BAM Fellows Program

About BAM Houston

BAM Fellows is a leadership incubator for Black artists who are ready to move with intention.
This fellowship brings together artists across disciplines who believe their art carries responsibility, not just to be seen, but to serve, challenge, and transform. Over the course of the fellowship, participants engage in immersive gatherings centered on healing, leadership, collaboration, and collective visioning.
Fellows don’t just develop projects; they help shape the structure of the fellowship itself. This first cohort sets the tone, the culture, and the future of BAM Fellows, building something that will last beyond them.

Grounded in community, guided by reflection, and connected to a global Black artistic lineage, BAM Fellows is about becoming clearer, stronger, and more aligned in how you show up as an artist and a leader.

This is not about rushing.
It’s about rooting.



Overview

The BAM Fellows Program is a healing-centered, leadership-focused fellowship designed to support Black artists in Houston as culture-shapers, community leaders, and systems-builders.

The program is supported by the BIPOC Arts Network & Fund (BANF) through the Creative Risk Fund, which provides funding for the design, development, and launch of the fellowship. This investment supports the creation of the program’s structure, curriculum, convenings, and facilitation model—building long-term infrastructure for artist leadership rather than funding individual art projects.

The BAM Fellows Program is rooted in the belief that artists are essential leaders in community healing, cultural memory, and social transformation, and that sustainable artistic leadership requires belonging, clarity, and collective care.


How the BAM Fellows Program Works

Cohort-Based Leadership Model

Fellows participate as a cohort, emphasizing collective learning, trust-building, and shared responsibility. This model reinforces collaboration over competition and ensures artists are growing alongside peers navigating similar leadership and creative journeys.

Bi-Monthly, In-Person Fellowship Sessions
Fellows meet bi-monthly in extended, in-person sessions focused on leadership development, healing-centered reflection, identity and values, community accountability, and integrating personal healing with public leadership.

Healing-Centered Leadership Framework

The fellowship is grounded in the understanding that sustainable leadership requires emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and relational integrity. Fellows engage in facilitated dialogue and reflective practices that connect personal healing to long-term creative and civic leadership.

Collective Fundraising as Leadership Practice

A core component of the BAM Fellows Program is collective fundraising. Fellows work together to raise the funds for their flights and per diem for the Rwanda experience. This process builds skills in fundraising strategy, storytelling, shared accountability, and community investment. Through this collective effort, the Rwanda experience is guaranteed.

Guaranteed Global Exchange: Rwanda

The fellowship includes a guaranteed cultural exchange experience in Rwanda rooted in healing, understanding, and reconciliation from artist, community, and leadership perspectives. Fellows engage with artists and cultural leaders whose work demonstrates how art supports collective healing, memory, and restoration following deep harm. The experience challenges fellows to consider the role of artists in reconciliation, leadership grounded in accountability, and the responsibility of returning this learning to their communities.