Facilitated dialogue training for staff and volunteers of local museums and development of a public program module exploring regional Indigenous history. 

The Wilson Museum, in collaboration with Castine History Partners and other community groups and individuals, will build the capacity of the museum and the wider community to engage with complex topics in the humanities by providing training in facilitated dialogue. Through a two to three day workshop in facilitated dialog, participants will gain an understanding of the dialogic approach to group learning, develop their skills in facilitating dialogue, and begin the process of creating dialogic programs around Indigenous history and current issues, climate change and community resilience, the American Revolution, and other topics important to participants. The project will give Wilson Museum staff and volunteers, and staff and volunteers from other local historical organizations, enhanced capacity to interpret our collections, exhibits, and cultural landscapes.

Reinterpretation of the museum’s Native American gallery through collaboration and consultation with tribal representatives.

The Jim Gatchell Memorial Museum would like to create a Native American Wisdom Council by gathering regional tribal members from the Crow, Shoshone, Arapaho, Sioux, and Cheyenne tribes. This council would then be paid as guest curators/consultants to reinterpret their Native history throughout the museum's exhibit galleries. Museum staff and volunteers would coordinate meetings, document, and facilitate the installation of new interpretation and exhibits throughout the museum.

Creation of a “Neighborhood Storykeeper” to develop co-curated humanities-based programs for underserved communities in Cambridge, MA.

In 2025, History Cambridge will create a new role called “Neighborhood Storykeeper.” Each year, one Storykeeper connected to a different Cambridge community will develop, research, and share with the public a personally meaningful historical story. In 2024, we seek funding for Phase 1: Working with consultants close to our organization (and known humanities experts) to develop a toolkit that will outline the process for implementing this crucial role. We aim to reach the most diverse audience possible and to build trust with partnering communities. This toolkit will be made widely available nationwide to other organizations interested in establishing a similar, replicable program. By co-curating a public history project based on first-hand experiences from marginalized groups in conjunction with primary research, this project will fill in gaps in the historical record and ultimately strengthen cross-community bonds through increased empathy and understanding of neighbors.

An interpretive plan on the history of the African American experience at United Lutheran Seminary Gettysburg campus.

This project will create a plan to interpret African American history and the legacy of slavery and servitude on the Gettysburg campus of United Lutheran Seminary.

Staff and volunteer training on best practices for interpreting the history of the enslaved residents of Patrick Henry’s home, Red Hill.

The humanities encourage our communities to engage in deeper thinking related to the meaning, value, and purpose of human life. Humanities topics and programming at Patrick Henry's Red Hill also push the questions of "what is justice?" and "what is equality?" Patrick Henry's "liberty or death" speech rallied the Second Virginia Convention to arms against Great Britain. He compared the price of peace under British rule with being bound in "chains and slavery," but most of the audience, including Henry himself, enslaved people on plantations. As the staff at Red Hill uncovers more layers and more truths about those enslaved and buried at Red Hill, we can more fully engage our visitors in these critical topics of justice and equality. Staff training becomes more and more critical as our conversation and educational content prompt deeper thought and understanding on these topics within the broader field of humanities.

Creation of an interpretive plan for the Ball & Socket Arts complex.

Ball & Socket Arts requests funding to convene historians and exhibition experts to research, create, and develop a detailed interpretive site plan that will explore the best way to tell the labor history of Ball & Socket Manufacturing.

Development of an interpretive plan to expand the museum’s narrative to tell a more comprehensive story of communities within the region. 

Frequently we hear from those who live in rural West Central Illinois that they don't see themselves in history. This inability to see how we fit in the story limits our ability to connect to and learn from the humanities. Our region’s historically underrepresented groups include the people of color who sought the freedom to own farmland and women, through the pursuit of education, sought the freedom to choose a profession outside the domestic sphere. Our project will create a new exhibit narrative that features these changemakers and ensures that a more complete history of rural America is told. The new permanent exhibit will re-enforce that these stories deserve to be included in history.

New interpretive signage and a web-based audio tour for a historic site to tell the story of Native American displacement, early European settlers, the rise of recreation culture, and KKK protest.

This grant project will fund the development interpretive signage and a web-based audio tour to tell the story of Skinner Butte Park as it relates to the Shelton McMurphey Johnson House through multiple forms of interpretive storytelling. This history includes Native American husbandry and displacement, early white settlers’ territorial land claims, the growth of public infrastructure, the hobby of recreation, and the city of Eugene, and nearby African American settlement and subsequent KKK events. Grant funds will be used to hire an interpretive consultant and an audio production contractor, provide honoraria for Advisory Committee members, and support project management.

Development of an exhibition on the history of Black women’s higher education and related interpretive training for staff.

This project's target audience is Black women and girls in Richmond, the same community Hartshorn Memorial College (HMC) students, and Maggie L. Walker focused on. At a time when Black women’s rights are being threatened, it is all the more important that the former capital of the Confederacy remembers its less well-known history as a capital of Black female empowerment. Figures like Maggie L. Walker and the alumni of HMC demonstrate that Black women have the capacity to take charge of their own destiny as well as the destiny of their communities; hence, telling their stories in a compelling way can be an empowering way for Black women and girls to connect to their legacy and capacity.

Program evaluation and audience outreach leading to the development of more inclusive interpretive strategies to meet the needs of residents of Laurel, Maryland.

The Laurel Historical Society seeks funds to conduct comprehensive evaluation and analysis of collections and public programs. The proposed project would strengthen interpretation as a result of internal and outward-facing evaluations to assess the gaps in our current collection, evaluate our programs and community needs, engage in listening sessions, and interview community members and stakeholders. These approaches would aid the organization in strengthening interpretation and public programming at the Laurel Historical Society.

Reinterpretation of the Genesee Country Village & Museum historic sites to incorporate the deeper histories of African Americans in the region.

Encompassing the first two phases of a larger strategic interpretive project, GCV&M will use research completed in 2023 to produce interpretive panels for two buildings, and both develop and launch a daily guided tour to four buildings in our Historic Village, interpreting the history of enslavement in 19th century Western New York for our general public. The goal of this project is to ensure the history of Black Americans in the Genesee Valley Region told on our site is comprehensive and fully integrated into our Historic Village, daily interpretive programming, and staff knowledge base. GCV&M will work with local community partners as well as both local and non-local subject experts to create and review the panel and tour content as well as train our staff to responsibly deliver it to GCV&M’s 80,000 annual visitors.

Creation of programming tied to the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society’s archive of African American history.  

Through My Eyes, is a program that will diversify our interpretive insights into our collections, raise awareness of African Heritage history and complement our current work to catalogue our archive (some 7,000 linear feet) . We will create a series of monthly videos that bring the insights of community members (students, teachers, politicians, local celebrities, etc.) to the documents found in the archive. Each month, our archivist and other RIBHS members will teach the community members about a different document, and the community members will, in turn, talk about their personal intertest in or connection to the document, which we will capture on video. These will be distributed on YouTube, at our website, and through our social media channels to simultaneously: provide our community with a deeper understanding of our work, introduce our community to the broader world, and raise awareness of African Heritage history and culture as far as our digital presence will reach.

Development of an interpretive plan and public programming to tell a more comprehensive story of Allen County.

The Allen County Historical Society (dba Allen County Museum) is seeking funding to plan for the reorganization of three permanent collection galleries, relocation and reorganization of its temporary exhibit gallery, and the development of an interpretative plan. The proposed activities are a direct consequence of ACM's in-depth institutional plan completed in 2020. Specific activities include 1) reorganization of permanent collection galleries to create more engaging, impactful, and exciting visitor experience; 2) development of an interpretative plan to provide a cohesive experience and narrative; 3) creation of thematic programming in conjunction with permanent collection and exhibits to reach new audiences and increase visibility; and 4) creation of programming to enable an immersive, interactive experience in the exhibits. The overall project will focus on visitor-centered design and interpretative approaches.

Planning and implementation of an exhibition about historically significant residents from communities underrepresented in the historical narrative of Greensboro, NC.

The Greensboro History Museum requests $25,000 to expand the content of its permanent 2010 "Voices of a City" core-history exhibition to include local African Americans and women who called Greensboro home and had national impact in the history of the arts. There is a small gallery in the pre-WWII area of "Voices" that focuses on the local short story writer William Sydney Porter, known as O. Henry. We are proposing to redesign the space so that we can add some highly significant creative voices who are missing from their city's museum: African American Harlem Renaissance-era artist Malvin Gray Johnson; formerly enslaved Orpheus McAdoo who brought Black American music to South Africa in the late 1800s; musician Margaret Mitchell Faulkner who founded NC A&T's music department; and mathematician Virginia Ragsdale, known for her 1906 Ragsdale Conjecture. Grant funds would help pay for a new installation and associated interpretation to be added within the "Voices" exhibition.