For over 30 years, the Americana World Community Center has been a place where Louisville immigrants, refugees and otherwise underserved community members have found resources and support.
But a Feb. 17 Facebook post put its future into question.
“Americana is facing closure—we need your help. #SOSAmericana,” the first line of the post read.
It went on to explain the Americana Center needs to raise $520,000 by June to keep the doors open.
They launched a fundraiser to raise $150,000 by the end of March and the rest by the June deadline. Supporters exceeded the March goal before the month’s end.
The Americana Center is one of many Kentucky organizations facing funding challenges as federal funds and support for programs believed to be associated with diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives are dissolved.
One such grant is the National Endowment for the Arts Challenge America grant. The grant, aimed at supporting programs for underserved communities, offered $10,000 in funding to more than 100 organizations nationwide every year.
The NEA announced in February that Challenge America would not move forward for fiscal year 2026. Organizations who already applied for the grant were encouraged to instead apply for other NEA opportunities.
The Americana Center is a previous Challenge America grant recipient. Its fibers arts program received $10,000 for fiscal year 2023.
“[Fiber works creates] a sense of belonging in a newly established place that may be unfamiliar to them,” Americana Executive Director Emilie Dyer told LPM News.
Refugee and immigrant women in the fiber works program craft pieces to be sold online with the goal of building resources, confidence and entrepreneurial skills for participants.
The Kentucky Symphony Orchestra, which operates in venues across northern Kentucky, received a Challenge America grant for fiscal year 2025. They use it to support a free outdoor concert series.
“We believe bringing families together to experience quality culture and entertainment, at no cost, is a gift to our community/region,” James R. Cassidy, the organization's founder and executive director, told LPM via email.
With 30 years of ups and downs under his belt, Cassidy said the Kentucky Symphony Orchestra has always balanced its fiscal and artistic challenges well.
“Not spending what we don’t have has always been key for the organization to manage recessions, and disruptions like 9/11, COVID as well as unforeseen local changes and challenges,” Cassidy said. “Rather than react to changes that are not within our control, we normally take a wait-and-see approach, and in the meantime, play the hands we are dealt.”
He said it has always been important to not rely on a single funding source.
But for organizations whose work is built around in diversity, equity and inclusion, the attack on DEI impacts multiple revenue streams.
“It's not just our federal funding,” Shannon Woolley Allison, Looking for Lilith Theatre Company’s co-founder and co-artistic director, said. “We have shows that we tour to universities, like ‘Life Cycle of a Blackberry.’”
The one-woman show, written by former Kentucky poet laureate Crystal E. Wilkinson, tells the stories of Black women and girls' experiences in Appalachia.
Woolley Allison expressed concern that anti-DEI legislation like House Bill 4 would make it impossible to book shows at public colleges and universities in Kentucky.
“It's all of these different streams that are affected by this federal mandate that we can't talk about these things anymore,” Woolley Allison said.
Looking for Lilith received a Challenge America grant last fiscal year. They got the last of the grant money in December 2024. Woolley Allison said if they'd waited to file expenses, she worries they wouldn't have gotten their final payment.
She and Looking for Lilith’s other co-founder and artistic director, Jennifer Thalman Kepler, couldn’t imagine changing the theatre company’s mission in order to get funding.
“There's a part of me that's like, proud of that, ‘Hey, we're doing all these things,’” Thalman Kepler said.
Thalman Kepler hopes Looking for Lilith’s experience with dealing with “unprecedented times” – and peer community support – will buoy them through.
“Being in community and continuing to be in community together and with other artists and arts organizations in our city is how we keep going,” Thalman Kepler said. “It's how we build support and capacity, emotional, mental capacity to keep going.”
