How Future Prairie began

Future Prairie started as an informal collective before it was an organization. In January 2018, poet Liam Whitworth founded Future Prairie in Portland, Oregon on a simple refusal: that queer artists should have to trade their work for exposure instead of pay. The IRS granted the organization's 501(c)(3) status that same spring. Our first ongoing project was Future Prairie Radio, a podcast built to pass the mic to LGBTQIA+ Oregon-based working-class artists and let them talk plainly about their work and about what it actually costs to make art when you are a queer, working artist in the Pacific Northwest. Our original vision was a commitment: pay the artist, then make room for what they make.