The 20th edition of Charlottesville SOUP will be held at 6PM on Monday, March 16 at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center. SOUP is a community dinner series to create a crowdfunded grant for an artist in the Charlottesville area. At each SOUP, attendees give a $10 donation and in return they receive a meal and a vote. During the meal, artists make short presentations about their creative projects in need of funding. At the end of the meal, each attendee enters a voting booth to cast their vote for which project to fund with the money raised from the meal that night. We’ll award the grant right then and there. Consider SOUP an experiment in civic engagement and a chance to play a role in supporting creativity in our community.
March 2026 Charlottesville SOUP
At our event on March 16 join us at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center to get to know Charlottesville artists, vote on your favorite creative project, and enjoy a delicious dinner featuring soup from Plenty, salad by Ian Walters, bread from Albemarle Baking Co., and dessert from Splendora’s.
Thanks to the generosity of community members, this event's grant will exceed $3,500! All artist presenters are guaranteed a $500 honorarium. Applications to pitch at the event and the ticket lottery to attend are now closed.
Meet the Presenting Artists
Following a competitive application process, four artists were selected by a committee made up of Tobiah Mundt and Megan Donovan to pitch their creative projects at the March 16 meal:
Yunina Barbour-Payne: An Affrilachian Theater maker planning to create The Whole of me Ain’t all Hill’s and Mountains, a multimedia community inspired dance for film based on Black Appalachian women’s writing.
Daniel Carmelo: A landscape designer creating zines and an interactive display illustrating recently discovered precolonial grassland remnants in the Virginia Piedmont.
Patricia Nguyen: An interdisciplinary artist creating an artist book grounded in workshops with communities on breathing and meditation practices honoring survivors of violence.
Jalia Dillard: An artist making a live, mystery-themed matchmaking experience designed to foster intentional community connection and pilot a new episodic film project.
Attend
A $10 ticket gets you dinner, dessert, and a vote! The SOUP Ticket Lottery is now closed.
Thank you
Charlottesville SOUP is a program of New City Arts. The 2026 SOUP dinner is made possible by generous sponsors including the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation, Eventide, Hello Comics, C-VILLE Weekly, Nest Realty, Kristen Finn Photography, The A/V Company, Splendora's Gelato, Daisy Dee, Amanda Monroe Finn, and anonymous donors.
