From These Hills: Public Programming and Engagement through the Appalshop Archive

FAIN: ZH-252992-17

Appalshop, Inc. (Whitesburg, KY 41858-0743)
Caroline Rubens (Project Director: May 2016 to January 2024)

Digitization, expansion, and curation of Appalshop archival material.

A Humanities Access challenge grant will support Appalshop in 1) enhancing the organization's humanities program, 2) improving access to collections in its care, and 3) broadening and deepening its unique role as a regionally-based cultural, arts and humanities center in Appalachia with a national and international reach. As an anchor institution in a region that is currently undergoing significant economic transition away from coal as a dominant extractive industry, the timing of the NEH grant would be well-suited to this period of change as thousands of coal-related layoffs have occurred. This moment provides an opportunity to honor the area’s coalmining legacy while reimagining a future with a more diverse economy built in part through community cultural development. Materials in the Appalshop Archive hold lasting value for public programming in the humanities and will form the basis for implementing a robust outreach and engagement effort to bring more work before the public.