TAWID is a bridging grant — its purpose is to support work that is community-rooted, operates without institutional backing, and addresses concerns that cannot wait for larger funding structures to catch up.
In evaluating the fourteen proposals received this cycle, the committee weighed urgency alongside positionality: who is doing the work, and from what position within the community it originates.
The committee also considered which applicants had the least access to alternative funding—the grant is designed to initiate or supplement, not to compete with institutional support that already exists. The two selected projects address immediate, irreversible forms of loss, led by practitioners working at the scale this grant was designed for.
The selection was made entirely by an independent jury: Lynn Nandar Htoo, Rani Jambak, Cường Minh Bá Phạm, and Napakadol Kittisenee — sound and archive practitioners and researchers from Myanmar, Indonesia, the United Kingdom/Vietnam, and the US/Thailand. We are grateful to the jury for the rigor and care they brought to this process, and for the intellectual and emotional labor of deliberating over work that matters.
Ambient Narratives: Bacong River Archives and Sonic Responses to the Changing Climate and Ecology in Rural Panay
Ambient Narratives proposes to trace the Bacong River in rural Antique from ilaya (upstream) to ilawod (downstream) and toward Mararison Island, which is sinking. The project by Tonio Flores II, Ekopraxis Pilipinas, and Dulungan Youth gathers the sonic dimensions of a place living under compounded pressures: sea-level rise, biodiversity loss, the corruption of public funds designated for climate adaptation, human rights abuses against environmental defenders, and land dispossession.
Hongan di Page (Healing of the Rice Plants)
The project documents the sonic heritage of the Ifugao agricultural rituals—the hongan di page—gathering the chants, invocations, songs, and instrumental soundscapes of the pre-harvest (Ahitulo), harvest, and post-harvest (Apuy) cycles.
