased to share that Pop Culture Collaborative was featured in the June 2021 issue of Inside Philanthropy: Some of the most enduring stories we tell each other on screen and on the page aren’t just entertainment. They’re empathy-generating machines. Late 1970s miniseries sensation “Roots” didn’t just bring the realities and horrors of slavery into homes across the country—it also forced white America to empathize with a Black single family across generations. More recently, Ava Duvernay’s Netflix offering “When They See Us” brought more awareness to the Central Park Five. But not only t ..read more

2020 laid America bare. With the most consequential election of our lifetimes, the raging COVID-19 pandemic, and protests around the nation in support of Black lives, the events of the past year exposed a tug-of-war between pluralist belonging and nationalist exclusion—a conflict that has raged since the country’s founding. Grappling with what it means to be an American today, we were each called upon to consider our role in civic life, our responsibility to our communities, and the opportunities available to us in such a historic moment. The Pop Culture Collaborative responded with Becoming A ..read more

When Emmy- and Peabody-winning journalist Imara Jones called for a “reimagination and an expansion of Blackness” in Time Magazine’s recent issue featuring voices of the “New American Revolution,” she did so with the goal of shifting the current culture of hostility towards transgender people in the United States. “Trans people, just through our existence, show the power and the resilience of change, and possibility of how we can do things differently,” wrote Jones. “We are creating a future less defined by gender roles, and defined more by what we can create than what we can destroy.” To under ..read more