Frontera Culture Fund

The region spans the four US states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, as well as the six Mexican states of Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas. It has long been the home of 26 federally recognized tribal nations, numerous unrecognized Indigenous communities, and at least seven Indigenous homelands divided by the border. 

It is also a region that is often misunderstood, misrepresented, and—especially with respect to arts and culture work—minimally funded. What can we learn from existing creative expression and traditions, and from stewardship of heritage, language, and lands?  

Despite the borderlands’ rich artistic production, heritage practices, and cultural histories from binational and Indigenous communities, the region is frequently reduced to harmful and inaccurate rhetoric about immigration, migrants, and border communities that stoke fear of both the place and its inhabitants. 

Through the Frontera Culture Fund, a $25 million commitment announced in 2024, Mellon aims to amplify the voices of artists and cultural leaders who continue to shape the borderlands as a place of beauty, radical imagination, and collective action.  

Designed in collaboration with artists and cultural leaders from the region, the Frontera Culture Fund will provide flexible funding for grantees spanning the US and Mexico, including artist-led projects, cultural organizations, and grassroots community groups. The fund will also support Indigenous, binational, and Black networks that are facilitating regional and cross-border knowledge exchange and working to defend cultural rights.  

The inaugural grantees for the Frontera Culture Fund were selected based on their vital contributions to the region’s cultural life and their integration of arts with essential community needs, including racial and climate justice, migrant and refugee rights, LGBTQ+ rights, Indigenous cultural sovereignty, public memory, and community health. 

Chicano Park Museum and Cultural Center (San Diego, California)  

The Chicano Park Museum and Cultural Center, located in the heart of Barrio Logan—San Diego’s oldest Mexican American neighborhood—preserves and interprets the history of Chicano Park. Mellon funding supports the assessment, conservation, cataloguing, and digitization of two significant archives that document the work of generations of Chicanx artists and activists at the park. 

Carrizo Comecrudo Nation of Texas, Inc. (Floresville, Texas)  

The Carrizo Comecrudo Nation of Texas (Esto’k Gna), though federally unrecognized, wields a strong political and cultural presence in the region. Mellon funding supports a Community Land Trust protecting 170 acres of Rio Grande riverfront ancestral land—a new model for regional conservation. It also supports an Esto’k Gna Education Center to preserve culture, teach lifeways, and address Rio Grande delta environmental degradation. 

Fandango Fronterizo (Tijuana, Baja California)   

The Fandango Fronterizo is an annual event at the Tijuana–San Diego border that brings together musicians, dancers, and community members to celebrate son jarocho. Mellon funding facilitates organizational and programmatic capacity for the annual event and provides support for son jarocho elders and contemporary practitioners.    

La Semilla Food Center (Anthony, New Mexico)  

La Semilla Food Center operates a community farm that promotes sustainable agriculture, food sovereignty, and ecological health through land-based programs and regional arts and culture initiatives. Mellon funding supports La Semilla’s Chihuahuan Desert Cultural Fellowship, which supports artists and culture bearers whose practices uplift the desert bioregion. 

Haitian Bridge Alliance (San Diego, California) 

The Haitian Bridge Alliance (HBA) advocates for fair and humane immigration policies, with a focus on serving Black migrants and asylum seekers from Haiti, the Caribbean, and Africa. Mellon funding supports a significant expansion of HBA’s artistic partnerships and storytelling capacity as it continues to create a culture that values and defends Black migrant lives.  

Azul Arena (Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua)  

Azul Arena, a gallery and project space located miles from two international border crossings, provides a platform for artists and cultural producers to develop and exhibit work while collaborating with curators, writers, and academics to document and preserve contemporary narratives about the Chihuahuan region. Mellon funding provides capacity for Azul Arena as it grows its artistic programming, binational collaborations, and archive of artistic production.

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The Frontera Culture Fund is a multi-year $25 million initiative that supports the creative and historically rich work of artists and cultural leaders living and creating in the US-Mexico border region and tribal communities.  

Mellon will announce a call for proposals in 2025 that will be open to organizations, projects, and networks in the US and Mexico that are not already Mellon grantees.