Maryland Humanities has awarded $74,146 to 13 organizations based in or creating projects in Maryland. The grantees span six Maryland counties and Baltimore City: recipients are located in Anne Arundel County, Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Howard County, Montgomery County, Prince George’s County, and Wicomico County.
Maryland Humanities’ major grants support up to $10,000 per recipient. Mini grants support up to $1,200 per recipient. Funding goes to nonprofit organizations that use the humanities (literature, philosophy, history, etc.) to inspire Marylanders to embrace lifelong learning, exchange ideas openly, and enrich their communities. Grant criteria encourage free public programming in many forms.
$69,547 in major grant funding will go to the following organizations: Accokeek Foundation, Baltimore School for the Arts Foundation, Banneker-Douglass Museum Foundation, Docs in Progress, Lost Towns Project, Olney Theatre Corporation, The Peale Center for Baltimore History and Architecture, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and Wicomico Public Libraries.
Blair Network Communications, Historic Hampton, Patapsco Heritage Greenway, and Salisbury Middle School will receive a combined total of $4,599 in mini grant funding from Maryland Humanities.
Projects funded in this most recent round of awards include a set of storytelling workshops about home and family; educational programming surrounding a public art project entitled The Black Vote Mural Exhibit; and a series of events, lectures, and exhibits commemorating the history and culture of the Patapsco Valley within the context of the nineteenth amendment.
Maryland Humanities’ Grants Program is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Maryland Historical Trust in the Maryland Department of Planning, and the Maryland Department of Labor.
To learn more about our Grants Program, eligibility, and deadlines, visit www.mdhumanities.org/grants.
Fall 2019 Major Grant Awards
Accokeek Foundation
Land and River Conversations: Exploring Race and Culture through Stories from the Earth
Prince George’s County
Award Amount: $8,000
During the spring of 2020, the Accokeek Foundation will host “Land and River Conversations: Exploring Race and Culture through Stories from the Earth,” programming that will consist of presentations by scholars and experts, followed by Q&A and group discussions. Conversations will acknowledge uncomfortable topics of historic and contemporary trauma and cultural resilience, while grappling with the complexities of race, gender, class, and education that have existed throughout Maryland’s history.
Baltimore School for the Arts Foundation
Between the Shelves
Baltimore City
Award Amount: $5,150
“Between the Shelves” will share stories focused on people who could have crossed paths in the integrated space of the newly opened Central Library Branch of the 1880s. Baltimore School for the Arts students will research period newspapers, diaries, letters, photographs, government documents, and other primary source documents to inspire written monologues. They will then rehearse and perform these monologues in a living history format, with costumes, graphics, props, and set pieces created by stage design and production students.
Banneker-Douglass Museum Foundation
The Black Vote Mural Project
Anne Arundel County
Award Amount: $8,000
The Black Vote Mural exhibition is a public art project that will transform the interior galleries of the Banneker-Douglass Museum into multiple murals that interpret the Association for the Study of African American Life and History’s 2020 theme: African Americans and the Vote. In conjunction with the exhibition, Banneker-Douglass Museum will host a series of educational programs and events.
Docs In Progress
Silver Spring Screening Room
Montgomery County
Grant Award: $10,000
Silver Spring Screening Room is a public program series that will engage Maryland audiences in discussions built around the screening of documentary films. It will include monthly curated screenings that will take place at Docs In Progress’ space in downtown Silver Spring and other venues in the city. Silver Spring Screening Room offers a gathering space to showcase documentary film as a form of audio-visual, non-fiction literature that draws on the humanities’ values of biography, history, culture, and ethics.
Lost Towns Project
Anne Arundel’s African American Heritage through Culinary Traditions
Anne Arundel County
Grant Award: $10,000
Lost Towns will host conversation-engaging events centered on culinary traditions and foodways of the African American community. The program format will consist of three evening programs featuring dinner table conversations around a topic or historic theme. Each evening will include several conversation-prompting tasting plates that are relevant to the evening’s topic. Scholars and local historians will serve as hosts and facilitators for each event.
Olney Theatre Corporation
Perspectives on Home in a Multicultural America
Montgomery County
Grant Award: $8,000
Collaborating with public schools and partner organizations, Olney Theatre will conduct storytelling workshops with students and adults to introduce Miss You Like Hell. Based on the musical’s themes of home, family, and immigration, artists will introduce the structure of a story circle through which participants will share and discuss their personal experiences. Following the workshop, participants will attend Miss You Like Hell and a post-performance discussion with artists. Workshop leaders will return to partner sites to continue story circles based on the musical’s themes.
The Peale Center for Baltimore History and Architecture
Universal Design Today
Baltimore City
Grant Award: $9,498
Universal Design Today will highlight the successes and challenges of persons with disabilities in Maryland and serve as a model for creating more inclusive and accessible physical, digital, and social spaces. The project will result in a participatory exhibit addressing disability, ability, and ableism via installations in three spaces: a website, the Carroll Mansion in Baltimore, and a University of Maryland gallery in College Park. Programming will occur at both physical spaces and will engage in-person and online audiences interested in disability and civil rights, critical inquiry of architecture, and emerging technologies including augmented reality.
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
The Bell Affair: A Documentary Animated Film Reframing American Slavery and Freedom
Out of State (Prince George’s County)
Grant Award: $8,399
The Bell Affair tells the story of Daniel Bell from Prince George’s County, who launched a lawsuit to gain freedom for his enslaved family in the nation’s capital in the late summer of 1835. Daniel Bell privately negotiated for the freedom of his wife and children, but all of his careful plans were upended in the swirl of private and public reaction. Eventually, Daniel Bell organized the largest escape attempt in American history on The Pearl.
Wicomico Public Libraries
Jazz and the Civil Rights Movement
Wicomico County
Grant Award: $2,500
As part of their African American History programming in February 2020, Wicomico Public Libraries will host a program that explores the history of the United States’ civil rights movement through jazz music. The program chronicles the history of jazz music from the turn of the century to present day, highlighting women in jazz and their influence on the evolution of jazz as an art form.
November 2019 Mini Grant Awards
Blair Network Communications
SilverLens
Montgomery County
Grant Award: $1,200
Blair Network Communications (BNC) is a student-run media production organization at Montgomery Blair High School. SilverLens, BNC’s documentary team, creates short films that often focus on social justice and other issues of importance to members’ local communities. The students independently develop a topic, research, and reach out to local organizations and experts for interviews. Their films air on Montgomery County TV and reach people off all ages across the county.
Historic Hampton
Ethnographic Study Lecture Series
Baltimore County
Grant Award: $1,200
Hampton National Historic Site (HNHS) has recently completed an Ethnographic Overview and Assessment. An 11-member team has conducted groundbreaking research leading to enhanced knowledge of the lives and families of the enslaved. The new historic information will be incorporated into enhanced interpretation and programming at HNHS, where staff and docents are being trained to include the new information and the art of interpreting this difficult subject. In addition to the newly enhanced interpretive tours, there will be lectures by members of the Ethnographic Team to publicly share research findings.
Patapsco Heritage Greenway
Patapsco Days 2020
Howard County
Grant Award $1,200
During the month of May, Patapsco Heritage Greenway will partner with local institutions within the Patapsco Valley Heritage Area to host a series of events, lectures, and exhibits celebrating the history and culture of the Patapsco Valley centered around a single theme. This year, Patapsco Days will be celebrating the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment by focusing on women’s history.
Salisbury Middle School
Salisbury Poetry Week
Wicomico County
Grant Award: $999
In celebration of National Poetry Month, a Poet-in-Residence will travel to Salisbury to lecture and teach a series of writing workshops for the 4th-annual Salisbury Poetry Week. Programming will be held March 30–April 5, 2020 and will highlight the significance and relevance of poetry as a voice for all residents of Salisbury and the Eastern Shore, including youth, senior citizens, and the general population.
