First Kentucky and Colorado Leaders Selected for Soros Equality Fellowship to expand (Un)Known Project
The Open Society Foundations announced the 2022 cohort of Soros Equality Fellows, including (Un)Known Project co-lead artists Hannah Drake (Louisville, KY) and Josh Miller (Denver, CO). The diverse group of fellows include documentary filmmakers, professors, archivists, grassroots organizers, policy advocates, journalists, and authors.
Through the Soros Equality Fellowship, Drake and Miller will expand (Un)Known Project to a national initiative featuring sites that use arts installations and experiences to honor the names and tell stories of Black enslaved people in the United States.
“Enslavement is not just the story of Kentucky or the story of the South. Enslavement is the story of America, and it is important that we use our work to tell a more accurate history that reflects the lives of Black men, women and children that were enslaved,” said Hannah Drake, Chief Creative Officer at IDEAS xLab. “Many of the names and stories are not unknown, they are simply hidden. With this fellowship, we will be able to exhume those names and stories so that they are unknown no longer.”
“Through (Un)Known Project we’ve already unearthed over 800 names of enslaved people, and unveiled public art, art installations and an immersive experience in Kentucky,” said Josh Miller, co-founder + CEO of IDEAS xLab. “As part of (Un)Known Project, we are inviting White people to acknowledge the possible role their family played in enslaving Black people, and to bring forward and share that information. Through the Soros Equality Fellowship, we’ll be able to expand the reach and impact of our collaborative efforts across the nation.”
“We are proud to work with the 2022 class of Soros Equality Fellows, a group of individuals who will bring strong leadership to critical conversations around the range of racial and social justice issues that this country is currently grappling with,” said Andrew Maisel, senior program manager at Open Society-U.S. “Their work will help us build towards a more just and equitable future.”
Among the projects the sixth cohort of Equality Fellows will be working on: multimedia educational resources on race and equity in intellectual property law, a book and other media on race and debt, an archive and arts installations on Black enslaved people in the United States and Afrodescendant Puerto Ricans, an inclusive story-telling model to support better community engagement in TV and film production, a documentary that tells the stories of survivors of hate violence, a talk show produced through an Indigenous lens, a documentary about voting rights in Georgia, and a catalog of effective practices by Latinx organizations to create a collective identity.
The 2022 Soros Equality Fellows will receive stipends of $130,000 for their projects over the course of 18 months along with leadership development training, networking, and other professional support aimed at strengthening new ideas in the racial and social justice movement.
About Hannah Drake (she/her)
Drake is a blogger, podcast host, activist, public speaker, poet, and author of 11 books. She serves as the Chief Creative Officer at IDEAS xLab and co-lead artist of the (Un)Known Project, which seeks to discover the hidden names and stories of Black people who were enslaved in Kentucky and beyond. She writes commentary on politics, feminism, and race, and her writing has been featured online at Cosmopolitan, the Washington Post, the Bitter Southerner, the Lily, Harper’s Bazaar, and Revolt TV. In 2022, Drake was recognized by Today’s Woman magazine as the Most Admired Woman in the Arts. Drake was recently honored as a Kentucky Colonel, the highest title of honor bestowed by the Kentucky governor, recognizing an individual’s outstanding service. Drake holds a bachelor’s in communications from the University of Colorado and was granted an honorary doctorate in humanities by Simmons College of Kentucky.
About Josh Miller (he/him)
Miller is a queer changemaker, public speaker, photographer, and outdoor explorer. He is the co-lead artist of (Un)Known Project and the co-founder and CEO of IDEAS xLab—an organization that uses the art of storytelling and community collaboration to impact public health. Miller’s work has been featured by the New York Times, the Aspen Institute, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. He received the 2022 Nonprofit Visionary Leader Award from Louisville Business First and was selected for Business Equality Magazine’s Forty LGBTQ+ Leaders under 40 and Louisville Business First's Forty under 40. Miller is a two-time TEDx speaker and has been described as a "force in our community.”
He holds an MBA from Indiana University and an undergraduate degree from Bellarmine University. Previously, he served as an advisor to the Derby Diversity & Business Summit and co-chair for the Louisville Health advisory board’s communications committee.