The Bayard Rustin Residency provides a year of support at the Penington to aid in the development of a unique project to address Racism in the United States.
Trans Activist Joshua Allen Selected for Bayard Rustin Residency
The Penington Friends House in Manhattan, NY is proud to announce their 5th Bayard Rustin Resident will be artist, organizer, and activist Joshua Obawole Allen. The Bayard Rustin Residency provides a year of support to aid in the development of a unique project to address Racism in the United States. Joshua, selected from over 50 applicants, will live at the Penington while developing a leadership program for young, Trans People of Color. Piloted originally at The LGBT Center in Chelsea, Joshua will expand and work to replicate this leadership program. This residency is supported by the Society of Friends (Quakers) and individual donors.
Joshua Obawole Allen (b. 1995, Brooklyn, New York) is a multidisciplinary artist and activist whose practice envisions a more just, equitable, and joyous world. Working at the intersections of art, community organizing, and cultural strategy, Allen uses visual storytelling to honor Black queer and trans life while shifting the cultural conditions so that Black queer and trans people are not merely surviving, but thriving.
Their work has been included in group exhibitions at AM:PM Gallery (2025), the Center for Black Visual Culture at NYU (2024), Leslie-Lohman Museum (2024), Armory Week (2024), the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporic Arts (2024), and the national For Freedoms / Wide Awakes billboard campaign (2020). They are featured in the 2024 For Freedoms monograph published by Phaidon Press and the forthcoming anthology Generation Queer from Lee & Low Books. In Spring 2025, Allen appeared as a cover star for Dazed Magazine.
Allen is also a regular contributor to Queerty x Native Son, where they write on art, culture, entertainment, and politics, helping to shape public discourse around intersectional justice and representation. In addition to their artistic and editorial work, Allen brings over a decade of experience in grassroots organizing. They served as the first-ever Activist-in-Residence at New York City’s LGBT Center, where they piloted a mentorship program for Black queer and trans youth. In 2020, they were recognized as one of The New Yorker’s Hometown Heroes for their community service during the COVID-19 pandemic. That same year, they led a record-breaking grassroots fundraising campaign that raised over $300,000 in just 18 days for Black trans youth, and later co-organized the Brooklyn Liberation March, which drew over 15,000 people in support of Black trans lives.
Allen’s work continues to build bridges between art and activism, rooted in the belief that cultural change is inseparable from systemic change.
Questions on this residency can be directed to Todd Drake, Residency manager, at outreach@penington.org
