Instagram Launches the #BlackDesignVisionaries Grant to Support Young Black Aspiring Designers

Instagram is teaming up with the Brooklyn Museum in an effort to uplift aspiring Black designers. #BlackDesignVisonaries is a collaboration between Instagram’s @design page and the Brooklyn Museum, which will award up to $130,000 in grant money. This includes three $10,000 grants that will be given to young designers and one $100,000 grant, which will be awarded to a Black-led small design business.

“Design has a profound impact on the shape of our daily lives. Because of that, it is vitally important that design is inclusive of all,” says Antwaun Sargent, the grant committee lead, in a statement. The grant program was developed in collaboration with the three Black-led design organizations—the Chicago Mobile Makers, the Hidden Genius Project, and the Inneract Project—and its winners will be judged by a panel of some of the design world’s brightest names:

• Justina Blakeney, Founder and Creative Director of Jungalow
• Ruth E. Carter, Oscar-winning Costume Designer
• Toni L. Griffin, Founder of urbanAC, Professor in Practice at Harvard Graduate School of Design and Director of The Just City Lab
• Sarah Elizabeth Lewis, Associate Professor at Harvard University and Founder of the Vision & Justice Project
• Rick Lowe, Artist, Professor at the University of Houston
• Bobby C. Martin Jr., Co-Founder of Champions Design
• Heron Preston, Artist and Designer
• Ian Spalter, Head of Instagram Japan
• Asad Syrkett, Editor in Chief, ELLE Décor

Applications are open now through July 16, and require applicants—who must be 18-30 years old, a US citizen, and Black identifying—to submit three examples of their best work in PDF format. You can enter through the application doc here. Good luck!