Announcement | a new cohort of BFF Grantees!

Big Field Fund announces $60,000 in grants to artists and art collectives in eastern Iowa

Public Space One is proud to announce the 2025-26 Big Field Fund grantees. In its second year, BFF is awarding a total of $60,000 to 10 Iowa artists or collectives living within an 80 mile radius of Iowa City. These grants support the research, development, and public realization of artist-led projects in the visual arts, often falling outside the reach of typical funding sources. In the coming year, this work will manifest new and inventive models, support under-resourced creative communities, and engage with vulnerable structures, systems, or ecologies.

Research/Development Grants:
Erin Turvey, Haileigh Steffen, and Morgan Olsen • Jason J. Snell • Nat Holm • eli rodriguez fielder and e clayton scofield

Project Grants:
Satomi Kawai and the Women: Hood Collective • Akwi Nji • riel Sturchio and Bianca Sturchio of Begin Collective • Carlos Maldonado • Sarah Ndagire • Miriam Alarcón Avila 

Big Field Fund is a Regional Regranting Program supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and administered by Iowa City arts organization Public Space One (PS1). Part of PS1’s mission is to sustain and provide access to inclusive, experimental, and non-commercial arts programs, spaces, and resources, for our members and our community. We also aim to support and advocate for artists by offering opportunities and resources to help them thrive in their creative careers. Among those resources, thanks to the generosity of the Warhol Foundation, BFF grants continue to offer essential support for publicly-engaged experimental, collaborative, and connective visual arts projects in eastern Iowa.

Offering new perspectives to the selection process, this year’s Big Field Fund jury included artists and cultural workers alike – Julia Franklin (Des Moines, IA), Narciso Meneses Elizalde (Cedar Rapids, IA), Jessica Johnson (New Orleans, LA), and Ingrid Raphaël (Philadelphia, PA).

One of the jurors and recent BFF grantee, Narciso Meneses Elizalde, shared the following: “It is absolutely inspiring and fulfilling seeing the breadth and reach of the selected proposals [...] from providing safe creative spaces to non-artists within LGBTQ+ and disability identities, to the production of zines for the self-education and empowerment of the community during these times of censorship and cultural oppression [...] these proposals and the artists that unfold them address various, often unseen aspects of life in Iowa.”

Learn more on the website and follow us @bigfieldfund to read about each grantee over the next few weeks.

Check out the following images from PS1’s year-end possibility PARTY, an evening of celebration and appreciation at PS1 Close House. We gathered as a community to reflect on all that's happened at PS1 this year, including the public recognition of new and recent Big Field Fund grantees. Plus video reels from ICVZ, MAC, PS1, and prints from ICPC! Special thanks to HVOG, Lex Leto, Tommy Santee Klaws, Snacky Mini Mart, Laura Moser, May Roded, and Christian Riddle.

Congrats again to the new BFF grantees!