California Humanities is proud to announce that 20 projects throughout the State of California have been selected as grant awardees for its Community Stories program. Chosen from over 120 submissions, the projects comprise a broad range of community-focused stories to explore the diversity of the California experience, and capture the interest of local, regional, and even wider audiences.
Subjects range from an investigation of the culture of low-riding in San Diego to the diverse histories and traditions of the historic Mission town of San Juan Bautista to Sacramento’s contemporary “foodscape.” Some projects will give voice to Californians whose stories are seldom heard: LGBT farmworkers, homeless youth, and recent African and Middle Eastern immigrants. Other projects will document stories of civic engagement and democratic practice, past and present, from the efforts of a small Northern California community to preserve a historic bridge to the challenges faced by a displaced group of Native Californians seeking tribal recognition to students involved in the DREAM movement. Grant awardees are equally diverse, and represent a public library, museums and archives, theater groups, colleges and universities, an immigrants’ rights group, and community-based arts and cultural organizations. Most of the projects also involve collaborations between California-based institutions of higher education, both public and private, and community partners.
Community Stories (formerly known as the California Story Fund) is a competitive grant program that supports story-based projects that are informed by humanities perspectives, methods, and content; that reveal the realities of California and its cultures, peoples, and histories; and that will be of interest to local, statewide, and potentially even national and global audiences. It aims to provide community-based and academic institutions the means to capture genuine and compelling stories from and about California’s diverse communities, and to ensure that those stories can be shared widely.
For a complete listing of funded projects, please go here.
