The Interledger Community 🌱: Kokayi Walker

The Future|Money Grant Application is now live!

Kokayi Walker — Thu, 23 Feb 2023 17:36:50 +0000

The Future|Money Arts & Culture Grants ‘23

The application is now open. You can apply here. The deadline for submissions is Monday, April 3, 2023 at 11:59 pm EST.

FUTURE|MONEY, the first open grant opportunity for 2023, seeks artists of any discipline to reimagine outdated financial systems that currently exclude 1.7 billion people from accessing essential services to make and receive payments. We ask artists to envision a world where financial systems were built to serve everyone, everywhere, always. Where borders aren’t barriers to supporting each other financially as well as emotionally. Where services aren’t built in silos and organizations are intentionally interoperable. All expressions of that future are welcomed.

This grant opportunity will fund up to eight (8) projects at $25,000 USD for a eight months project timeline. The final results will be exhibited during the ILF Summit 2023; travel stipend for the artist will be provided by the Interledger Foundation.

All proposals will need to articulate:

Portfolio with samples of the applicant/artist's work done within the past six years.
Design a brief on what the artists seek to achieve with this grant funding and how it aligns with the Interledger Foundation FUTURE|MONEY brief.
A practical work plan outlining key milestones, timelines and intended use of grant funds to bring the project to fruition.

We understand that artists need the ability to access unrestricted resources. These resources provided artists with the ability to create or continue work, purchase supplies and equipment, pay for life, and elevate their careers. This simultaneously assists in raising their profile within the local and global communities interacting with their work.

Artists are the creators and curators of culture, bringing to life the expressions of community voices, ideas and passions. The demographic of artists spans from the underrepresented and underfunded to the wealthy and always heard, impacting a myriad of social and political groups.

Future|Money Office Hours Sessions

We invite you to attend one or more weekly Office Hours Sessions for the FUTURE|MONEY open call for proposals, you can register here. This is a great opportunity to drop in to ask questions you may have about the Call for Proposals.

About Interledger Foundation

The Interledger Foundation (ILF) believes that financial inclusion is a right, not a privilege and that financial systems should work for everyone, everywhere. We are stewards of the Interledger Protocol or ILP, an open standard, built on the interconnectivity of the web to create an open payments network, making all systems and services interoperable, inclusive and accessible.

We are building a community of creators and innovators to realize a future where how you earn or share money and where you live do not impact the financial services you can access. We recognise the critical role of artists in reflecting the voice of communities, excluded from systems that do not serve them.

Our ambition for global financial inclusion relies on visionary artists to imagine a future where it already exists. To inspire people to believe change is possible and activate change in old systems, with new thinking.

Here is a resource guide to learn more about this grant and Interledger Foundation.

Good Luck!

ANNOUNCING INTERLEDGER’S FIRST ART & CULTURE GRANT - FUTURE|MONEY

Kokayi Walker — Thu, 16 Feb 2023 16:13:51 +0000

Interledger Foundation is excited to announce our inaugural Inti/vation Grant: FUTURE|MONEY, which asks artists of any discipline to imagine what a financially inclusive future might be.

To inspire and shape our mission at Interledger Foundation (ILF), we are asking artists to imagine a world using any medium and artistic discipline, where equitable financial inclusion for all peoples exists.

The intersection of art and technology has been a driving force in the cultural landscape throughout history. With each technological development, artists have found new ways to express themselves and engage with their audiences.

The rise of the internet and digital technologies has created new possibilities for collaboration, distribution, and interactivity, leading to a new stream of adoption in the New Media Art forms such as AI, virtual reality, and NFTs. The web 3.0 cycle is creating a new paradigm for artists to do their work and engage with stakeholders in a more direct and decentralized way.

Parallel to this burst of innovation, international payment systems have revolutionized how individuals (for some, not all) make transactions, making it easier and more efficient for businesses and individuals to make and receive payments.

Artists and Creative communities are embracing this technology, as it allows for greater flexibility and accessibility for artists and arts organizations to receive funding. But with the speed and complexity of our growing digital economy, we need creative visioning about how we might design a better world with emerging tech and not be further marginalized by it.

We are looking to grant eight artists $25,000 each in unrestricted funds and a platform to showcase their realized work, in exhibition at the 2023 ILF Annual Summit.

FUTURE|MONEY is the first in our new Arts & Cultural stream of awards, which we call Inti/vations. "Inti/vations" is a portmanteau of intention and innovation, centered on the idea that intention exists within the creative core, acting as a catalyst for empathy to evoke positive human reaction. Through empathic, intentional expressions of a financially inclusive future, new systems of economic justice can emerge through the liminal scenarios created.

As a prompt, we ask that proposed pieces consider themes for the future, like decentralization, pan-border interconnectivity, financial services that work for people, and new cultural understandings of the fluidity of money.

So what does all that mean?

The goal is to provide substantive and robust support for underrepresented artists, including Black, Latina/o/x, Indigenous, AAPI, PoC, LGBTQIA+, disabled, and income-challenged artists of all disciplines, understanding that artists need the ability to access unrestricted resources to continue or create new work, purchase supplies or equipment, need support to make everyday life earlier, and most importantly to elevate their careers which assists in raising their profile within the local and global communities that interact with their work.

The FUTURE|MONEY art and culture grant opportunity will open on February 23, 2023, and accept applications until March 23rd.

Stay tuned for more details on the Interledger Foundation’s website and community forum for information on the current call for proposal’s eligibility requirements, application form, live information sessions, and other additional information.

All are welcome to the Interledger Slack or contact us at info@interledger.org if you have any questions.

What is Interledger?

Changes

Kokayi Walker — Tue, 17 Aug 2021 23:58:50 +0000

For my 2nd post in a day, in this space, I wanted to announce that I’ve transitioned from my role as Ambassador with Grant for the Web to the Ambassador Program Manager. What does that even mean, you may or may not ask. The idea was to take the experiences and lessons learned from acting as Ambassador and conduit to diverse communities to finding and managing other unique passionate people to do that same work. As we move to build communities and ecosystems we have to expand our sight lines and be very specific about connecting one specific community to larger communities, with an understanding that there are obstacles to entry points when we start honing on on this very specific and unique community.

What currently makes sense is to have a multifaceted program, that engages multi hyphenate Ambassadors who can assist in joining siloed communities. My experience over these last seven months has been working to identify divides between tech and creative communities who would/could/should benefit from participating in becoming a member of this unique body of people, especially individuals from communities that have been historically marginalized in technology spaces and structurally excluded. With a new set of Ambassadors we are looking at having the program be global in its reach, looking to engage with community liaisons to; connect a powerful community of web advocates and leaders, promote creative and innovative solutions to connecting humanity and steward technology and standards work that advances open payment technology and financial inclusion.
I look forward to seeing you outchea, thus concludes my TED Talk.
Holla
k

InnerSections: BeatsnBeans

Kokayi Walker — Tue, 17 Aug 2021 23:40:21 +0000

In June 2019 (PC) I traveled with a film crew to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia with BeatsnBeans, a cultural design project examining the intersections of creativity, coffee culture, and the reimagining of creative spaces, that my partner Seshat created. While in Addis we interviewed Ethiopian expats who were working to develop a creative economy, in a country whose culture doesn't necessarily regard creativity as the bastion of economic stability. We sought out creatives with different disciplines, in different age groups and with unique stories. We completed the doc and began editing, but the pandemic happened and everything hit the back burner. During the time between filming and the completion of the doc, I became an Ambassador with Grant for the Web and reached out to a number of creatives to apply for grant funding including one of the partners that I met in Addis.

Cut to August 5th when we were able to premier the documentary at the Eaton hotel theater with support from Grant for the Web and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. In addition to premiering the doc we also had a great conversation with Metasebia Yoseph from Design Week Addis/Digital Gojo, Kenny Allen of Undken leather goods, and Addis Creates about their work in Ethiopia, the cross sections of creativity and digital currency and what web-monetization and Interledger protocol could mean for their particular practices, content creation, mobile money opportunities and the undergirding of creative projects and spaces in Addis. We also spoke about the unique relationship between DC and the Ethiopian communities that exist in those Sister Cities, the role of the expats in local ecosystems, crypto currencies and their effects in Africa as a whole and Ethiopia specifically, interledger protocol and how it relates to the upsurge in mobile micro payments that are happening in Addis, and the need to uniquely monetize content; strategies in that space, and the outlook from the new Prime minister and the governments commitment to investing in the economic stability of the creative workforce in Ethiopia.

Many thanks to Chris, Erika, Ayesha and Briana for supporting the evening, the Eaton Hotel for signing on as our partner to present the film and my partner/creator of BeatsnBeans and producer Seshat for working with me to continue to spotlight traditionally overlooked communities of creatives. The film will be released later this year once we’ve completed our submissions to film festivals.

photo: Les Talusan