Tuesday, February 12, 2013

New Grant Cycle to Support Commemoration and Remembrance

Proposals are Due March 11

Commemoration and Remembrance Grant Opportunity

Beginning this year, in partnership with the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the Council will offer 5 grants of $2000 each to organizations and qualifying individuals developing projects that commemorate and remember local and national histories. Commemoration, though almost always celebratory, works in the intellectual sphere much the same way historic preservation does in the physical. If memories can only be preserved by remembering so collective memory can only be preserved by commemoration. 

Though history will always remember DC as the testing ground for emancipation, it is the ritual commemoration of Emancipation Day that makes it an integral part of the city's culture and character. A statue in a local park may provide its subject with an aesthetic sense of immortality, but  it soon becomes merely decoration unless the meaning behind the bronze is consciously remembered through ceremonies, parades, and other traditions. 

The people, events, and sites a public chooses to remember and commemorate can say more about the current community than the remembered past. What histories do we choose to commemorate? Why do we commemorate them the way we do? What messages do we hold on to so that we may apply them dutifully to our daily lives? 

Help us answer these questions while preserving the collective pasts important to the people of Washington. Visit grantapplication.wdchumanities.org and start your grant proposal today. A preliminary application is not required for the Commemoration and Remembrance grant, the final proposal is due on March 11 at midnight.

Small Grants (Also due March 11)

The Council awards small grants in amounts up $1500. These grants are often used to support planning, research, or the early stages of larger endeavors. Like the Major grant, this opportunity is for projects that bring the humanities to the people of Washington, DC. The online application can be found at grantapplicaton.wdchumanities.org.