Grant
Community Lab and Incubator Program
April – August 2025

From a pool of 181 global applicants, {B/qKC} and I (along with three others) were selected for the Cultural Memory Lab: an incubator program between Gray Area, TechSoup and the Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web training community archives in decentralized web technologies.

Through this program, I received a grant for the continued support of my work, as well as technical and business development mentorship, and free access to the DWeb For Creators course.

Fun fact: this entire portfolio site is self-hosted on a server I built using a Raspberry Pi and YunoHost, something I learned through this program!

Check it out below:

Closing Presentation

On June 18th, 2025, I gave a closing presentation and demo at the DWeb for Creators Project Salon talking about my commitments to Black queer futurity, and how I’ll use what I’ve learned in the course to continue my community memory work.

What does it mean to archive a community that history tried to erase? In this powerful demo, Nasir Montalvo (they/them) introduces *{B/qKC}: A Black Queer Archive, a community-led effort to preserve and uplift the stories of Black LGBTQ+ life in Kansas City. From the underground ballroom scene to a mob-owned sandwich shop turned queer bar, this archive reclaims erased narratives with care, creativity, and radical ownership.

TechSoup, Description on YouTube