RI Humanities

FEATURED GRANTS

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In 2013, Rhode Island Council for the Humanities awarded filmmaker Christian de Rezendes and Southeast New England Film, Music, and Arts (SENE) a Major Grant of $4,000 to support the production phase of a documentary film that tells the unique story of Slatersville Mill and the development of America’s first pre-planned mill village.

The feature-length documentary will follow the story of America’s first mill village, its historic impact on the Blackstone River Valley, and its two-century-long evolution through the Industrial Revolution—from the tales of Samuel and John Slater seeking land to expand their workforce in the early 1800s to the saving and restoration of the abandoned Slatersville Mill in the early 2000s.

Dr. Richard Greenwood of the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission, one of the film’s scholars, shared the following:

quote
Slatersville is nationally significant, because it was there that John and Samuel Slater demonstrated how you could reproduce a factory and create the necessary supporting infrastructure to make manufacturing move—from the falls on the Blackstone River to rivers and streams throughout the Blackstone Valley, New England and the East Coast.”
—DR. RICHARD GREENWOOD
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