Assembling Voices - Incite at Columbia University

Launched in 2020, Assembling Voices is a year-long fellowship that supports activists, artists, scholars, workers, and others with ideas for public initiatives that bring people together to address community-identified issues in novel ways.

During the program year, fellows receive $25,000 in income, initiative, and travel support, as well as intellectual, administrative, and professional support from Incite Institute and our vast network.

Fellows are free to conceive and execute public programming as they envision it. Past initiatives have engaged communities in using light art to combat unsafety and stigma in New York, amplifying a civil rights battle in Nashville, and archiving home movies and ephemera in a South Texas community facing existential threats, and experimenting with cultural programming for and by unhoused people in San Diego.

Throughout the program year, fellows come together in New York City for training, collaboration, and networking. We develop custom training each year based on the cohort's desires and needs.

Assembling Voices acknowledges that biggest issues of our time aren’t just technical—they’re social. Ideas crafted entirely within the walls of universities risk being detached from the lives of the worlds they might transform. Outside those walls, organizers, artists, community leaders, and workers directly engage these same issues. Through this program, fellow brings both worlds together through a process of assembly, wherein people gather to more effectively transform themselves, their communities, and the world.