Unmanageable's 2024 Year in Review
2024 has been a huge year for Unmanageable's projects! To read the complete report: Click here to read more.
HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM UNMANAGEABLE!
OUR 2024 YEAR IN REVIEW
We uplift artists and projects with large-scale creative visions that challenge convention, with priority given to BIPOC artists, especially women, who are based in the South.
Since 2020, we have raised more than $2.6M in funding for artists and their visionary projects. These funds came from government grants, foundations, sponsors, and generous individual donors.
Funding went to project and tour support, recordings, disaster relief, and childcare support for artist mothers. This includes funds that Unmanageable has handled directly along with significant funds that have gone directly to artists.
By the end of our current fiscal year, we anticipate having tripled our annual budget relative to the previous year. We are proud to report that a transformative organizational capacity building grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundationcontributed to this growth, helping us to add staff to meet this moment of expansion in 2025 and beyond.
KEY PROJECTS IN 2024
photo credit: Eric England
We Are North Nashville:
Community Elders Storytelling Project
Led by artist and community leader M. Simone Boyd, We Are North Nashville is a large-scale storytelling project to gather, document and share wisdom and sacred knowledge from North Nashville community elders.
Check out the first season of the podcast here.
Follow along for news and event updates here.
Support this project directly by clicking here.
This project is supported in part by The Frist Foundation, Just Economy Institute, the Anne C. Kenan Redistribution Fund, the Tennessee Arts Commission’s Arts Build Community Grant, Chrissy Washburn, and a number of generous individual donors.
Biscuits & Banjos Festival
Biscuits & Banjos is a new music festival curated by GRAMMY & Pulitzer Prize-winning artist Rhiannon Giddens dedicated to the reclamation and exploration of Black music, art, and culture in her home state of North Carolina.
The festival will take place April 25-27, 2025 in Durham, NC.
Festival passes are currently sold out, but you can join the waitlist to be notified if additional tickets open up.
To support the mission of this community-rooted festival directly with your donation, click here.
Biscuits & Banjos is a non-profit, community responsive festival. Funding for Biscuits & Banjos is made possible in part by the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, North Carolina Humanities, the Danielle Rose Paikin Foundation, the Harper House Foundation, Warner Music Group & Blavatnik Family Foundation Social Justice Fund (a sponsored project of Moore Impact), Biscuitville, Duke University, the City of Durham, Durham County, Discover Durham, and other generous individual donors, sponsors, civic, and community partners.
photo credit Anthony Mulcahy, Newport Folk Festival 2021
The Once & Future Sounds Fund
The Once & Future Sounds Fund, inspired by Allison Russell’s pairing of art & activism, works to improve equity in the music industry by elevating artists from historically marginalized and exploited groups. The Fund will launch two signature programs — The Once & Future Laureate Program and the Once & Future Festival — over the next three years.
To learn more and support this project directly with a donation, click here.
This project is supported in part by the Looking Out Foundation, Live Nation Women Fund, Harper House Music Foundation, Newport Festivals Foundation, and a host of generous individual donors.
Rancho La Puerta Artist Retreat & Folk Festival
Created by artist & producer Amber Rubarth and co-produced with Carissa Stolting, Rancho La Puerta Artist Retreat and Folk Festival takes place on a stunning resort in Tecate, Mexico and includes a wealth of collaborative concerts, artists talks, and spontaneous performances, sharing the power of folk music traditions while focusing on diversity, collaboration and the dissolution of boundaries through creative exchange.
To make a direct donation in support of this project, click here.
Radio Resistance: Tennessee Experimental
Radio Resistance, curated and hosted by Carissa Stolting, is a new podcast featuring experimental music makers in the South. Each episode shares the music and personal story of a local artist making unconventional, genre-defying work, and programs their music alongside artists who have influenced their creative path.
To listen to the podcast, click here.
To support this project directly with a donation, click here.
This project is supported in part by the Tennessee Arts Commission.
Women’s Giving Circle
Unmanageable continues to fundraise for and operate the Women's Giving Circle, which provides support for artist mothers in the South who rely on their artmaking as a primary source of income for their families and are in need of restorative time and relief in order to advance their art-making.
Funding supports childcare expenses, basic necessities, COVID and disaster relief expenses, and other needs. Since the inception of the fund, Women’s Giving Circle efforts have yielded $323,000 in direct individual support and mutual aid for artist mothers!
To support the Women’s Giving Circle directly, click here.
Fiscally Sponsored Projects
In addition to the hands-on work that Unmanageable does in partnership with artists to lift their large-scale projects, we also serve as a fiscal sponsor for artists and projects who align with our mission.
We’d love to give a shout-out to the amazing artists below who are doing incredible work. Please take the time to learn about each of them, and support their work with a donation!
Kyshona Armstrong’s Your Song
Amber Rubarth’s Cover Crop Music
Missy Lane’s Charitable Foundation
Bread & Roses + Song Confessional + Boom! Lawyered
Road Trip
Daisy Friedman’s The Squad
Taylor McFadden’s Lovers
Anna Roberts-Gevalt’s Sick Center
To learn more about fiscal sponsorship, drop us a line.
GRATITUDE
This year we continued to strengthen the family of support around our work by building our board and launching an incredible advisory board. We want to recognize them and express our deep gratitude in the many ways they have helped us build a family around this work:
BOARD OF DIRECTORS:
Erin Malone-Smolla, Board Chair
Christy Frink
Christina Horn
Kortney Toney
Abigail Washburn
ADVISORY BOARD:
Amber Banks
Tracy Gershon
Ali Harnell
Fiona Prine
Allison Russell
Shannon Sanders
Carolyn Snell
Rachel Whitney
FOUNDATION SUPPORT
Unmanageable is grateful in 2024 for general operating support from the following generous partners:
This support has allowed us to offer more robust and expansive assistance to artists.
Heartfelt THANKS to all of our supporters, donors, friends, and collaborators for your continued partnership, wisdom, advocacy, and generosity.
Above all, thank you to the artists who entrust us in helping to lift their big, bold, and beautiful dreams.
with tremendous love, thanks, and best wishes for 2025,
celine & carissa
If you're able - please consider supporting Unmanageable's work in 2025 and beyond. If you're moved by what we're doing, click the button below to make a year-end gift! We are so grateful for your support.