National Endowment for the Humanities Announces $33.8 Million in Grant Awards

The National Endowment for the Humanities recently announced funding recipients for its initiative American Tapestry: Weaving Together Past, Present, and Future . $33.8 million in grants to support 260 humanities projects were awarded nationwide.

The National Humanities Alliance, who tracks NEH spending in humanities disciplines and supports programming, research, released the following statement from its Executive Director Stephen Kidd:

“As part of the American Tapestry: Weaving Together Past, Present, and Future initiative, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) will support 28 small and mid-sized cultural organizations in underserved communities in strengthening their public humanities programming through its newest grant line, Public Impact Projects at Smaller Organizations. Preservation and Access Education and Training Grants will help further conservation training across the country to ensure effective stewardship of humanities collections. More than 100 NEH Fellowships and Awards for Faculty will support humanities research at higher education institutions throughout the U.S. And 30 Infrastructure and Capacity Building Challenge grants will encourage local investment as organizations work to sustain and bolster humanities infrastructure.” 

“We are immensely proud of the NEH’s impact across the U.S. and will continue advocating for increased federal support for future grants in 2024 and beyond.” 

Several funded projects center on cultural and folklore activities, including:

• Hilda Vila of University of Puerto Rico, Arecibo Campus was awarded $149,332 for The Island Resilience Project: Cultural Heritage and Community Empowerment in Islote, Puerto Rico, which supports the collection of ten oral histories as well as other documentation about the cultural heritage of Islote, Puerto Rico, a small and historical fishing village on the north coast endangered by climate change.
• Kate Derickson of the Regents of the University of Minnesota was awarded $143,386 for Cultural and Community Resilience in Gullah/Geechee Nation, which supports the collection of 25 oral histories and the creation of a StoryMap with relevant cultural heritage sites for the Gullah/Geechee Alkebulan Archive.
• Kimi Eisele of Southwest Folklife Alliance was awarded $149,698 for ClimateLore, which supports recording 20 oral history interviews to document the impacts of and adaptations to climate change on cultural heritage and folklife in two desert regions of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.
• Cassandra Smith of Pueblo of Isleta was awarded $149,998 for Sustaining Shie’hwif Tue’i Craft Traditions Across Generations, which supports facilitation of a series of intergenerational, community-led workshops on Pueblo of Isleta cultural heritage craftwork that is under threat of loss from the impact of COVID-19. The project would create a mixed and multimedia archival collection, language recordings, craft curricula, and instruction manuals.
• Hoi Leung of the Chinese Culture Foundation of San Francisco received $118,019 for Chinatown Cultural Resilience Project, which supports planning efforts to establish an inventory of the intangible cultural resources of San Francisco’s Chinatown. Community input would guide a documentation strategy and the creation of training and other materials to build a digital collection in the future.

Read more about additional awardees and projects on the NEH website.