Member Spotlight: Joe Tolbert, Jr.
Joe Tolbert, Jr., Executive Director of The Waymakers Collective
Brief Bio: Joe Tolbert Jr. (Joe T.) is a minister, art critic, and the founder and lead cultural strategist of Art at the Intersections. He received his B.S. in Communications from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and completed his M.Div. in Social Ethics from Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. Joe is a sought after facilitator and cultural strategist who works with communities and institutions to help them harness the power of art and culture through the building, implementation, and evaluation of cultural strategies.
How long have you been part of AFN? I have been part of AFN for one year, and I am a new member of the AFN Steering Committee.
What is the mission of your organization, and why is this pursuit important to you? Our mission is to advance an Appalachian Futurism that is rooted in equitable justice, creative cooperation, and sustainable stewardship. We strive to sustain creative practice, land, livelihoods, and dialogue across neighborhoods and disciplines. We envision an Appalachia that supports the joy, imagination, and hopes of our artists, activists, and culture bearers. We sustain community organizations led by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color; young people; LGBTQ folks; non-English speakers; new immigrants; and those unlikely to get mainstream funding.
It is important to me because our radical imagination is our greatest resource to meet this current political moment of division. What could we accomplish if we engage artists and creatives as people integral to coming up with the solutions our communities need? That’s what energizes me about this pursuit.
What is a project you are working on that you’re passionate about? With the help of the Ford Foundation, we are creating a fund to support the work of queer artists and arts organizations. I am excited about this, because this is coming in a moment where the queer community is in a constant state of resistance to the regressive policies that are targeting queer and trans people in our region.
What is the desired impact of this project? I hope the impact of this project will support the continued “joy as resistance” work that queer communities embody in our region. I also hope the impact of this work helps them to do their work with ease, because many of the pride organizations and individual artists provide so much more beyond the artistic and creative products.
What do you see as the greatest strength of Central Appalachian communities? I see the diversity of our region as our greatest strength, because when we work together, each person can bring a piece to make the beautiful mosaic our region is.
What is one thing you’d like to see improved in how funders work together in Central Appalachia? I would like to see funders in our region take more risks and lean into experimentation, and not put that risk on the community.
What do you see as the primary hurdle in the pursuit of equitable Appalachian transition? How would you approach this challenge? Getting stuck in the “this is how we’ve always done it” mentality. I would approach this challenge by creating cultures of learning and political study to see what models can be tried and iterated upon based on our current context and political moment.
What questions do you think funders in Appalachia should be asking regularly about improving their grantmaking processes? Who is missing? How can we use money as medicine to repair historical and institutional harms based on the legacies of extractive wealth building?
What is the one experience from your past, personal or professional, that most influences the work you do today? One of the experiences that I bring forward is being a founding member of The STAY Project. The lessons I took with me from that time are what it means to be community centered in design and governance of the organization, and what it means to develop leaders by giving them opportunities to learn new skills by doing so with support of the leadership.