Black Yarn aims to shine a light on systemic harms, foster equity, and connect Black experiences with those of all Americans through storytelling, research & collaboration.

“Our Story Is Your Story Too,” reflects our belief that the unifying thread of storytelling can create a shared commitment to equity, building a legacy that benefits everyone.

Black Yarn was founded in 2023 under the fiscal sponsorship of the Bluegrass Community Foundation to amplify Black stories and preserve the rich history, culture, and lived experiences of Lexington's Black community. Since then, Black Yarn has grown into an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, evolving from an entirely volunteer-led initiative to an organization with two full-time and three part-time staff members as of January 2026.

In just three years, Black Yarn has produced and premiered its first documentary, Lexington: Resilience in the Redline, engaging more than 1,500 community members through screenings and facilitated conversations with Fayette County Public Schools, colleges and universities, churches, nonprofit organizations, neighborhood groups, and civic leaders. The film was also recognized as a quarterfinalist in the International Indie Film Festival and was selected for screening at the BronzeLens Film Festival, affirming both its artistic quality and community impact. These experiences have demonstrated the power of storytelling to deepen understanding, strengthen relationships, and inspire action.

Today, Black Yarn is entering its next phase of growth. We are transitioning from a project-based organization to a sustainable cultural institution that uses art, storytelling, and community engagement to make complex systems visible, elevate community voice, and foster collective action toward a more equitable Lexington.

• Cultural/Multi-Arts

Black Yarn requests $5,000 to support Voices of Home: A Housing Story Circle, a free community-based participatory arts experience that uses oral storytelling to strengthen community connection, recognize lived experiences, and foster dialogue about housing in Lexington.

Housing shapes identity, belonging, opportunity, and community. While conversations about housing often rely on data, policy, and statistics, storytelling provides a powerful artistic medium for exploring the lived experiences behind those conversations.

Voices of Home is one component of Black Yarn's broader community engagement around housing, alongside a planned Housing Ecosystem Gap Summit and Barriers to Housing Survey. Together, these initiatives seek to deepen Lexington's understanding of housing through research, dialogue, and the arts. The Story Circle serves as the artistic centerpiece of this work by creating a space where lived experiences are shared, honored, and remembered through oral storytelling.

Storytelling has long been a cornerstone of cultural expression, preserving history, transmitting knowledge, strengthening community identity, and inspiring social change. Voices of Home honors that tradition by inviting residents to become storytellers, sharing experiences of home, neighborhood change, affordability, displacement, resilience, and belonging.

Participants will gather in a welcoming community venue where Black Yarn's artistic team will curate and facilitate an intentionally designed Story Circle. Through thoughtfully crafted prompts, participants will share stories while audience members practice intentional listening and reflection. The experience will blend oral storytelling, facilitated dialogue, and creative reflection to create an engaging participatory arts experience where every participant's voice is valued.

Voices of Home is intentionally designed as an artistic experience rather than a public listening session. Stories shared during the event will be documented, with participant consent, through photography, audio, and video, preserving community narratives while creating opportunities for future artistic exhibitions, educational programming, and community storytelling initiatives.

This project represents the next chapter in Black Yarn's storytelling practice. Following the success of the documentary Lexington: Resilience in the Redline that premiered in 2025, Voices of Home moves storytelling off the screen and into the community itself. Residents become both artists and storytellers, creating a shared cultural experience that strengthens community while preserving contemporary history.

Voices of Home addresses a growing need for spaces where Lexington residents can connect across differences through creativity, dialogue, and shared experience. Housing affects every resident, yet conversations often focus on policy instead of people. This project creates an accessible artistic experience where storytelling fosters empathy, understanding, and stronger community relationships.

The project intentionally creates opportunities for voices that are often underrepresented in civic conversations, particularly Black residents and others whose experiences with housing, neighborhood change, affordability, and belonging deserve greater visibility. By recognizing lived experience as artistic expression, the Story Circle celebrates community members as culture bearers whose stories contribute to Lexington's collective history.

Building on Black Yarn's award-recognized storytelling work, Voices of Home expands opportunities for residents to actively participate in the arts rather than solely experience them as audiences. The event strengthens neighborhood relationships, encourages civic dialogue, preserves community memory, and demonstrates how storytelling can transform public conversations into shared cultural experiences.

By bringing neighbors together to create, share, and witness stories, Voices of Home embodies LexArts' vision of building community through the arts, demonstrating how artistic expression can strengthen relationships, celebrate diverse voices, and foster a deeper sense of belonging throughout Lexington.

Black Yarn will promote Voices of Home through an integrated communications strategy that includes social media, email newsletters, our website, community calendars, local media outreach, and community-based partners. Outreach efforts will include neighborhood associations, faith communities, educators, artists, housing organizations, nonprofit organizations, and civic groups to encourage broad participation.

Marketing materials will emphasize storytelling, belonging, and community participation while reflecting Black Yarn's established visual identity. As partnerships develop during the planning process, Black Yarn will work collaboratively with participating organizations to expand outreach into neighborhoods and communities that may not traditionally participate in arts programming.

Voices of Home is designed for Lexington residents of all ages and backgrounds, with intentional outreach to historically underserved communities, whose stories have often been excluded from traditional historical narratives.

The project also welcomes artists, educators, neighborhood leaders, students, nonprofit organizations, housing professionals, and anyone interested in exploring housing through storytelling. Participation will be free and open to the public to ensure broad community access regardless of financial circumstances.

Equity is central to both Black Yarn's mission and the design of Voices of Home. The Story Circle intentionally centers diverse artists, storytellers, and participants whose lived experiences reflect Lexington's racial, cultural, economic, generational, and geographic diversity.

By recognizing oral storytelling as an art form and lived experience as cultural knowledge, the project expands traditional definitions of who is an artist while creating welcoming spaces where historically marginalized voices are prioritized, celebrated, and preserved.

The event will be free to attend and intentionally designed to reduce barriers to participation, ensuring accessibility for a broad cross-section of the Lexington community.

Voices of Home is designed to be a collaborative community arts initiative. As planning continues, Black Yarn intends to engage housing organizations, neighborhood associations, faith communities, educators, artists, nonprofit organizations, and civic leaders to help share information about the event and encourage broad community participation.

Black Yarn will lead the artistic vision, storytelling design, facilitation, and documentation of the Story Circle while seeking partnerships that expand outreach and help ensure a diverse group of storytellers and attendees. These collaborations are intended to strengthen the project's reach while allowing Black Yarn to maintain responsibility for the artistic direction and participant experience.

While formal partnership commitments are still being established during the planning phase, Black Yarn has a strong history of building cross-sector collaborations that bring together arts, education, housing, and community organizations. Voices of Home seeks to continue that approach by using storytelling to build relationships, encourage dialogue, and strengthen community through the arts.

Voices of Home advances Black Yarn's mission to amplify Black narratives and use storytelling to strengthen communities. Project goals include:
1. Present a high-quality participatory storytelling experience rooted in Black oral tradition.
2. Increase access to free, community-based arts programming.
3. Foster meaningful dialogue and stronger community connections through storytelling.
4. Preserve contemporary housing stories as part of Lexington's cultural history.
5. Expand participation in Black Yarn's artistic programming while engaging new audiences.

Black Yarn will evaluate Voices of Home using both quantitative and qualitative measures aligned with the goals of artistic excellence, community engagement, accessibility, and community impact.

Quantitative measures will include attendance, the number of featured storytellers and audience members, demographic representation, participation from first-time attendees, social media engagement, marketing reach, and the number of organizations that help promote the event.

Qualitative evaluation will include participant surveys, written reflections, facilitator observations, and testimonials assessing the quality of the artistic experience, participant satisfaction, and the project's effectiveness in fostering community connection through storytelling. Participants will be invited to reflect on whether they felt welcomed, heard, inspired, and more connected to their community through the experience.

The project will be documented through professional photography, audio and video recordings (with participant consent), participant testimonials, attendance records, and promotional materials. This documentation will preserve the artistic work created through the Story Circle while supporting future artistic exhibitions, educational programming, and community storytelling initiatives.

Success will ultimately be measured by the project's ability to create meaningful artistic experiences that strengthen community relationships, elevate underrepresented voices, and demonstrate the power of storytelling as an art form.