Being an independent artist comes with its fair share of challenges, but a Springfield organization has just given 15 local artists a way to help mitigate some of them with grant money and professional development opportunities.
Earlier this summer, the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts, a Springfield nonprofit, announced the members of the ValleyCreates 2026 Capacity-Building Cohort. Those members are rapper and producer A U R of Springfield; multidisciplinary artist Gri Martinez Saex of Springfield; multidisciplinary artist Julieth Cabral of Wilbraham; singer Taija New of Chicopee; photographer and community organizer Talysha Rivera of Springfield; poet, open mic host, and yoga teacher Camille Asia of Northampton; multidisciplinary artist Elayna Jason of Northampton; dancer and choreographer Francesca Baron of Northampton; rapper Tableek of South Hadley; illustrator Kalyani Kastor of Deerfield; actor and drag performance artist Patric Madden of Northampton; actor Sabine Denise Jacques of Amherst; potter Vivian Gay of Plainfield; multidisciplinary artist María Sparrow of Buckland; and multidisciplinary artist Tony(a) Lemos of Conway.
Through its Capacity-Building Program, the organization awards unrestricted $2,500 grants to selected artists aged 18 and older in Hampshire, Franklin and Hampden counties. Over a six-month period, recipients also participate in professional development workshops focusing on goal-setting and personal finance, alongside one-on-one coaching and cohort networking events.
Emma Mesa-Melendez, director of communications at the Community Foundation of Western Mass, said that the organization’s work hopes to help artists in a time in which the creative sector has had to contend with government defunding.
Artists “not only create beautiful work but speak to the injustices that exist in the world and can act as a voice for communities,” she said. “We want to make sure that they are able to do that with [the] proper resources.”
The funding comes from ValleyCreates, the Community Foundation’s arts program, and is administered by Assets for Artists (A4A), which operates from the MASS MoCA campus in North Adams.
“It’s really important to feel like art matters and that it’s important to the community and to ourselves, too,” Kastor said. “I think it can get brushed aside really easily in today’s climate on what’s important for communities and individuals, but I think it’s been proven time and again that art’s a core necessity in a thriving community and [in] connecting with ourselves and each other.”
Kastor learned about the Capacity-Building Grants from her former mentor, Mark Guglielmo, who had been part of a cohort in 2021. Having benefited from the cohort himself, Guglielmo recognized the program as an ideal fit for Kastor and urged her to apply.
As a new member of the cohort, Kastor plans to use a portion of the grant to purchase materials she previously felt hesitant to try, such as large canvases. “I’m really excited to have the funds to explore and experiment without the stress of thinking, ‘Oh, if this doesn’t work, it was a waste of money,’” she said.
For Baron, a dancer, choreographer, producer and educator, the notion of capacity-building is about building — “working toward something in the future, expanding growth, forward movement and creating more space … to spread the artistic joy in creation with more people.”
She plans to allocate her grant toward upcoming projects, including a five-person dance piece slated to debut this fall. The financial backing is crucial, she noted, because it removes the immediate burden of production costs. “It really lightens the mental-emotional load and really gives me the space to fully be immersed in the work.”
Jacques, an actor, theater artist, educator and facilitator, echoed that sentiment and said that capacity-building means “making more room and more space to experience the joy of what we do, how we create.” The program’s webinar on how to do taxes as an artist, for example, will give her “more space to think about the creativity than the, ‘Oh, how do I do this really difficult part [of my] taxes?’”
“It releases some anxiety, which then allows me to create more space for the excitement and the joy and being able to know I have this skill if I need it,” she said.
Jacques is looking forward to building relationships with her fellow cohort members. “I feel like we’re all doing such beautiful, amazing, different things, and we’re gonna branch off and do even more beautiful, amazing things,” she said. “[We’ll be] able to call in and call on each other like, ‘Hey, I have this project, and I thought of you.’”
Madden, who performs as the drag character Dame Judi Dentures, has already spent half of their grant money on a student loan payment. Still, they’re saving the other half to use on a future project, though they haven’t decided which one yet. It might be a free drag show they’re producing in September for queer elders in Holyoke — which is fitting, they said, because Dame Judi is 1,200 years old.
Madden noted that the grant “comes at such a lovely moment in my artistic journey, and it has a huge impact.” They appreciate the opportunity for three distinct reasons. First, it serves as a heartwarming and affirming vote of confidence in their practice. Second, it connects them with a diverse network of creators across multiple disciplines. Finally, the cohort meetings and project-planning workshops provide valuable professional accountability to help see their ideas through to completion.
Though Madden appreciates their day job as an arts administrator, they want to be able to spend more time with their own artistic practice, so being part of the cohort allows them to envision what that might look like.
“Feeling that I have this support and these tools is just awesome,” they said.
For rapper Tableek — known offstage as Ibrahim Ali — capacity-building is about gaining the tools to survive as an independent artist. He has recorded and performed extensively as a solo act and as a member of the group Maspyke.
“There was a moment in time when it was not really the most exciting thing to be independently producing music and releasing your music, at least in certain types of genres,” he said. “Certain types of genres, it was like, ‘You’re doing it on your own? You’re stupid.’”
Tableek releases music through his own independent label. Being signed to an existing label, he said, is “enticing to many folks, the idea that you can ‘focus on the music’ while somebody else handles the business side of things. In my understanding of things, that is not the way to go about it, and you really put yourself in a bad position if you relinquish your control of your own life to other people.”
In a follow-up email, Tableek pointed to legendary artists like James Brown and Sam Cooke, who were “not just musicians, but owners of the things they created. … It takes a very confident and thick-skinned individual to take on the business responsibility to run their own career.”
The capacity-building grants likewise challenge the notion that professional opportunities for artists “are behind the curtain of the Wizard of Oz,” he said.
“The behind-the-curtain stuff is really not that complex; it’s not that difficult to understand,” he said. “It just takes some introduction to it.”
For more information about each of the artists selected for this year’s cohort, visit assetsforartists.org/blog/welcome-2026-valleycreates-cohort. For more information about the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts, visit communityfoundation.org.
