Cultural Freedom

In 1999 Lannan Foundation established the Lannan Prize for Cultural Freedom. The Foundation awarded the first Cultural Freedom Fellowship in 2003 to encourage and support leaders in American and international communities to contemplate, reflect, write, and study.

Cultural Freedom awards and fellowships were granted to individuals in recognition of their extraordinary and courageous work promoting social justice and the human right to freedom of imagination, inquiry, and full cultural expression. These individuals are typically advocates for education justice, prison reform and abolition, environmental justice and protection, social and economic justice, human rights, and press and journalistic freedom. A Cultural Freedom Prize is an award for a lifetime of remarkable achievement. The foundation has also produced numerous public cultural freedom events, the Readings & Conversations series, which features activists reading and discussing their work. You can watch and listen to these events in our media archive here.

Lannan Foundation is no longer accepting letters of inquiry in any of our grant-making programs. Unsolicited proposals and letters of inquiry will not be considered.