New DCCHP Cycle Set to Begin Soon

DC Community Heritage Project Grant Proposals are Due Tomorrow

The deadline to apply for the Humanities Council's DC Community Heritage Project grant for 2011 is tomorrow at 5pm, so we will soon have an outstanding new group of grantees dedicated to preserving those aspects of DC history and culture most important to them. Last year we received some wonderful final projects about neighborhoods and landmarks across the city. A group from Congress Heights produced a historic survey of their neighborhood and published it for a popular audience, another organization produced a virtual exhibit on the historic Franklin School, and Tendani Mpulubusi expanded his outstanding documentary on Barry Farm and Hillsdale.

The 2011 awards will be decided in June, and projects will take place throughout the Summer and Fall. The Humanities Council will be in frequent contact with grantee organizations, and updates will be posted regularly here on Human Ties. The DCCHP grant cycle culminates with a grantee showcase in December where organizations have the opportunity to display their projects for the public. 

The DCCHP isn't just about grants, however; the Humanities Council and its partners offer regular symposia designed to strengthen community historians and preservationists' skills and put them in contact with scholars and other experts who can help them realize their visions and tell their stories. Last Summer, the DCCHP Symposium offered participants instruction on researching commercial and residential lots in DC, creating cell phone tours, and conducting church histories. In previous years, the DCCHP symposia have focused on topics such as fundraising and creating neighborhood walking tours. Footage from those events can be viewed below and on the Humanities Council's Youtube channel, HCTV.

The Future of Fundraising

Creating a Walking Tour

The Humanities Council is planning another symposium this Summer. Leave a comment, and give us topic suggestions. We do our best to find experts knowledgeable on the topics garnering the most interest.

Get Out, and Take a Walk

As the Weather Warms, Remember Our Walking Tours from Past "Big Reads"

Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes regularly collaborated
on projects during their time in Washington, DC until they had
a falling out over rights to a play in 1930.

In 2007, the Humanities Council launched its first Big Read, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts. That year, Washington, DC read Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, a novel of the late Harlem Renaissance which explored racial and gender issues in the American South. The book, now considered a classic and a must-read for any curriculum in African American literature, was criticized in its time for its use of authentic Afro-Carribbean dialect, openness about the divide between light and dark-skinned blacks, and revelations on the status of black women in the rural South.

As part of the 2007 Big Read program schedule, author Kim Roberts produced a walking-tour linking Hurston and the Harlem Renaissance with sites around Howard University, U Street, Le Droit Park, and Shaw. The tour includes background on Hurston's life, and the friendships she made with other African American luminaries during and after her years at Howard. The idea for a walking-tour was such a hit, that it became a regular Big Read staple. Roberts produced subsequent walking tours on F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, and Carson McCullers' The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Last year, for Ernest Gaines' A Lesson Before Dying, Roberts developed an online exhibit about Washington, DC's historic segregated school system.

The tours are all illustrated with maps, and photos, and are the perfect way to connect with Washington's neighborhoods through classic works of literature. Try to do all three tours and check out the online exhibit before the commencement of Live to Read, the Humanities Council's new city-wide read, this year featuring Lynn Nottage's Ruined as the selected work of literature.