Three Denver Artists Receive $50,000 Bonfils-Stanton Social Impact Artist Awards

DENVER, CO, June 15, 2026 — In a city where rising costs, displacement, disability justice, youth mental health, and cultural erasure are reshaping the public conversation, three Denver artists have spent years doing what policy alone cannot: helping communities see themselves, mourn together, organize, remember, and imagine a different future.

Bonfils-Stanton Foundation has named photographer Armando Geneyro, rapper and performer Kalyn Rose Heffernan, and musician and social practice artist Stephen Malloy Brackett as the recipients of its second Social Impact Artist Award, a $50,000 award honoring Denver-based artists whose work addresses the social needs of community.

Each artist will receive a $35,000 unrestricted cash award and $15,000 in project support to advance a socially engaged creative project over the next year.

The award marks the second cycle of Bonfils-Stanton Foundation’s renewed investment in individual artists, following the Foundation’s reannouncement of the Social Impact Artist Award as a direct investment in artists whose creative practices are deeply connected to civic life, community care, and social change.

At $50,000 per artist, the award also places Bonfils-Stanton Foundation’s investment among a notable group of national artist awards that provide significant direct support to individual artists. For Denver artists working at the intersection of creativity and public life, the scale of the award is designed to offer not only recognition, but time, flexibility, and resources to sustain work that often happens outside traditional institutional structures.

“This award is about more than honoring exceptional artists. It is about recognizing that artists are part of the civic infrastructure of a city,” said James-Allan Holmes, President and CEO of Bonfils-Stanton Foundation. “Armando, Kalyn, and Stephen have each built bodies of work that help Denver see itself more clearly. They document what is at risk of being forgotten, challenge who gets access to cultural power, and create spaces where people can gather, heal, and imagine what comes next. That kind of work deserves serious investment.”

The award arrives at a moment when the role of artists in American public life is being tested and redefined. Across the country, artists are being asked to do more than create work for galleries, stages, or concert halls. They are building archives, supporting young people, challenging institutions, documenting communities under pressure, and creating spaces where people often excluded from cultural power can speak in their own voices.

In Denver, Geneyro, Heffernan, and Brackett have each built practices that make art inseparable from community.

For Bonfils-Stanton Foundation, the award is part of a larger commitment to investing in artists not only as creators, but as civic leaders.

“Social impact does not always begin inside an institution or a policy process,” said Chrissy Deal, Director of Leadership, Arts & Social Change Grants at Bonfils-Stanton Foundation. “Very often, it begins with artists who are close to community, close to the questions a city is wrestling with, and close to the people most affected by change. These artists are not making work from a distance. They are inspired by and build with their communities, and that is what makes their practices so powerful.”

The Social Impact Artist Award was created to recognize artists whose work demonstrates both artistic excellence and a sustained commitment to advancing social change. The award supports artists whose practices engage communities directly, challenge inequity, and expand the role of art in public life.

At a time when many American cities are asking what culture is for, these three artists offer a clear answer: culture is not decoration. It is one of the ways communities remember, resist, heal, organize, celebrate and survive.

Bonfils-Stanton Foundation will honor the recipients at a closed award celebration at the new Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Center for the Healing Arts, bringing together artists, community leaders, and invited guests to celebrate Geneyro, Heffernan, and Brackett’s contributions to Denver’s cultural and civic life.

About the Artists

Armando Geneyro has spent years photographing neighborhoods, families, artists, and everyday lives often flattened or overlooked in traditional narratives. Born in Los Angeles to South American immigrants and raised in Lompoc, California, he served six years in the U.S. Air Force before earning a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Sociology from Metropolitan State University of Denver. His military experience, including an overseas deployment in 2005, eventually led him to become a conscientious objector and receive an honorable discharge.

That arc — service, moral reckoning, political study, and close observation — informs his documentary and street photography. His ongoing project, God Bless the Block, documents life in Denver’s historic Five Points neighborhood, focusing on the culture, resilience, and social fabric of a community navigating rapid change and displacement. Through the project support portion of this award, Geneyro will work with youth to produce a photojournalism book inspired by God Bless the Block, equipping them with tools to document their own communities and lived experiences.

Geneyro is also a co-founder of Theyshootn, a collective of visual storytellers using photography, exhibitions, and public programming to engage conversations around social justice and community issues. His work has been exhibited at Denver International Airport, History Colorado Center, and the Denver Art Museum, and featured by outlets including 9News, Colorado Public Radio, Denverite, The Colorado Trust, and The Colorado Sun.

‍

Kalyn Rose Heffernan has built a career out of refusing the terms by which disabled people, queer people, and working-class communities are often represented. A rapper, performer, educator, community advocate, and founding member of the experimental group Wheelchair Sports Camp, Heffernan’s work moves across music, theater, film, television, museum interventions, creative direction, performance art, permanent installations, politics, and public protest.

Her practice is confrontational, humorous, loving, and deliberately difficult to categorize. Heffernan has performed internationally and locally, bringing a voice rooted in disability justice, queer liberation, and community accountability into spaces that have not always known how to hold it. Her work insists that accessibility is not simply a technical accommodation but a cultural and political question: who is allowed to belong, who gets to lead, and who gets heard without being translated for comfort.

With support from the award, Heffernan will launch Wheelchair Band Camp, a project designed to create inclusive, artist-led space for disabled young people to make noise, express themselves, and take up space with support from local musicians. 

‍

Stephen Malloy Brackett has spent decades turning performance into civic infrastructure. Known nationally as a musician and member of the Flobots, Brackett’s work extends far beyond the stage. He is a social practice artist, organizer, educator, and institution builder whose career has moved through hip-hop, youth development, public policy, community grief, and collective action.

Brackett co-founded Youth on Record in 2008, helping build a professional recording studio inside public housing and creating pathways for young people most excluded from the cultural economy. More than 30,000 young people across Colorado have come through that work. He also helped develop “Why Did We Stop Singing?” for the international activist organization Momentum and helped create Colorado’s Music Ambassador program during the pandemic, bringing live music into housing complexes and retirement facilities to keep musicians working and isolated people connected.

Brackett currently runs ONE Denver, the city’s Office of Nighttime Economy, and leads Foundation Music School in Fort Collins, delivering free music education to rural and low-income youth. His current project, The House Party, which will be supported by the project portion of the award, is an attempt to make explicit what has long animated his practice: that music can do more than gather people. It can help restore the social ecosystems that make artists, neighbors, and cities more resilient.

Together, the three awardees reflect a broader shift in how social impact in the arts is understood. The work being recognized is not simply art about justice. It is art that functions as a form of justice work: documenting neighborhoods under threat, challenging ableism and exclusion, creating platforms for young people, preserving community memory, and building new structures of care.

About the Social Impact Artist Award

The Bonfils-Stanton Social Impact Artist Award is a bi-annual award honoring Denver-based artists whose work addresses the social needs of the community. Each recipient receives a $35,000 unrestricted cash award and $15,000 in project support to advance a socially engaged project within one year.

The award reflects Bonfils-Stanton Foundation’s belief that artists are essential to building a more just and vibrant Denver. By investing directly in individual artists at a nationally competitive level, the Foundation seeks to recognize the civic, cultural, and community value artists create — particularly those whose work advances equity, belonging, and social change.

Bonfils-Stanton Foundation will honor the recipients at a closed award celebration at the new Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Center for the Healing Arts, bringing together artists, community leaders, and invited guests to celebrate Armando Geneyro, Kalyn Rose Heffernan, and Stephen Malloy Brackett’s contributions to Denver’s cultural and civic life.

About Bonfils-Stanton 

Bonfils-Stanton Foundation believes extraordinary arts and leadership are essential to building a vibrant Colorado. The Foundation strategically invests in imagination and innovation because cultivating the creative spark strengthens communities and makes Colorado a place where people want to live, work, and thrive. Since its founding, the Foundation has distributed more than $100 million in charitable contributions. Learn more at bonfils-stantonfoundation.org. 

‍

##

‍