Grant Award Announcements

2012 MAJOR GRANT AWARDS

AS220
Action Speaks: Underappreciated Dates that Changed America
$15,000 was awarded to support the public forum / radio show that explores contemporary ramifications of under-appreciated dates in twentieth-century American history. Action Speaks is embarking upon its 16th year.

Blackstone Valley Tourism Council
Interpreting the Chocolate Mill Overlook Park
$9,500 was awarded to support the creation of educational, interpretive panels for the new Chocolate Mill Overlook Park in Central Falls. The signs will include the history of the William Wheat Chocolate Factory and chocolate manufacturing in the 18th century.

Bryant University
The African Digital Archive (ADA)
$6,000 was awarded to support the creation of the African Digital Archive, an online archive of images, interviews, videos, and curriculum materials about African people living in Rhode Island. The interactive website will be a resource for learning about African culture, including topics of migration, assimilation, race, and identity.

FirstWorks
Caravanserai in Rhode Island: A Place Where Cultures Meet
$10,000 was awarded support a series of humanities programs that invite Rhode Islanders of all ages to engage with visiting Pakistani artists and scholars. Through public forums, in-school programs, and workshops, the Caravanserai initiative seeks to expand participants’ connections with contemporary Muslim societies.

Friends of Hearthside, Inc.
Color & Light
$15,000 was awarded to support an exhibition and programming centered on 50 recently discovered photographic prints of the 200-year old Hearthside House in Lincoln, RI. The hand-tinted prints will be displayed alongside artifacts to bring a blend of art and history to life.

Global Rhode Island
RI Capitol Forum on America’s Future
$9,600 was awarded to support a program that offers professional development training to 16 Rhode Island teachers on complex international issues. The year-long project culminates in the Capitol Forum – a mock UN day held at the State House with 80 students, legislators, and policy and non-profit professionals.

The Learning Community
An Inquiry-Based Social Studies Curriculum for Middle Grades
$6,000 was awarded to support teacher training for the development of social studies curriculum for 6th and 7th graders based on Inquiry Projects: an initiative in which students learn about and actively intervene in local community issues of interest to the students.

Little Compton Historical Society
The History of Little Compton: A Home by the Sea, 1820-1954
$10,000 was awarded to support the History of Little Compton Project.  Based on the successful model of Phase One, The History of Little Compton, First Light: Sakonnet, 1660-1820, the project will research and archive the history of Little Compton from 1820 to 1954, and present an exhibition, a publication, and accompanying public programs.

Newport Historical Society
The Spectacle of Toleration
$5,000 was awarded to support a project that will research and publicize Rhode Island’s role as a ground-breaking establishment of tolerance in the 18th Century, and the positive impact that position had on its interesting and economically successful society.

North Providence School District
Civic Engagement Program
$1,800 was awarded to support the development of a new Civic Engagement Program in the North Providence School District. With guest lecturers, guided tours and leadership training, the Civics Engagement Program will enhance students’ writing and oral communication skills with the aim of addressing pertinent civic issues.

The Preservation Society of Newport County
Newport Historic Urban Plan Project
$5,000 will support the creation of an online, interactive map depicting the history of Newport’s physical development linked to information on its social, political, economic, and cultural history. The project will engage the public in a continuing conversation about American history, citizenship, and democracy by providing an access point for researchers, educators, and the general public to gain information about Newport’s past.

Providence Children’s Film Festival
Providence Children’s Film Festival
$9,000 has been awarded to support the third annual film festival that specializes in independent and international family films. Workshops, filmmaker presentations, and hands-on activities will enrich the film-going experience as children learn to think actively about film as a medium to tell stories, understand new concepts, and activate the imagination.

Redwood Library and Athenaeum
To Arrive Where We Started
$8,809.37 has been awarded to support an art installation within the Redwood Library. The installation is inspired by and draws upon the Library’s archive collection and the historic building in which it is housed. The installation will be accompanied by a catalog with scholarly essays and lectures.

RiverzEdge Arts Project
Stories of Access, Stories of Denial: Communities of Color on the Blackstone
$10,000 has been awarded to support a project in which youth historians and mentors will research stories about the historic role of the Blackstone River in city life. With focus on communities of color from the Civil War to Civil Rights eras, youth will create a blog and a public exhibition involving performance, storytelling, artifacts, and visual art.

Rhode Island Civic Chorale and Orchestra
Sir Michael Tippett’s A Child of Our Time: Visions of Oppression and Peace
$5,000 has been awarded to support a series of panel discussions and presentations in anticipation of the Rhode Island premiere of Sir Michael Tippett’s A Child of Our Time.

Rhode Island College
Exploring the Japanese-American Internment through Art and Literature
$5,000 was awarded to support a lecture and exhibit on the Japanese-American internment. The exhibit explores the importance of storytelling and art to preserve memories, as well as how fictional representations can reflect the human consequences of racism and social injustice. The exhibit will be presented as part of Rhode Island College’s Open Books Open Minds Conference.

Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre
Big Brother in Our Hip Pocket: Why Orwell Still Matters
$5,700 was awarded to support public forums coordinated in conjunction with the production of George Orwell’s 1984. Forums will explore the themes of the novel and a digital presentation providing context on the life, work, and influence of George Orwell will be viewable online and at the theatre.

Serve Rhode Island
Justice Talks Continuation & Replication Project
$5,000 has been awarded to support Justice Talks, a unique six-week discussion and reflection series that engages Rhode Island state AmeriCorps members in generating challenging, open discussions about service, social justice, and civic engagement through provocative readings and reflective conversations.

Slater Mill
Student Access Program
$7,386.69 was awarded to support visits to the Slater Mill historic site for teachers and youth from five of Rhode Island’s most economically disadvantaged cities.

Social Venture Partners Rhode Island
Social Enterprise Storytelling
$15,000 was awarded to support the Social Enterprise Story Project in collecting and sharing the stories of Rhode Island’s social entrepreneurs. The project will address why entrepreneurs pursue social change and how their efforts impact Rhode Island communities.

Southeast New England Film, Music, and Arts (SENE)
Slatersville: America’s First Mill Village
$3,900 will support the creation of a working script for a 30-minute educational and promotional video on the historical significance of the Slatersville mill village founded by Rhode Island’s Father of the Industrial Revolution, Samuel Slater.

Tiverton Public Schools
Bridging the Gap in Social Studies Instruction Middle to High School
$9,904 will support 20 Tiverton Public School social studies teachers to work with a curriculum consultant to develop new units aligned to the Rhode Islands Grade Span Expectations.

Vartan Gregorian PTO
A Taste of Home: Food as Connector to Culture, Community, and Local Geography
$10,000 was awarded to support a classroom and community project for students learning about the history of Fox Point through lessons, activities, and teacher training. The 2011-2012 school year theme is A Taste of Home: Food as Connector to Culture, Community, and Local Geography.

VSA Arts RI
“Getting Away With It”: Lucy Truman Aldrich’s Weekend with Chinese Bandits
$5,000 was awarded to support an exploration of the 1840-1930 debate on Deaf instruction in Rhode Island, Lucy Truman Aldrich’s Atlantic Monthly essay, My Weekend with Chinese Bandits, and the 1920’s Chinese rebel practice of kidnapping foreign tourists. Research will result in a public presentation and a script based on Aldrich’s essay.

2011 Major Grant Awards – Fall Cycle

Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre, $2,950 to “Dear God, Did You Make Mankind After We Made You?” Funds support production of a series of three Pawtucket Humanities Forums in relation to the North American premiere of Howard Brenton’s play PAUL. Each forum, moderated by URI political scientist Maureen Moakley, aims to engage local scholars and audiences in conversation about the role of religion in public life. 

Seedworks Fund, $4,966 to Deer Prudence. Funds support script development for a 58-minute documentary film by filmmaker Tijana Petrovic set on Block Island, RI, which follows the process and the effects of the community's decision to eliminate the island's deer herd due to their decade long struggle with Lyme disease. Research for the film will be centered around the island community and its history, including issues surrounding Lyme disease such as hunting, land conservation, and animal management.

Center for Independent Documentary, $4,500 to Finding Lovecraft. Funds support script development for a feature-length film by local filmmaker Cat Hainfeld on RI horror storywriter Howard Phillips Lovecraft. 

Providence Children’s Film Festival, $6,000 to Providence Children’s Film Festival. Funds support expanded programming for the second year of the Providence Children’s Film Festival. The volunteer-led endeavor plans to leverage community relationships to increase the festival to a full week; partner with RISD’s education department to hold free events; and offer scholarships to students involved in CityArts in South Providence. 

The Genocide Education Project, $8,740 to A Journey from Despair to Hope: The Story of the Armenian Americans of Rhode Island. Funds support creation of a teaching kit and workshops for secondary Rhode Island educators to promote understanding of genocide, specifically using the experiences of Armenian Americans who sought asylum in Rhode Island.

Ocean State Learning, $9,550 to Creative Survival: African American Foodways in Rhode Island. Funds support creation of an exhibition on African American cooking in Rhode Island at the Johnson & Wales Culinary Museum. An oral history document of 8 African American chefs, restaurateurs, and church cooks will be created, along with an exhibition booklet listing exhibition items, venues for finding Black food in Rhode Island, and recipes from the Black community.  Various programs will also accompany the exhibition – including a opening event lecture by Norma Jean Darden, an authority on African American foodways, and two public library events showcasing Linda Cline’s collection of Black cookbooks.

Brown University (Rites and Reason Theatre), $8,3000 to Folkthoughts. Funds support pre/post play Folkthoughts – or multi-format “talk-back” discussions - for three theatrical productions that explore different aspects of the Black experience in North American and the Caribbean.

Little Compton Historical Society, $10,000 to Sakonnet Point Perspectives. Funds support Little Compton Historical Society, the Sakonnet Preservation Association, and the Friends of the Sakonnet Lighthouse to collaborate in the creation of an exhibition at the Little Compton Historical Society on the importance of Sakonnet Point from its earliest history to the present day.  The exhibition will not only be a resource to the general public through gallery hours and public programming, but also to summer camps and walking tours organized by the three collaborating institutions. An exhibition booklet will be available at the exhibition with copies also distributed to the local school and library. 

Mount St. Rita Health Centre, $4,395 to The Spirit of Mercy. Funds support Mount St. Rita Health Centre to explore its history through performing an archival inventory of historical documents, photographs, and journals, as well as an oral history project targeting residents specifically the aging Sisters of Mercy.

Vartan Gregorian Elementary School PTO, $10,000 to The I WAS THERE Project. Funds support a multifaceted classroom and community project aimed at upper grade students in learning about the history of Fox Point through lessons, activities, and teacher training.  The 2010-2011 school year theme is Factory Workers and the Jewelry Industry.

Institute for the Study & Practice of Nonviolence, $12,500 to Raise Your Voices: Examining Culture, Clash, Community, Change. Funds support expansion of Raise Your Voices – a classroom program designed to offer teachers an interdisciplinary approach for fostering an understanding of the guiding principles of non-violence.

Living History, $13,194 to Grand Review 2011. Funds support a collaborative effort between Living History (a nine year old program that engages high school aged youth from Providence’s MET school in reenactment activities specific to the experience of Rhode Island’s 14h Regiment of Black Civil War soldiers) and the Providence Community Library system to offer multiple events at three different sites in Providence to commemorate the 150^th anniversary of the Civil War.

2011 Major Grant Awards – Spring Cycle

AS220, 15,000 to Action Speaks. Funds support a multi-format, interdisciplinary humanities program that explores 'under-appreciated dates' in twentieth-century American history. Action Speaks includes a live public panel discussion featuring guest panelists and moderator Marc Levitt, complementary RIPBS documentary screenings, radio broadcast of edited panel discussion on WGBH Boston, and secondary materials including Levitt's production blog and interactive resources for discussion and commentary available on the Action Speaks website. 

Block Island Historical Society, $7,500 to Island Nurse. Funds support the post-production phase of a 30-40 minute film on the life and work of Mary Donnelly – RI’s longest working employee, serving as the Block Island nurse for over 55 years. The film will chart Mary’s story through interviews with friends, family, community members, and Mary herself, as well as footage of her in action, visiting Block Island residents.

Brown University, $10,000 to Expanding the Choices Program in Rhode Island Classrooms. Funds support the development of (3) 30-minute live webinars aimed introducing teachers to the Choices Program, which seeks to deepen RI secondary level social studies teaching, particularly in the areas of history and civics education. Webinars will include unit outlines, additional resources, and advice from fellow teachers who have utilized the program.  In addition to the interactive, live webinars, recorded versions will be available to all Rhode Island high schools.

Center for Independent Documentary, $10,000 to Finding Lovecraft: Life is a Hideous Thing. Funds support the post-production phase of a feature-length film on RI horror storywriter Howard Phillips Lovecraft. The film aims to help audiences understand the author through coupling a documentary examination of Lovecraft’s life with a fictional narrative in which the documentary filmmakers are drawn into a plot that recreates the feel of Lovecraft’s stories. 

Documentary Educational Resources, $7,500 to Pell Grants: A Passion for Education.  Funds support the post-production phase of a 90-minute documentary tracing the history of the Pell Grants and their legacy. The film will explore how the Pell Grants developed from a dream to reality, charting how Senator Pell overcame a variety of challenges to successfully open the gates of higher education, and will reflect on the role of Pell Grants in higher education from 1972 to the present day. 

Everett Arts, $9,996 to Brain Storm-ing: A Dialogue at the Intersection of Neuroscience, Human Consciousness, and the Arts.  Funds support humanities programs around Everett Dance Theatre’s fall production of Brain Storm, a performance piece examining how the latest developments in neuroscience intersect with our daily lives.  Programs will focus on creating a dynamic community dialogue at the intersection of neuroscience, human consciousness, and the arts and will include three public Brain Cafes led by collaborating scientists and humanists and an interdisciplinary BrainStorming audience program guide documenting the “making of” and “thinking about” process of creating Brain Storm. Funds will also contribute to building the infrastructure of the humanities section of the organization’s website as a source of deep documentation and dissemination of lessons learned through the project.

Museum of Natural History, $10,000 to Circle of the Sea: Bringing History to Light. Funds support the renovation and reinterpretation the museum’s 10-year-old ethnological exhibition on Oceanic peoples titled “Circle of the Sea.” The project will transform the current exhibition from a sparse, object-oriented space to an enriched exhibit with new objects, specimens and information about the natural environment inhabited by the peoples, and cultural and historical information about the New Englanders who originally collected the artifacts.

Pawtucket School Department, $4,000 to Shea Government and Public Administration Academy. Funds support an increase in the reach of a program focused on enhancing voter education in the classroom and demonstrating how citizen involvement is essential in our democracy.  The program works with seniors at Shea High School to create educational materials to be shared online and presented at educational assemblies related to voter education at middle and high schools throughout the state.

Pettaquamscutt Historical Society, $4,700 to A Natural History Continuum at the Hale House. Funds support the development of the historic Hale House into a center that celebrates the humanities and continues a legacy of artistic and literary enlightenment that engages, enriches, and inspires community.  Ana Flores, planner, researcher, and humanist for the project, will explore the history of the property to identify appropriate programs, forums and enrichment opportunities the House can best support, and to create a plan for the long-term sustainability of the Hale House as a destination for cultural investigation, professional enrichment, and community engagement for a wide variety of audiences.  Research will culminate in an exploratory art-nature workshop as a pilot project for feasibility and evaluation purposes.

Providence Community Library, $3,750 to Spoken Word Intergenerational Celebration. Funds support a series of five two-session intergenerational spoken word workshops at five of the Providence Community Library branches.  In the workshops, participants will explore the richness of their cultural and family histories and traditions, and will work with humanities scholars to practice and polish the telling of their stories.  The workshops will culminate in a Spoken Word Intergenerational Celebration Performance to coincide with Celebrate Providence 375 events.

Rhode Island Black Storytellers, $7,612.50 to Sankofa: Looking Back to Look Ahead. Funds support a partnership between RIBS, Higher Ground International, and OASIS International to work with young Black and African immigrants in Rhode Island to research local Black history, experience professional storytellers, develop storytelling skills and create stories for publication and performance both in November and at the 14^th Annual Funda Fest in January.  The program will also include a family engagement workshop for the participants’ families, where parents can recall and share stories from their cultures in order to preserve the oral tradition within the family and community.

Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project, $9,200 to Rhode Island in the Revolution: A Heritage Tourism Project.  Funds support a research project to expand the existing knowledge base related to Rhode Island’s Revolutionary War history.  RI Marine Archaeology Project staff will conduct historical investigation and partner with local historical societies to create four new Rhode Island heritage trails featuring buildings, industrial sites, archaeological sites, and other locations relating to selected Revolutionary War themes.  They will also publish and distribute accompanying heritage trail guides to historical societies throughout the state, and will host a statewide heritage tourism meeting for interested individuals and organizations.

Roger Williams National Memorial, $6,000 to “A Lively Experiment” – A Public Discourse about Providence’s Rich History.  Funds support a seven-week public lecture series at various venues throughout Providence, to take place in conjunction with Celebrate Providence 375 years.  The lectures cover such topics as Providence’s African-American and Latino-American history, Historic Preservation in Providence, Rhode Island’s culinary history, and the creation of Roger Williams National Memorial, and aim to engage a wide variety of audiences in inspired civic discourse.  The lecture series will culminate in a three hour “This I Believe” Workshop, in which community members will reflect on their personal philosophies just as Roger Williams did 375 years ago.  A 5-10 minute video documenting and capturing the lectures, workshop, and participants’ reactions will be created and shared online.

Southeastern Massachusetts Arts Collaborative (SMARTS), $5,000 to Haven Brothers Movie: Legacy of the American Diner.  Funds support the script development phase of a 60-minute documentary film on the oldest operating American diner on wheels, downtown Providence’s Haven Brothers Diner. The film will explore the diner’s 100 plus years of history – how this slice of Americana has survived and changed through the years, and its relationship to Rhode Islanders – through the eyes of customers, historians, politicians, police officers, celebrities, and tourists.

URI Foundation, $5,000 to RELIANCE.  Funds support the development phase of a 90-minute film on Rhode Island State Police Sergeant Matthew Zarrella and his search and rescue dogs.  The film will explore Zarrella’s deep sense of duty, the struggles that motivated his ethical and civil obligation to his state and country, and the emergency resources he developed in Rhode Island as a result.  Zarrella’s story will be told through footage from live searches, first-hand interviews, diary footage, and unique animations.     

2011 Mini Grants Awards to Organizations:

College Crusade of Rhode Island, $2,000 to Langston Hughes Community Poetry Reading. Funds support the 16^th Annual Langston Hughes Community Poetry Reading held at the RISD Museum of Art on February 6, 2011. The project aims to educate a diverse audience about Langston Hughes’s poetry; highlight the humanities theme of African-American history and the Harlem Renaissance; and to use Hughes’s poetry as an example of maintaining a long-term legacy.

Salve Regina University, $1,000 to Exchange and Inspiration: A Cross-Cultural Look at Chinese and American Ceramics. Funds support a symposium on the cultural exchange between ceramics artists in Jindezhen, China, and the United States, which will include presentations, a round table discussion, and a screening of the documentary film Broken Pots Broken Dreams.

Providence Athenaeum, $2000 to Hark! The White Whale! Funds support a series of free public salon-style talks and a read-aloud events commemorating the 160^th anniversary of Moby-Dick. The Athenaeum will host a diverse group of scholars to discuss the disparate ideas in the novel, examine its relevance today, and encourage attendees to reconsider this book which is more heard of than actually read. The read-aloud event will include selections from Moby-Dick as well as Poe’s The Raven and Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener.

Rhode Island College, $1500 to Rhode Island and the Civil War. Funds support a free public history conference commemorating the 150^th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War. The conference focuses on popular historical memory – how Rhode Islanders have remembered the war – and will engage scholars, Civil War reenaactors and musicians, and local historical societies and museums. In addition, RIC will partner with the RI Historical Society to bring two related exhibits to the Adams Library for the month of April and will offer elementary and secondary-level lesson plans to accompany the exhibits. 

University of Rhode Island, $2000 to Crossing Borders: Women Writing Their Lives.  Funds support three public readings by prominent female memoir writers – Jill Ker Conway, Elaine Orr, and Nancy McCabe, in honor of Women’s History Month in March.  Each of the writers will read from their works, which speak to cultural history, cross-cultural experiences, and women’s issues. 

League for the Advancement of New England Storytelling, $2000 to Sharing the Fire Outreach Project. Funds support a storytelling project that aims to bring the experiences of storytelling and oral tradition (with a focus on multicultural folk tales) to culturally underserved audiences across the state.

Providence Children’s Museum, $2000 to A Celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Funds support the museum’s annual, day-long celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., dedicated to educating children and adults about Dr. King’s message and work.  The celebration includes a special exhibit, interactive experiences, and three performances of MLK: Amazing Grace written by Rochel Coleman and performed by Mr. Coleman and Valerie Tutson.

Southeast Lighthouse Foundation, $1212.70 to Portraying Place, Preserving Place: A Block Island Conversation. Funds support a free public presentation on the eve of the 26^th Annual Rhode Island Statewide Historic Preservation Conference. The presentation aims to facilitate a public discussion of Block Island’s visual qualities in the context of historic preservation and community identity.  Panelists will include an artist, a preservation advocate, and a preservationist. The presentation also functions as part of a yearlong series of programs and events to recognize the 350^th anniversary of Block Island’s settlement.

BC-10 Rhode Island College, $2000 to New England Comic Arts in the Classroom. Funds support a conference that will give educators (K-16 and pre-service teachers) the necessary resources to develop student literacy and cognitive skills by using the unorthodox learning tool of visual texts, such as comic art and graphic novels.  The conference will highlight strategies for incorporating graphic novels into existing curricula. Speakers will include well-known authors of comics and graphic novels, and K-16 educators will conduct professional development workshops.

Barrington Preservation Society, $2,000 to Documenting and Sharing Barrington History. Funds support Phase II of digitizing the Society’s collection.  In Phase I, 1,400 objects were digitized, and the Society now seeks to 1) digitize their remaining artifacts, and 2) spread community-wide awareness of the unlimited access to the newly archived system.  Publicity will be distributed through newspapers and magazines, and Society staff will host technical trainings for local organizations, educators and businesses to learn how to use the online system.  

Perishable Theatre, $2,000 to Humanities Research & Outreach for 1:23. Funds support humanities research and outreach for Carson Kreitzer’s play, 1:23, which dramatizes the stories of several women (historic and mythic) who have murdered their children.  Perishable plans to create humanities content to accompany the production, including a scholarly essay on the play’s issues to be included in the playbill, a visual display of humanities content on postpartum depression to be incorporated in the production’ set, online content and resources, and a post-performance discussion led by the 1:23 creative team and community members, including the Director of the Day Hospital (the nation’s only hospital dedicated to treating postpartum depression), Dr. Margaret Howard.

Roger Williams University, $2,000 to Documentary in the Public Sphere: Perspectives on Frederick Wiseman’s Juvenile Court. Funds support a public screening of Frederick Wiseman’s 1973 documentary film, Juvenile Court, as part of the Roving Eye Film Festival (organized by Roger Williams University students and produced by the Rhode Island International Film Festival). Following the film is a panel discussion and audience Q & A with the filmmaker, a scholar of documentary films (and Wiseman’s work in particular), a law official, and an expert in the field of juvenile justice. 

CCRI Foundation, $2,000, to We Talk about Architecture, Architecture Talks Back.

Funds support a panel discussion about the architectural style of the CCRI Warwick Knight Campus Building. As the building approaches its 40th anniversary, a panel of architecture scholars and experts will start a conversation about the building, its history, its place within architectural history, and about how the building environment affects those who utilize it.

South County Museum, $2,000 to In History's Wake, The Last Trap Fishermen of Rhode Island. Funds support a partnership between the South County Museum and Historic New England to produce and install a photographic exhibition examining the disappearing trap fishing industry off the coast of Rhode Island. The exhibition will include documentary photography by Markham Starr, and will be coupled with a lecture series on the same topic.

Trinity Repertory Company, $1200 to A Sym-POE-Sium: The Life and Literature of Edgar Allen Poe. Funds support a scholarly panel discussion to examine the life and literature of Edgar Allen Poe, in conjunction with Trinity Rep’s world premiere of The Completely Fictional – Utterly True – Final Strange Tale of Edgar Allen Poe. 

BC-10 RiverzEdge Arts Project, $1956 to Youth Voices on the River. Funds supports an Earth Day event at the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor Commission headquarters led by participants in RiverzEdge’s Art, Landscape & Ecology Program – teens and their historian mentors.  Teens will share their research on the history and ecology of the Blackstone River with the wider community through an exhibit, presentation, and panel discussion.

Jamestown Historical Society, $1700 to Windmill Informational Signage. Funds support the creation of two weather-proof informational signs outside of the 1787 grist mill in order to make historical and technical information available to off-season visitors and to those who are unable to enter the windmill.

Adopt a Doctor, $2,000 to The Art of Roger Williams: Providence at 375. Funds support an exhibition and series of public lectures on how Roger Williams has been portrayed in art and literature around the world for 300 years.  The exhibition, housed in the John Hay Library Gammell Gallery, aims to make history come alive and show the power of art and literature in telling stories by assembling an array of unique, rare, and emblematic pieces of material culture, art, literature, and ephemera, drawn mainly from historian Albert Klyberg’s collection of Roger Williamsiana.  The project is timed to commemorate the 375^th anniversary of Providence’s founding.

Alliance Francaise de Providence, $2,000 to La Cinematheque. Funds support a bi-weekly film series of short and feature French films.  The Friday evening and Saturday afternoon screenings will include talks both before and after the films, with a film expert present to support group discussions on various aspects of history in the French-speaking world, French-speaking cultures, and contemporary global issues raised in the films. 

Rhode Island State Council of Churches, $2,000 to Genesis of Islam in America. Funds support an exhibition tracing the historical presence of Islam in America.  The collection of materials and stories of American Muslims, curated by Amir Muhammad, will be on display for three days at the Temple Torat Yisreal in Cranston, and will be accompanied by public programming in the form of tours for local fifth grade students and two public lectures. The project aims to encourage interfaith dialogue and education based on factual evidence. 

WVCB/The Steel Yard, $1,995 to Books Under the Beams. Funds support an outdoor summer event aimed at connecting the public with four featured authors: Ann Hood, Tom Perrotta, Anita Shreve, and Jane Hamilton.  Activities will include a series of readings, a scholar-led discussion between writers, and opportunities for the public to join the authors’ conversation with their own questions and ideas.  This event will kick off what is hoped to be an annual two-day event featuring readings and workshops with emerging and established writers.

WaterFire Providence, $2,000 to Roger Williams at 375. Funds support the revival of the Rhode Island Legacies Project for the 375^th anniversary of Roger Williams founding the city of Providence.  This initial phase of the project will bring together the original historians, consultants, directors, and actors who created the project in 1984 to remount two of the original seven plays (The Legacy of Roger Williams and Samuel Slater Gathers a Work Force) in the First Baptist Church during the WaterFire celebration on Independence Day weekend.  WaterFire staff will later reconvene the production team, along with students and young actors to conduct a humanities discussion and focus group on how to make the RI Legacy Project a viable, ongoing enterprise.

National Coalition of 100 Black Women Rhode Island Inc., $1,265 to Afrocentric. Funds support a project exploring the underlying concepts of the term “Afrocentric” through an exhibition of works by African American women at the Roots Cafe, two lectures on black women artists of the 20^th and 21^st centuries, and two special exhibition tours and hands-on workshops for middle and high school students.  The project will provide opportunities to learn more about Afrocentrism and to increase knowledge about the contributions of black women to the visual arts. This is a well-planned project that aims to serve an audience traditionally underserved by RICH.

2011 Mini Civics Grants Awards to Organizations:

Mosaico CDC, $2000 to Sense of Pride – Connecting Kids to Community. Funds support a 4^th grade multi-disciplinary educational program that intends to foster a sense of place and community identity in area students. Fourth grade students will learn about local history through a series of illustrated talks whose topics will include Native American history, architectural history, and the history of the local maritime industry. Students will then take part in interactive projects to implement and augment what they have learned. Interactive aspects of the program include a Walking Tour, a Final Project and a Community Service Project with the goal of helping children develop respect for their surroundings and thus take pride in and responsibility for the care of their communities.

2011 Mini Grants Awards to Individuals:

Megan Sandberg-Zakian, $2,000 to Investigating the Role of Criticism in Socially Engaged Art. Funds support a research project inquiring into the role of criticism in socially engaged art. The researcher aims to create a rubric for evaluating socially engaged art that takes aesthetic value into account as well as the quality of the process and the ethics of collaboration. The research will focus on Everett Dance Theatre, an arts organization with a tripartite structure as a professional dance company, a community arts school, and an artist advocacy organization. Research will lead to a publication as well as a free public talk aimed at the community of youth arts practitioners in RI.

Mary Beth Meehan, $2,000 to Undocumented Immigrants: Putting a Face on Invisible Lives. Funds support a research project on the lives of undocumented immigrants in Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts – they have made homes here and have become part of many communities, yet they must remain invisible and cannot speak for themselves in the heated immigration debate.  Meehan aims to give a face to this silenced population through photographs of illegal immigrants’ homes as well as personal narratives drawn from her interviews with these individuals.  She will create a web-based gallery on her own website as well as a Facebook page devoted to this project so that viewers can engage with the text and images. This research and web gallery will feed into part two of the project: a traveling exhibition and public lecture in the fall of 2011.

Deborah Baronas, $2,000 to Rhode Island Mill Villages: Utopian Visions. Funds support a research project on the birth and development of Georgiaville, RI and Hopedale, MA, two villages that were originally envisioned as utopian industrial communities but grew to typify the American ideal gone awry.  Baronas seeks to answer the question: How can the rise and fall of mill villages, microcosms of the 19th century society and industry, inform our understanding of their evolution into the communities they are today?  The research will culminate in the development of an exhibition of photographs, archival items, and text as well as a website featuring these same materials.

LaShonda Barnett, $2,000 to “To Serve Before the Mast”: Recovering the Lost Legacy of RI’s Black Seamen. Funds support a historiographic research project exploring the contributions and experiences of African American and Cape Verdean seamen and whalemen and the shape of racial thinking in late 18th-century Rhode Island’s maritime culture.  Barnett will present research findings through an interactive online exhibit and public lectures at the Cape Verdean Museum and the Museum of Work & Culture.

Michael Fink, $2,000 to Roger Williams Revisited.  Funds support a study of Roger Williams – his encampments and artistic renderings of his image in order to examine his words, dreams, journey, and the implications of his words today.  The study will result in a photographic and informational exhibition at the Roger Williams National Memorial, as well as a research article in the Rhode Island Jewish Historical Association Annual Notes.

Alex Perullo, $1,959 to A Digital Archive of African Professionals in New England. Funds support the creation of an online digital archive that uses video, photographs, and interviews to present the cultural lives of 15 African professionals who have migrated from various countries in Africa to Rhode Island.  This is the second phase of a larger project to assemble an interactive archive with companion teacher and student guides.  Research will result in an exhibition and public African Studies Workshop at the Providence Public Library.

Marc Levitt, $2,000 to Audio Winds #2. Funds support a research project on the history of Narragansett Beach from 1870-present day. Levitt will illustrate the history of the beach through a 30-minute soundscape audio tour to accompany a walk along Narragansett Beach. He will speak about his research at an evening event at the Narragansett Public Library before officially launching the project at the beach on the first weekend in October.

Rhode Island Council for the Humanities
Grants Awarded in Fiscal Year 2010

 2010 Major Grants to Organizations:

Documentary Educational Resources

$4000 to Claiborne Pell: A Passion for Education. Funds support the scripting and development phase of a documentary film by Elyse Katz on the legacy of Claiborne Pell, with focus on the debate surrounding the development of Pell Grants.

Olneyville Neighborhood Association

$5000 to Love and Money Across Borders. Funds support the research and development phase of a collection of stories and data surrounding the practice of sending remittances by migrant workers in Rhode Island to their home countries. Project plan is to identify 12-15 migrants from a range of countries as participants for story-gathering and documentation. Proposed research will capture the impact of sending remittances on both the sender and family recipients.

Little Compton Historical Society

$5000 to The History of Little Compton – Part I Exhibition. Funds support the development of the first phase of a multi-year project to complete a new permanent exhibit for LCHS. Part of the request includes the creation of an online exhibit, as well as related public events.

Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre

$6200 to Straight Talk: Rock’n’Roll by Tom Stoppard. Funds support a series of public forums and a contextual pre-show digital slideshow exploring the role that music, art, and theatre play in political transformation.

Mathewson Street United Methodist Church/ Heads Up Inc.

$7000 to Life Before and After Stone Wall Rhode Island LGBTQ Oral History Project. Funds support the collection of stories from older (55+) members of the LGBTQ community in Rhode Island to ascertain if and/or how the Stonewall Rebellion impacted their lives. This research, which will be donated to a local public archive ensuring future access, will serve as the basis for an original theatrical production to be presented across the state.

Perishable Theatre

$8,400 to Perishable Humanities Bridge. Funds support “Humanities Bridge” supplemental programming to Perishable’s 2010 theatrical season, including a podcast series, panel discussions, and scholarly essays.

Ocean State Learning

$9300 to William J. Brown: Lessons from a Free Black Man in 19th Century Rhode Island. Funds support walking tours, guide, exhibition, public events and social media website based on the biography of William J. Brown, a free African American born in Providence in 1814. Project utilizes local book groups, libraries, and historical societies to promote the reading of the biography and related events.

Living History

$9384.80 to Hope and Glory. Funds support training youth interpreters from RI 14th Regiment in the skills and knowledge needed to portray Black Civil War soldiers on a 5-day march from Providence to Bristol. The program includes several public events and demonstrations.
Associacao Cabo Verdiana de Brockton, Inc., $9465 to Who’s History Is It? Interpreting History, Memory and Culture. Funds support three-day conference aimed at presenting "first voice" scholarship and building community among various members of the Cape Verdean Diaspora. 

Flickers

$10,000 to Behind the Hedgerow. Funds support the post-production costs for an hour long, feature-length documentary film by Rhode Island filmmakers G. Wayne Miller and David Bettencourt on the life of Newport’s last “grande Dame,” Eileen Slocum.

Rhode Island College

$10,000 to Professor Chester Smolski Slide Archive, Digitization and Public Scholarship Project. Funds support digitization and dissemination project with the goal to bring scholarship and images related to architecture and urban transformation (from the collection of RIC Professor of Geography Chester Smolski) into the “digital commons.”

South Kingston Education Foundation

$10,000 to Citizen’s All Project. Funds support the implementation phase for a 6-week summer institute for 10 South Kingston high school students addressing the central topics of slavery, the slave trade, and Native American interactions. The project will ultimately yield a new curriculum, educational framework, and professional development opportunities for teaching about New England’s slave past and ethnic tensions.

International Institute of Rhode Island

$12,500 to Raise Your Voice - Examining Culture, Clash, Community, Change. Funds support community project addressing diversity issues using poetry and storytelling as a tool in non-violence training. Participants will include 370 local students (grades 7-12, and adult ed students at the IIRI), 6 facilitators, visiting poet Naomi Shilab Nye, and the URI Center for Non-Violence and Peace Studies. 

Parents and Friends for Alternative Living

$12,512 to Best Judgment: The Complex Legacy of the Joseph H. Ladd Center. Funds support the media production phase of a documentary film by Rhode Island filmmaker Jim Wolpaw on the legacy of the Ladd Center institution for the mentally disabled in Exeter and Rhode Island’s subsequent transition to a community-based system for the developmentally disabled. 

AS220

$15,000 to Action Speaks! Funds support multi-format, interdisciplinary humanities program that explores 'under-appreciated dates' in twentieth-century American history. Program includes a live public panel discussion (featuring guest panelists and moderator, Marc Levitt), complementary RIPBS documentary screenings, radio broadcast of edited panel discussion on RI Public Radio, and secondary materials including Levitt's production blog and interactive resources for discussion and commentary available on the Action Speaks website.


2010 Special Initiative Major Civic Grants:

Barrington High School

$7,750.00 to A Look at Rhode Island’s Judiciary. Funds support  an experiential component to an existing 2-week unit of study on the state and federal judiciary system in their upper class required American History Course. 

Brown University (Office of Sponsored Projects for Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology)

$8,980.00 to African Americans in Rhode Island. Funds support development of online curriculum materials to complement and expand on the Haffenreffer’s Cultural CaraVan outreach program Sankofa: African Americans in Rhode Island. (The Cultural CaraVan program brings discussion to the classroom through direct interaction with objects and images from the museum.)

Global Rhode Island

$9600.00 to Teaching Complex International Issues and RI Capitol Forum on America’s Future. Funds support training teachers in multi-perspective approach to international issues at a 1-day workshop; dissemination of Choices curriculum materials into participating classrooms; public event at the State House for teachers and students; and evaluative workshop for teachers who elect to participate in the program.

Foster-Glocester Regional School System

$9840.00 to Perspectives: Using Multiple Lenses for Historical Understanding. Funds support training US History and World History teachers in six selected Choices curriculum units as well as the purchase of these units for students as part of an ongoing revision of pedagogy and content in this school’s Social Studies Program.  

San Francisco Film Society

$10,000.00 to Slavery and Racial Identity Development: How to Teach Our Complex History. Funds support workshops to educate middle and secondary teachers in Rhode Island’s role in slavery and the slave trade, to disseminate curriculum developed by the Rhode Island Historical Society on these topics, and to provide information on additional resources.

University of Rhode Island (for the Center of Nonviolence and Peace Studies)

$10,000.00 to Gandhi-King Teacher Institute:  Integrating Nonviolence, Humanities & Civics Education. Funds support development of an institute for secondary teachers to learn about nonviolence, and how to use the Raise Your Voices program – with its stress on humanities reflection and arts, to engage students with this topic.

Vartan Gregorian Elementary School PTO

$10,250.00 to I WAS THERE Project. Funds support expansion of an existing multidimensional oral history project that connects students to the history of their local community.  The scope of the project includes professional development for teachers, creation of lessons and student experiences on the theme of “Factory Work and Jewelry,” and development of 3-day teachers institute on methods to disseminate model across the school system.

West Warwick Public Schools

$10,000 to Units of Study Workgroup. Funds support further work already begun by this school system to align systematically their district curriculum to the Civics GSEs at the elementary level and also to create two units of study for K-4 Social Studies that are both grounded in humanities content and perspectives as well as the GSEs. Specifically, funds allow ten K-4 Social Studies teachers to develop these units and purchase classroom materials.

2010 Special Initiative Civics Mini Grants:

Ponaganset High School

$1982.20 for Studying the Spanish Flu through Local Town Records. Funds support production of educational materials for a collaborative history and math unit for high school students, which uses local town records as sources.

Tomaquag Indian Memorial Museum

$2,000 for Storytelling Through Film: A Humanities Curriculum.  Funds support development and dissemination a companion curriculum to the film Places, Memories, Stories & Dreams: The Gifts of Inspiration (a NMAI funded Visual and Expressive Arts project). The film reflects Narragansett Tribal history through the eyes of oral historian and storyteller Paulla Dove Jennings. Loren Spears, founding teacher at the Nuweentooun School on the Narragansett reservation, will create 6 unit lessons appropriate for middle school social studies teachers to assist teachers’ abilities to present accurate Native perspective to Rhode Island history by bringing to life a deeper understanding of Narragansett culture and history.

Rhode Island Social Studies Association

$2,000 for National History Day in the Classroom. Funds support a free, one-day workshop for grades 6-12 Social Studies teachers to inform them about the linkages between National History Day’s program and RI Civics GSEs, including training on how to implement NHD programming methods in their classrooms.

International Charter School

$2,000 for Documenting Cultural Communities. Funds support dissemination of the results and methods of a Rhode Island Foundation funded Social Studies curriculum developed by teachers at ICS to suit the unique needs of their global student body and dual language model for education through a web platform.

Lincoln School District

$1,924.57 for Preserving Living Legacies. Funds support creation of intergenerational oral history project to increase historical thinking skills among 80 Lincoln High School students. Participating students will interview seniors on-site at the Lincoln Senior Center about specific historical events they have lived through. The culminating work will be presented at a public expo in April at the high school.

2010 Mini Grants to Organizations:

League of Advancement of New England Storytelling

$2000 for Sharing the Fire: Community and Cultural Outreach Program. Funds support storytelling project which aims to bring the experiences of storytelling and oral tradition (with a focus on multicultural folk tales) to audiences across Rhode Island. Project Director will identify 30+ venues underserved by arts and humanities programming to host storytelling events.

Vartan Gregorian Elementary School PTO

$2000 for I WAS THERE: Explorations of Narragansett Bay. Funds support a K – 5 oral history and audio documentary project which aims to connect students and the greater community to the life and stories of Narragansett Bay.

Friends of Brown Street Park, Inc.

$2000 for Providence Children’s Film Festival. Funds support educational workshops for children that serve as supplementary programming to the Providence Children’s Film Festival taking place at RISD and Cable Car Cinema in February.

Providence Athenaeum

$1500 to Living Literature a Brief Visit with “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society”. Funds support development of a performance based on the above chosen novel to supplement RI Center for the Book’s Reading Across RI initiative. Living Literature’s methodology is to ‘take the page to the stage’ – turning this 274 page novel in to a 50 minute script that will be performed at libraries across the state. 

New Urban Arts

$1500 to Creating Family Stories: A Writing and Online Exploration. Funds support a creative writing workshop experience for 20 youth participants as part of New Urban Arts’ afterschool program. The workshop brings together a memoirist and historian for a three hour writing workshop to prompt youth on to use storytelling to share experiences of migration and examine what it means to be a “citizen of the world”. As a follow up to the workshop, a local artist and mentor at New Urban Arts will work with a select group of students to create companion How To Videos to their creative essays.

San Francisco Film Society

$2000 to Traces of the Trade: Ongoing Cuba Research. Funds support expenses to send D’Wolf descendents (Katrina Browne and James DeWolf Perry) to Cuba for a research trip to meet with Cuban scholars of the slave trade, to investigate archival records in Cuba, to develop research collaborations with local academic institutions to foster further exploration of Rhode Island – Cuban historical connections through the slave trade, and to seek to locate descendents of people enslaved by the D’Wolfs.

Pettaquamscutt Historical Society

$2000 to What's In a Name? State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Funds support public programs – exhibition and public lectures – examining the historical context of the naming of “State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.”

Providence Inner City Arts, Inc.

$2000 to Understanding Our Past, Creating Our Futures. Funds support the planning phase of an arts, humanities, and education project that aims to integrate performance art methods in the telling of RI’s history from the perspective of African Americans, other persons of color, and women whose voices have often been omitted or marginalized in basic formal texts.

Environmental Council of Rhode Island Education Fund

$2,000 to Mashapaug Pond, A Picture Book by Narragansett Families and Holly Ewald. Funds support an intergenerational arts and humanities workshop for Narragansett families. The workshops, organized by book artist Holly Ewald, will occur weekly from May - October and are intended to facilitate and capture memories and stories about the former Narragansett community displaced from Mashapaug Pond in the 1950s. Funds will assist the Museum Director to coordinate and promote the workshop series; compensate museum staff in locating and presenting pertinent artifacts in the Museum’s holdings; and provide honorarium for scholar Bill Simmons and tribal elders.

!Improvise! Inc.

$2,000 to Playback Theatre Project. Funds support the production of four performances at assisted living facilities, senior centers and nursing homes relating to the theme of “Life Review.” Playback Theatre is an original form of improvisational theatre where audience members tell stories from their own lives and then watch them performed on the spot. !Improvise! Inc. hopes to provide an opportunity for elderly Rhode Island residents to share their stories and revisit memories with the other people with whom they live.

AS220 (Paul Krot Darkroom)

$2,000 to Glass Negative Preservation Project. Funds support a public exhibition of photographic prints (from the Providence Public Library’s Special Glass Negative Collection of historic glass plates); creation of online visual database to catalogue the collection; and scholar honoraria for public program.

Museum of Natural History

$2,000 to Down the Rabbit Hole of the Natural History Collection. Funds support Curiouser, an exhibition examining natural history as a cultural phenomenon, with an artistic lens on the Victorian era's obsessions with amateur natural studies, specimen collecting and the natural world. Artists will be given unprecedented access the Museum of Natural History's archived collections to create works of art that uncover new relationships, patterns and meanings among antique scientific specimens.  RICH funds will be used to coordinate the work of the participating artists with associated humanities scholars, write all collateral material to frame the exhibit for viewers - gallery descriptions, exhibit catalog, and marketing and advertising - and to publicize the exhibit through advertisements, posters, mailings and social media marketing. 

Rhode Island Historical Society

$2,000 to RIHS Library Stereoview Project.  Funds support the photo digitization of 60 new (previously unseen) historic stereoviews into projectable images for public dissemination and presentations. 50 images are from the RIHS Library archives, while the remaining 10 are from a private collection that will then be donated to RIHS.

Salve Regina University

$1,250 to A Playwright By Any Other Name: Questions of Shakespeare's Authorship Examined. Funds support a panel discussion hosted by the Salve Regina University Theatre Arts program, debating whether or not William Shakespeare actually wrote the plays credited to him.  The “mock trial” program complements a series of four interconnected theatrical performances to take place at the historic Casino Theatre.

Adopt a Doctor

$2,000 to “A Christmas Carol:” Building Community through Storytelling. Funds support two dramatic readings of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, accompanied by period music and post-program discussions with RIC scholar Maureen Reddy on the power of storytelling to build community and enhance the experience of literature.

RI for Community & Justice

$2,000 to Immigration in RI: Myths & Realities. Funds support an invitational forum on the complexities of immigration, specifically targeted to leaders of civic, social and cultural organizations from RI’s rural and suburban communities. The forum, to be hosted in Lincoln, will present topical issues surrounding the legal, economic, and social impacts of immigration in RI.

Beavertail Lighthouse Museum Association

$2,000 to Beavertail Light Station Interpretive Building Signs. Funds support design, production, and installation of interpretive signs for education and public information at features of the Beavertail Light Station.  Signs will include historical information and a brief explanation of the use of each feature.  The installation of signage will especially provide educational enhancement for visitors who come to browse the grounds in months when the museum is not open to the public.

2010 Mini Grants to Individuals:

Ana Flores from Wood River Junction, RI

$2000 for Earth Portraits: Collecting and Sharing the Stories of the Land. Funds support development of visual and narrative portraits of six local stewards whose land is protected under the South County Conservancy (Charlestown Land Trust). The project director/artist will interview stewards, edit the stories of the stewards for publication in monthly newsletters from June through September, and construct an exhibit including the stories of the stewards and earth-art pieces at a historical one-room schoolhouse.

Elizabeth Cazden from Providence RI

$2000 to Robinson-Richardson Family Papers. Funds support the compilation and investigation of the Robinson-Richardson Family Papers at the Newport and Rhode Island Historical Societies. Research will be aimed at clarifying the identity of the family and their associations with both the abolitionist movement and the Rhode Island Quaker community.

Elaine Smollin from Lincoln, RI

$2000 to Rhode Island’s Antiquities and New Trends in Art and Design Education on Public Land. Funds support research on art and design technologies / productions present with the historic fabric at Hearthside and Chase Farmhouse in Lincoln, RI toward the development of an educational workshop on the topic.

Raymond Huling from Somerville, MA

$2,000 to The Complicated Life of the Quahaugger. Funds support research that examines the livelihood of Rhode Island’s shellfishery industry workers, namely quahauggers, to see what lessons from their practice may inform the national sustainable food movement. The researcher proposes to use the example of the quahauggers’ work practices and regulations as a catalyst to discuss sustainable food production.

Nancy Newbury from Newport, RI

$1500 to IDAWALLEY. Funds support research on Newport’s famed lighthouse keeper, Idawalley Lewis, focused on the topics of Family, Fort Adams, Newport, and the Women's Movement. Newbury will present her research locally, as well as develop a script for a potentially televised mini-series on Ida.

Tijana Petrovic from Brooklyn, NY

$1953 to Deer Prudence. Funds support the research phase for a feature documentary film set on Block Island, RI, which follows the process and the effects of the community's decision to eliminate the island's deer herd due to their decade long struggle with Lyme disease. Research for the film will be centered around the island community and its history, including issues surrounding Lyme disease such as hunting, land conservation, and animal management.

Francis Leazes, Jr. from Providence

$2,000 to In Search of Albert Martin: A Rhode Island Road to the Alamo. Funds support research to create an internet based presentation to tell the story of Providence native Albert Martin's road to the Alamo by discovering and interpreting the physical and textual artifacts that remain from the Martin's time in Providence and its surrounding area.  The project uses visuals and narrative, bringing together history, urban studies and photography.

Micah Salkind from Providence
$2,000 to Becoming Creative. Funds support research to investigate the ways that the changing arts investment and branding strategies have had an impact on the founding, and flourishing, of nonprofit arts organizations in Providence during the last twenty years as well as underground arts collectives and institutions.  The project will culminate with a panel discussion integrating the research findings as well as relevant media and visually engaging primary sources to be held in a public venue in downcity Providence.