Inside the Work: Meet Broward’s 2026 Artist Innovation Grant Recipients
What does it take to make something new?
Across Broward County, ten artists are answering that question through bold, experimental work—projects that push boundaries, explore identity and place, and invite the public into the creative process itself.
Supported by Broward Cultural Division’s Artist Innovation Grant, created in collaboration with the Community Foundation of Broward, these artists are developing original projects that span film, installation, public art, music, and multidisciplinary practice. The $15,000 award is designed to support risk-taking, exploration, and sustained artistic growth.
What emerges is not just a collection of projects, but a snapshot of a creative ecosystem—one that reflects Broward’s complexity, diversity, and evolving cultural identity.
Meet the 2026 recipients below.
Taimy Alvarez
Taimy Alvarez is a photojournalist, filmmaker, and mixed-media artist whose award-winning work blends documentary storytelling with artistic practice. Her work often centers on identity, migration, and cultural legacy.
Project: Beyond the Brush: The Essence of Creative Expression
An immersive documentary and exhibition that profiles South Florida artists, this project creates space for deeper engagement with the creative process—bridging the gap between artist and audience through film and visual storytelling.
BKapiArts
BKapiArts is a multidisciplinary artist who blends digital media with interactive installation to explore existential themes and human connection. Her work often transforms personal experience into collective reflection, inviting audiences into immersive, participatory environments.
Project: Dreamweaver’s Tapestry: Weaving Cosmic Echoes
This installation turns personal loss into a shared journey. Visitors are invited to contribute their own reflections, becoming part of a living tapestry that explores memory, mortality, and the ways we connect through experience.
Timothy Mark Davis
Timothy Mark Davis is a filmmaker and theatre artist whose work spans stage and screen, focusing on stories that foster empathy, introspection, and community connection.
Project
His documentary follows a family navigating loss and rare disease, exploring how grief can evolve into connection and community. The project combines personal storytelling with broader awareness-building through public presentation.
L. Fried
L. Fried is a filmmaker and designer whose work spans film, exhibition design, and historical storytelling. Her practice is informed by institutional experience and a deep interest in how history shapes contemporary understanding.
Project: Last Days of Koreshan
This short film examines the rise and fall of Cyrus Teed’s utopian movement in early Florida. Through research-driven storytelling and visual narrative, Fried explores belief, ideology, and the human impulse toward collective vision.
Gabriela Gamperl
Gabriela Gamperl is a Broward County–based artist and educator whose work centers on community engagement through murals, art education, and healing-focused creative programs. Her practice prioritizes accessibility, storytelling, and collective expression.
Project: Voices of the Neighborhoods
This mobile public art installation combines mural work with community-recorded stories, amplifying the voices that shape Broward County. The project creates space for residents to both share and experience the narratives that define their communities.
JaNia Harden
JaNia Harden is an artist, educator, and author whose work blends musical traditions across performance, education, and storytelling. From children’s literature to stage productions, her work creates emotionally resonant experiences that connect across generations.
Project
Harden’s latest work expands into new characters and immersive musical worlds, continuing her exploration of storytelling through sound, performance, and narrative. The project reflects her ongoing commitment to creating meaningful, accessible experiences for diverse audiences.
Luke Jenkins
Luke Jenkins is an artist and designer working primarily in wood, creating furniture, sculpture, and installations that examine natural ecologies and sustainability through material and process. Based in Fort Lauderdale, his practice merges craftsmanship with environmental inquiry, often exploring how traditional techniques can intersect with contemporary technologies.
Project
Jenkins’ work continues to investigate the relationship between human and natural systems, using wood as both medium and message. Through material-driven exploration, his project reflects on growth, adaptation, and the evolving dialogue between craft and environment.
Jacoub Reyes
Jacoub Reyes is a Florida-based interdisciplinary artist and public academic whose work explores community and ecosystems through research-driven printmaking and socially engaged practice. His approach combines material experimentation with cultural inquiry, grounding his work in place and shared history.
Project: Foraged Futures: Material Memories of Place
Blending ceramic sculpture, printmaking, and projection, this interactive project uncovers overlooked histories embedded within Broward County. Reyes invites audiences to engage with layered narratives of land, culture, and memory—reframing how we understand the spaces we inhabit.
Ileana Rincón-Cañas
Ileana Rincón-Cañas is a visual artist who creates immersive, symbolic photographic narratives exploring identity, memory, and ecological fragility. Her work is shaped by a transnational perspective, often reflecting on displacement and belonging.
Project: +58212: Sky is Buffering
This interactive installation draws from imagery of macaws over Caracas to explore themes of exile, resilience, and connection. Through layered visual storytelling, the work invites audiences to reflect on migration and the emotional landscapes it creates.
Fer Verano
Fer Verano is an Emmy Award–winning filmmaker, writer, and director whose work blends documentary and experimental storytelling to explore identity, memory, and human resilience.
Project: PEZ.KA and the Transformation of FATVillage
This documentary traces the evolution of Fort Lauderdale’s arts district alongside a chef’s journey, connecting cultural history with contemporary change and examining how communities transform over time.
Together, these projects reflect the breadth of artistic practice in Broward today—grounded in community, driven by experimentation, and shaped by a commitment to telling stories that matter.
To learn more about the Artist Innovation Grant, including upcoming application workshops and deadlines, visit Broward.org/Arts/Funding.
To meet these artists and learn about their artistic practice and process, visit the collection on Eventbrite HERE to attend one of three coffee and conversation series with these grant recipients during summer and early fall of 2026.
A Service of the Broward County Board of County Commissioners
