List of Humanities For All Quick Grants

In addition to projects on any topic, California Humanities offers special focus areas for Humanities for All Quick Grants:

*=Youth Voices
+=Arts &Humanities
‡=Second Responders: The Humanities in the Aftermath of Natural Disasters

Grants Awarded Summer 2023:

Native Sons – Soundtrack of the Chicano Movement 
Fox Riverside Theater Foundation, Riverside 
Project Director: Cynthia Wright 

 The Fox Riverside Theater Foundation, in coordination with the City of Riverside and other partners, will host an education outreach program presenting an extended preview of the documentary film, LOS LOBOS NATIVE SONS. The panelists will include Latinx artists and the award-winning production team of the film. This program will engage higher education institutions and local school districts will send students (middle school through college) to hear from those who have already changed, and continue to change, the landscape for young Latinx community members and artists. Programming will begin November 2023. 

America’s Newest Cities: Housing and “Red Lining” in California’s Central Valley * 
CSU Bakersfield Auxiliary for Sponsored Programs Administration, Bakersfield 
Project Director: Chris Livingston 

The story of Housing in the California’s Central Valley has been one of exclusion, isolation, and destruction. America’s Newest Cities is a public humanities project that examines the history and development of “red-lining” and housing discrimination in California’s Southern Central Valley, more specifically in Bakersfield and Kern County. This project will involve youth voices (high school and college students) who will participate in the planning, research, interpretation, design, and installation of the project. Programming will begin September 2023. 

Presenting AfroClassical Composers for California Audiences + 
Fulcrum Arts, Pasadena / Presenting AfroClassical Composers 
Project Director: Michael Ligon 

Presenting AfroClassical Composers for California Audiences, will provide enrichment opportunities for all ages by featuring live performances of works by AfroClassical composers at the Los Angeles Central Library on November 17, 2023. Programming activities will pair history, dance, literature, and visual art (photography, film, painting, etc.) with live music, giving cultural context to the music and lives of creators. After live performances, a host will moderate discussions between panelists and performers, with audience questions, and comments. We offer opportunities for participants to create social connections while expanding cultural awareness, via hands-on interactions and use of our social media Digital Pen Pal Initiative. Programming will begin in November 2023. 

Sharing the Stories of Gay Rodeo 
Autry Museum of the American West, Los Angeles 
Project Director: Ben Fitzsimmons 

Sharing the Stories of Gay Rodeo aims to engage, educate, and inspire inquiry about California gay rodeo history. This four-part program includes an Archives Workshop and Clinic, a tour of the Autry’s Imagined Wests exhibition and the case featuring California gay rodeo archival materials, a staged reading of the verbatim play, “That Damn Horse: Stories of the Gay Rodeo,” and a discussion about the experiences and roles of the panelists in capturing the histories embodied in The Gay Rodeo Oral History Project. The program will take place on November 2, 2023 at the Autry Museum of the American West. 

Nor Cal Outreach Project: The history of the LGBTQIA+ community in Northern California + 
NorCal OUTreach Project, Redding 
Project Director: Brad Hart 

NorCal Outreach Project will develop a slide show presentation that exploring the LGBTQIA+ history of the greater Northern California area. This program will include the counties of Tehama, Shasta, Trinity, Siskiyou, and Lassen counties. This historical presentation will include events, persons, physical locations, public and private entities, media reports and more. This slide show will be presented to local ally agencies as well as our local historical society. This program will run from October 2023 through August 2024. 

Indigenous Wisdom: Celebrating Our Central Valley Indigenous Elders + 
California State University Fresno Foundation, Fresno / CSU Fresno Library 
Project Director: Ginny Barnes 

For National American Indian Heritage Month, November 2023, Fresno State Library will host a community dinner and film screening showcasing the life and work of three Central Valley Indigenous elders providing a space for Indigenous youth, students, and the larger Central Valley community to strengthen community bonds through art, shared experience, and storytelling. The evening will begin with a community dinner welcoming the three elders, their immediate family, and guests from allied community organizations. A public screening of short films will follow the dinner each featuring the elders on topics such as environmental stewardship and Native language preservation.  

La Biblioteca del Maíz de los oaxaqueños indígenas de Los Ángeles, California 
Organización Regional de Oaxaca, Los Angeles 
Project Directors: Daniela Soleri, Isai Pazos

La Biblioteca del Maíz de los oaxaqueños indígenas de Los Ángeles, California will explore the memories and current significance of maize and traditional maize foods within this community. La Biblioteca del Maíz will document, celebrate and communicate these memories, innovations and practices and their role in Oaxacan identity and culture. This is a project of the Organización Regional de Oaxaca (ORO), and will be a collaboration between members of the Oaxacan community in LA, and researchers. Documentation (written, audio, photographic) will occur through oral histories, commentaries, recipes, and images gathered in individual interviews and through participation solicited at existing events for the Oaxacan community. Programming will begin September 2023. 

Los Braceros – A Mariachi Opera + 
ÁNIMO Theatre Company, Camarillo 
Project Director: Miguel Orozco 

ÁNIMO Theatre Company will launch a revival of Los Braceros – A Mariachi Opera in Fillmore on September 1, 2023 at the historic Fillmore Town Theater and three community colleges. The story of the Braceros is an important chapter in the history of Ventura County, whose fields and orchards received more of the laborers than in any other county in the US. Thousands of families trace their roots to a Bracero. Ventura County was home to the Buena Vista Bracero camp, the largest in the nation, which at its peak housed 5,000 workers. 

Imperial Geographies: How Pollution, Labor, and Border Policy Create the Modern Salton Sea and Imperial Valley 
LA Artcore Center, Los Angeles 
Project Director: Carly Creley 

Imperial Geographies: How Border Policy, Pollution, and Labor Create the Modern Salton Sea and Imperial Valley, will engage communities in discussions of how environmental justice issues affect our lives, and what we can do about it. Sessions will take place at Imperial Valley Desert Museum in October 2023, LA Artcore in December 2023, Steppling Art Gallery at San Diego State University – Imperial Valley in February 2024, and Nervous Ghost Press’s Community Workspace in March 2024. Each will include a talk with the artist, then engage audience members in art and discussion to create a more just environment for all Californians. 

Telling the Stories of our Elders’ Service 
Community Partners, Los Angeles / Mindful Veteran Project 
Project Director: Gail Soffer 

Southern California students will interview US veterans about their service and compose poems or prose pieces, telling those veterans’ stories. Pairing students and veterans based on ethnic, orientation, religious, minority backgrounds will provide a more personalized exploration and re-telling of the military experience of various communities’ elders, along with a comparison to the non-military battles that their people continue to fight now. Free public readings and storytelling events will take place around the Greater Los Angeles Area between May and July 2024. 

Shifting Possessions: Queer(y)ing Spiritualities & Sexualities + 
The 500 Capp Street Foundation, San Francisco 
Project Director: Rebecca Kaufman 

Shifting Possessions: Queer(y)ing Spiritualities & Sexualities, is a four-part salon series of talks and workshops. This program will highlight artist-scholar-activists whose humanities-based work transmute traumas (e.g., wars in SE Asia and on our streets; intersectional, institutional violence; displacement) towards joyous healing. By questioning binaries beyond spirituality/sexuality and illness/cure, the three interlinked events will focus on music and movement: 1) dance performance + workshop, 2) experimental film screening and Q&A 3) artist talk and workshop 4) art/research/healing workshop. These events will connect BIPOC, particularly queer Southeast Asian and African diasporic communities in the SF Bay Area and nationally through cross-cultural dialogue, ritual, and movement, both physical and metaphysical. Programming will run September 2023 through December 2024. 

Hunters Point Shipyard Community History Project + 
Shipyard Trust for the Arts, San Francisco 
Project Director: Barbara Ockel  

Shipyard Trust for the Arts will host four history workshops for local seniors and community members, focusing on the Hunters Point Shipyard. These engaging workshops aim to elicit participants’ memories, emotions, and family stories related to the shipyard, shedding light on a rich history that caused 10’s of thousands of African Americans to migrate to San Francisco. Despite the lingering effects of poverty, environmental concerns, and a sense of isolation resulting from restricted access to the Shipyard over the past five decades, this program seeks to reveal the importance of this hidden past for the community. Programming will run from October 2023 through January 2024. 

Sounds of Pomona, 1955-1975 * 
dA Center for the Arts, Pomona 
Project Director: Tomás Summers Sandoval Jr. 

Sounds of Pomona, 1955-1975, will consist of a mixed media, participatory exhibit and accompanying program of community events centered on the history of popular music performance in Pomona, California while promoting the continuing role of music in all our lives. Collaborators to this project will include a group of local students from the Pomona Unified music program, as well as teachers and other professionals seeking to provide an impactful humanities experience for other local youth, using music and history as a foundation. Programming will run November 2023 through February 2024. 

First Friday: Community Stories + 
San Jose Museum of Art Association, San Jose 
Project Director: Robin Treen 

The San Jose Museum of Art (SJMA) will launch a free three-part series from 6–9 pm on October 6, February 2 and May 3, in partnership with Francis Experience—an Eastside San Jose-based performing group that blends rap, poetry, and storytelling — SJ Storyboard, an organization that bridges diverse communities through digitally immersive storytelling events, and local poets. Offered on popular free “First Friday” nights with open galleries, the three-part residency will offer students and diverse audiences new ways to engage with exhibition themes of themes of migration, identity, self-love, and inclusion through written and spoken word. 

Compton Mural Project: Empowering and exposing Compton youth to civic engagement & social justice through mural design and conversation * 
Unearth and Empower Communities, Compton 
Project Director: Sara Bomani 

The Compton Mural Project (CMP), in partnership with Compton District 2 Councilmember Andre Spicer, takes 20 BIPOC youth, grades 6-12, through two months (October andNovember 2023) of mural design and conversations learning Compton history, the importance of civic engagement, and what social justice can look like. Students will work directly with local artists and community leaders to plan, design, and paint murals, to activate youth voices, narratives and perspectives. CMP is intentionally designed to work with and empower local community members to get involved in social justice and civic engagement through the lens of art, culminating in a community mural unveiling celebration. 

Memorias en Movimiento: The Forgotten Revolutionaries of the 1990s San Diego Chicana/o Student Movement + 
Media Arts Center San Diego, San Diego 
Project Director: Maria Figueroa 

In the 1990s Chicana/o students across California organized around issues of the time: state legislation that impacted communities of color, the struggle for representation in the educational system and a fight to reveal the legacies of colonialism in the region. Focusing on San Diego, Memorias en Movimiento: The Forgotten Revolutionaries of the 1990s San Diego Chicana/o Student Movement, will host an intergenerational symposium to bring together the young people from that time. Alongside the panel of speakers will be an exhibit of photos and other memorabilia of this generation’s movement work and contributions. The exhibit and symposium hosted at the historic Centro Cultural de la Raza, will add to San Diego’s collective memory. Programming will run October through December 2023. 

LitHop Fresno 2023 
Fresno Arts Council, Fresno / LitHop Fresno 
Project Director: Andrea Mele 

LitHop Fresno, is an annual, all-day literary festival in venues across Fresno’s Tower District founded in 2016 by California’s Poet Laureate, Lee Herrick, during his tenure as Fresno’s Poet Laureate, and co-founded by Lisa Lee Herrick. LitHop is scheduled for Saturday, October 14, 2023, beginning at 12 pm with a series of 45-minute readings at the top of each hour, until 5 pm. Each reading will feature four writers. Audiences will have their choice of reading topics ranging in theme and genre. This event is free, all-ages, and open to the public. A full list of events will be posted on lithopfresno.org. 

For Us, By Us: Our Beloved Communities + 
Filmmakers Collaborative SF, San Francisco / Re-Present Media 
Project Director: Jennifer Crystal Chien 

For Us, By Us: Our Beloved Communities, is a multicultural film screening and discussion event highlighting six documentary film excerpts made by a diverse group of local filmmakers who are telling personal stories of Bay Area community heroes. Each film is paired with a key discussion question to engage audiences in cross-cultural dialogue to better understand and to be inspired by role models from different cultural communities. The event will take place in September 2023 in San Francisco. 

Queering Cultural Forms 
Shawl-Anderson Modern Dance Center (SADC), Berkeley 
Project Director: Snowflake Calvert 

SADC’s Queering Dance Festival presents Queering Cultural Forms, a free public movement class and discussion series February 17 –March 9, 2024 at BANDALOOP Studios in West Oakland. Four Queer and Trans practitioners of traditional dance forms, including Mexican Folkloric and Armenian Line Dance, will teach cultural dances through a Queer lens and facilitate discussion of the cultural history of queer and gender-expansive people in their dance communities. The series will culminate in a showing by class participants and a discussion with the four teachers about the ways in which LBGTQ2IA+ folks from all backgrounds are deepening traditional dance practices. 

Love for Liberation 
Film Independent Inc, Los Angeles 
Project Director: Robin J. Hayes 

During February 2024, the Love for Liberation Project will present a series of public readings and discussions of the critically acclaimed history book, Love for Liberation: African Independence, Black Power, and a Diaspora Underground. The text chronicles the experiences of activists—including Malcolm X, Kathleen Neal Cleaver, and Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture)—as they developed connections with African leaders fighting colonialism. Project activities will occur at public libraries situated in underserved, historically African American communities: Watts, Compton, Inglewood, and Baldwin Hills—and be led by the author, Robin J. Hayes, PhD, a renowned NEH-funded scholar and Los Angeles resident. 

Grants Awarded Spring 2023:

Art Is Healing: Indian Alley Film Screening and Panel Discussion + 
Community Partners, Los Angeles on behalf of Your Neighborhood Museum 
Project Director: Pamela Peters 

Multimedia Artist, Pamela J. Peters, will collaborate with Your Neighborhood Museum and United American Indian Involvement to screen the film “Indian Alley” in downtown Los Angeles. This program will be followed by a panel featuring Native American community members sharing how the US American Indian Relocation program impacted the urban Native community, and how art can be used for healing. Programming will include a photography exhibition of the Indian Alley murals. The event will provide the general public with a better understanding of culture and heritage preservation in an urban context and on the relationship American Indians have with the federal government. Programming will be presented in June 2023. 

2023 Beast Crawl Literary Festival* 
Intersection for the Arts, San Francisco 
Project Director: Paul Corman-Roberts 

The “2023 Beast Crawl Literary Festival,” will consist of 20-25 free one-hour literary/spoken word readings presented in over a dozen downtown Oakland-based independent businesses and community spaces. Readings will be curated from underrepresented and marginalized communities from across the Bay Area and the world, including the Oakland Youth Poet Laureate Program, the Creative Growth Art Center, Project 510, Youth Speaks, Pochino Press and many others doing this important work. Programming will run from July 20-23, 2023. 

Sites and Cycles of LA: Bike Messengers and the City + 
USC’s Institute for Diversity and Empowerment (IDEA), Los Angeles 
Project Director: Robeson Taj Frazier 

“Sites and Cycles of LA: Bike Messengers and the City,” is a photovoice project, exhibition, and panel discussion centering on the voices of bicycle messengers in Los Angeles. Messengers, couriers, and delivery riders are essential workers in today’s cities. Yet, they widely remain under-served and vulnerable: they work as independent contractors and at low rates, risking their personal safety. Messengers often remain unheard and invisible in the public sphere. Through a photography project, culminating in an exhibition and website, “Sites and Cycles of LA” will provide a platform to share their stories and experiences in the city of Los Angeles. Programming will run from May through September 2023. 

Danza de los Diablos de Santiago Juxtlahuaca + 
Independent Arts & Media, San Francisco, on behalf of ARTSCCC (Arts Contra Costa County) 
Project Director: Jenny Balisle 

This project will support the presentation of an Indigenous dance performance and oral history video documentation of the “Danza de los Diablos de Santiago Juxtlahuaca (Dance of the Devils of Santiago Juxtlahuaca),” group. Project co-leaders Felipe Gonzales and Alma Guzman, of Santiago Juxtlahuaca, Oaxaca, will lead this award-winning group and collaborate on this dance performance. The community participatory performance will occur in conjuction with the July 4, 2023 parade in Martinez. ARTSCCC will lead the project, document the group’s history, and facilitate a virtual community discussion. Almost 170,000 Indigenous migrants from the Mexican states of Oaxaca, Guerrero, and Michoacán (including Mixtecs, Zapotecs, and Purépechas) live in California.  

LindaVisions + 
Visual Communications, Los Angeles 
Project Director: Jason Tiangco 

Visual Communications will present, “LindaVisions,” a multi-part series that celebrates and considers the impact of Asian Pacific American cinema as a key ingredient in nurturing and sustaining ongoing socio-political and progressive movements. Set to take place in historic Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo between August and October 2023, the series will include curated film screenings and bring together filmmakers and past and present AAPI student activists as a means of bringing relevance of these works to newer generations of activists. 

RED DRESS DAY + 
Pajaro Valley Ohlone Indian Council, Watsonville
Project Director: Mary Ann Carbone 

Supporting Indigenous Communities Group (SICG) will present, “RED DRESS DAY: Raising awareness of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two Spirit People (MMIWG2S).” This project will consist of an interdisciplinary inter-tribal presentation and community gathering that will include: 1) A Memorial Ceremony for MMIWG2S; 2) A moderated Indigenous Women Speakers’ Panel; 3) MMIWG2S-concerned state legislators and tribal leaders; 4) Indigenous storytellers, drummers, dancers and singers; 5) Red Dress art exhibit. The event is scheduled for Saturday, May 6 from 11 am to 6 pm at Oldemeyer Center in Seaside, California, and is open to the general public while targeting underserved communities and youth. 

Seen and Heard: Bay Area Women in Jazz and Beyond + 
San Francisco Jazz Organization, San Francisco 
Project Director: Rebeca Mauleon 

In March of 2024, SFJAZZ will present “Seen and Heard: Bay Area Women in Jazz and Beyond,” a series of onstage panel discussions and performances highlighting the historic and contemporary artistry of Bay Area women jazz musicians. This program will explore the cultural and historical conditions that have made the Bay Area community a singularly welcoming environment, where women can live and create. Over four consecutive Wednesday evenings at the SFJAZZ Center’s Joe Henderson Lab, “Seen and Heard” will offer expert panel discussions complemented by live performances featuring leading women artists in the Bay Area jazz, blues, and Latin(e)(x) music scenes.  

Hidden History: Nathaniel Smith, First Black Settler on the Mendocino Coast + 
Kelly House Museum, Mendocino 
Project Director: Anne Semans 

“Hidden History: Nathaniel Smith, First Black Settler on the Mendocino Coast,” will comprise of two exhibits and two facilitated discussions, presented at the Kelley House Museum. This project will explore the life of Nathaniel Smith, the first documented Black man to settle on the Mendocino Coast in Northern California in 1850, and about whom little is known. Exhibits and facilitated discussions with the community, including students, will occur during March and April, 2024. 

Sites of Social Change: Youth-Led Walking Tours of San Jose * 
Silicon Valley De-Bug, San Jose 
Project Director: Leila Ullmann 

“Sites of Social Change” is a series of youth-led local history public walking tours that will tell stories about key sites, influential figures, and movements for social change in four historic neighborhoods in San José. Largely overlooked and understudied, these neighborhoods are home to communities who have long fought to preserve their culture and livelihoods. This project recognizes the importance of tending to those histories in the face of gentrification and displacement. It will increase public curiosity for and attention to history while equipping youth to shape the future of their hometown. The tours will be conducted asynchronously in August 2023. 

SOL + 
Invertigo Dance Theatre, Culver City 
Project Director: Chelsea Sutton 

Invertigo Dance Theatre’s “SOL” is a free, one-day community-driven storytelling initiative that will respond to the current time of climate crisis, to find connection at the intersection of environmental justice and dance. “SOL” will feature dance film screenings, panel discussions with Body Movement engagement, spoken word poetry readings by Indigenous and Latinx/e guest artists, and new live dance performances choreographed and performed by Invertigo. Programming will be presented in June 2023, in the Baldwin Hills Parkland and Conservancy. “SOL” seeks to cultivate an exchange exploring our relationship to identity, ancestors, and nature, with all performances created to celebrate the Solstice and help us find roots in our local land. 

The Audacity to Believe: Re-connecting Oakland to its History of Pioneering Education * 
Marcus A. Foster Educational Institute, Oakland  
Project Director: Arianna Morales 

In its 50th year, the Marcus Foster Education Institute will hold an exhibit to bring together the Oakland community to commemorate the life and legacy of Dr. Marcus Foster at the African American Museum and Library. The exhibit will run from July to November of 2023, highlighting Dr. Foster’s impact in Oakland and nationally as the first Black superintendent of a major US school district. The exhibit, opening reception, and following forums, all open to the public, will give youth and educators, following in Dr. Foster’s footsteps, the opportunity to share their tested ideas to improve their schools. 

SHSA Student Docent Oral History Revealed Project * 
Sierra Historic Sites Association Inc, Oakhurst 
Project Director: Paul Adelizi 

The project will reveal a hidden collection of historic resources by creating short videos using oral histories of firsthand accounts of figures such as Teddy Roosevelt, John Muir, and the local Indigenous community. The videos will be made by local students under the supervision of local historians and educators. Students will take a deep dive into past perspectives and actions of those before us, and will find that many topics are still relevant today. The videos will combine voice and historic images to make accessible and compelling media for a diverse and expanded audience. Project activities will run from May through August 2023, at the Fresno Flats Historic Village and Park in Oakhurst. 

Borderlands/Nowherelands: Stories of Art, Migration, and Resilience from South East Europe to Los Angeles 
South East European Film Festival, Los Angeles 
Project Director: Vera Mijojlic 

“Borderlands/Nowherelands,” is a series of film screenings, discussions, and performances that invite discussion about the artistic contributions of Eastern and South Eastern Europe—resplendent regions whose communities struggle with legacies of ethnic conflict, violence, and displacement. The series will be presented by SEEfest Los Angeles, a multi-ethnic arts platform that promotes cultural dialogue between California and South (Eastern) Europe. In collaboration with local colleges, cultural organizations, and artists, we will spotlight the contributions of immigrants from the SEE regions in Los Angeles, opening dialogues about art as a tool of resilience. Programming will run from fall 2023 through summer 2024. 

What is the role of arts and humanities in war and conflict? A keynote session on Ukraine at the 2023 Hi-Desert Fringe Festival + 
Project Sheba Inc, Joshua Tree 
Project Director: Miri Hunter 

The sixth annual Hi-Desert Fringe Festival will take place at the Joshua Tree Retreat Center in Joshua Tree, the weekend of May 19-21. Julie Anne Franko will give the keynote address on the evening of May 19, discussing the role of arts and humanities in war based on two decades of life as a performing artist in Ukraine. Ms. Franko will also facilitate community discussions on this topic on Saturday May 20 and Sunday May 21 as part of the Hi-Desert Fringe program of classes and seminars. 

Poetry to the People + 
San Diego Entertainment and Arts Guild, Rainbow 
Project Director: Michael Klam 

In partnership with the San Diego Public Libraries, San Diego Poetry Annual (SDPA) will conduct a series of online and in-person workshops, readings, and community events. This program seeks to foster poetry creation, publication, and performance opportunities aimed at San Diego residents whose voices and life experiences are not usually represented in the traditional cultural archive. By highlighting the value of expression and offering recognition to the experiences of the often overlooked, this project aims to counteract the devastating crisis of isolation and despair exacerbated by the pandemic to empower and connect at-risk populations to free cultural resources and opportunities. Programming will run from May 2023 through April 2024. 

Dia de Los Muertos Celebration 
Friends of Rancho San Pedro, Compton 
Project Director: Celeste Calabrisi 

The project is the Dia de Los Muertos celebration held at the Dominguez Rancho Adobe Museum in collaboration with the Semillitas Learning Community on November 4, 2023. This is a free public event that showcases the history and culture of this Mexican holiday through performances, food, and vendors, as well as offering children’s activities and tours of the historic Dominguez Rancho Adobe Museum. The main objective of this event is to decolonize and decommericalize the holiday, to take it back for the Mexican community while harnessing the power of culture to provide a safe, joyous event. 

Mestizaje Ventura County + 
Ventura County Arts Council, Ventura 
Project Director: Anna Bermudez 

The exhibition “Mestizaje: 500 Years of Meeting,” and the County of Ventura, will launch Hispanic Heritage Month, running from September through November 2023. Preservation of heritage and culture provides the focus for workshops and presentations. Public events will facilitate dialogue, education, and collaboration between local artists and Indigenous artists from Oaxaca. Sculptures integrating wood carving, feather art, weaving, tin art, goldsmithing, and oil on petate, incorporating animals, images, and concepts representative of Mesoamerican history comprise the exhibit. Venues include galleries, public spaces, theaters, educational facilities, and municipal buildings. The exhibit will be displayed at the Ventura Government Center, and locations throughout Ventura County. 

Stories of Us Gatherings – Building a Sense of Community Through Culture 
San Diego Children’s Discovery Museum, Escondido 
Project Director: Whitney Raser 

San Diego Children’s Discovery Museum will present “Stories of Us Gatherings,” cross-community, multi-disciplinary, public storytelling events that will fill important gaps in the county’s history by providing a platform for individuals to share cultural contributions and their unique personal stories. The project builds upon the museum’s existing cultural partnerships, with a special focus on San Diego County’s first peoples, the Kumeyaay Nation, and Luiseño tribes. It aims to increase the visibility of underrepresented community members and build a diverse, welcoming, respectful, and inclusive culture at the museum and beyond. Programming will run from May 2023 through April 2024. 

ukiaHaiku Festival Youth Outreach * 
North Coast Opportunities Inc, Ukiah 
Project Director: Colter Jacobsen 

The UkiaHaiku Festival is an annual celebration of the Japanese poetic form, haiku. UkiaHaiku Youth Outreach will provide haiku workshops in Mendocino County schools, grades 4 through 12, as well as for formerly incarcerated and at-risk youth. The aim of these workshops is to inspire County youth to submit haiku entries for the festival. The winning poets will be awarded gift certificates for a local bookstore and will have the opportunity to read their haiku publicly at the Festival to be held on April 28, 2024 at the Grace Hudson Museum in Ukiah. 

Music and the Language of Storytelling:  A Paiute Storytelling Path to Traditional Ecological Wisdom + 
Left Coast Chamber Ensemble Inc, San Francisco 
Project Director: Matilda Hofman 

Left Coast Chamber Ensemble and the Peralta Hacienda Historical Park will present two days of public workshops and performances on language and music in the art of storytelling inspired by stories from Paiute country. By exploring the Paiute language and stories with native language specialist, Jefferson Greene, humanities specialist and storyteller, Susan Strauss and flutist Stacey Pelinka, we hope to connect Californians of diverse backgrounds in a common appreciation of the importance of local cultures and the humanities as a way of coming together to understand the issues that face all of us who are living on the land today. Programming will run from September through October 2023. 

Push, Pedal, Pump: Active Movement Through California Landscapes + 
Echo Park Film Center, Los Angeles 
Project Director: Nicole Ucedo 

“Push, Pedal, Pump: Active Movement Through California Landscapes,” is a three-part cinema series featuring films that highlight the vibrant and joyous culture of riding around in California be it in the waves or on the concrete, while also bringing awareness to the BIPOC, LGBTQ+ and female-led organizations working to make these activities more accessible. During the summer of 2023, film screenings, discussions and workshops in Santa Barbara, East LA and Long Beach will provide historical context, contemporary connections, and inclusive opportunities for community members to share and celebrate how surfing, skateboarding, and biking have created positive outcomes in their lives. 

Grants Awarded Winter 2023:

Grants Awarded Spring 2022:

We Are Long Beach: Our Stories, Our Future +
Visual Communications, Long Beach
Project Director: Eseel Borlasa
In collaboration with other community organizations within the Long Beach area, Visual Communications will present a free virtual and in-person event in the summer of 2022. This project seeks to build community engagement and strengthen solidarity around issues impacting BIPOC community members in Long Beach, CA. The in-person event will provide three short documentary screenings accompanied by a community forum that will engage in meaningful multi-ethnic dialogue that uplifts personal stories, elevates the local neighborhood issues, and empowers civic engagement.

Sobrevivir One-Day Symposium and Community Quilt-making Workshops +
Vincent Price Art Museum Foundation, Los Angeles
Project Director: Steven Wong
“Sobrevivir One-Day Symposium and Community Quilt-making Workshops” will feature a one-day symposium and the implementation of four months of quilt-making workshops presented at the Vincent Prince Art Museum in fall 2022. These programs will augment the public exhibition by artist Phung Hyunh titled “Sobrevivir, Healing Through Art and Recognizing the History of Coerced Sterilization.” The work documents Hyunh’s public/community artworks commissioned to honor over 240 Latina women who were involuntarily sterilized at LA County, USC Medical Center. This program traces convergences of race, class, and gender that surface through California’s histories of coerced sterilization to inform conversations around contemporary reproductive health/justice within communities of color and practices that governments, communities, and individuals deploy to repair systemic, generational trauma.

Speaking of the Dixie Fire: Students of Plumas County on the Fire that Changed Their Lives +
Pachuca Productions/Las Pachucas Films, Plumas County
Project Director: Tina Terrazas
Pachuca Productions will present “Speaking of the Dixie Fire: Students of Plumas County on the Fire that Changed Their Lives,” a program created to give the students of Plumas County (k-12 and college) a platform to share their stories of living through the Dixie Fire. Pachuca Productions will facilitate two days of programming at the Town Hall Theatre in Quincy and the Taylorsville Historic Hall with free/donation admission. In addition, programming will be live-streamed on the Plumas Arts Facebook page. This program will also include the participation of an art therapist to help students work through issues that come up in generating their creative works about the Dixie Fire.

Mapping Queer Fresno: Community History Talks and Digital Mapping of Fresno County +
Community Link, Fresno
Project Director, Katherine Fobear
“Mapping Queer Fresno: Community History Talks and Digital Mapping of Fresno County” will consist of a public lecture series and digital mapping project focused on the LGBTQ2+ history of Fresno County. Invited LGBTQ2+ community speakers and researchers will focus on key points of history, geography, and cultural knowledge representative of the diverse LGBTQ2+ history of Fresno. These talks will be digitally recorded and linked to locations on a digital map on the Qistory website, with public events beginning in the summer of 2022.

Agri-CULTURED: Reflections on our Local Food Community by Land and by 
Hand +
Petaluma Arts Council, Petaluma
Project Director: Carin Jacobs
Petaluma Art Center’s (PAC) “Agri-CULTURED” exhibit will run from August through mid-September 2022. “Agri-CULTURED” will draw on the uniting power of food by reaching out to segments of Petaluma’s communities that do not ordinarily engage with the arts. “Agri-CULTURED” is rooted in a distinct sense of place. The exhibition reflects upon the current natural challenges of drought, wildfires, and pandemic that govern much of Petaluma’s food culture and economy today. This project will explore novel farming methods, the unprecedented challenges of climate change, inventive approaches to culinary-based enterprise, and the newly acquired tastes of Petaluma’s changing population.

Olongapo Disco: Archiving Joy Across the Diaspora from 1950 to the Future +
Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation, San Diego
Project Director: Angelica Tolentino
“Olongapo Disco” is an exhibit and participatory series that will debut in June 2022 at the Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation.  “Olongapo Disco” will showcase the diverse ways that community members create and share joy through an array of artistic solutions among community members in Southeast San Diego and Olongapo, Philippines. Throughout this project, participating artists and community members will explore the question: What are joy technologies from Olongapo and San Diego that we need to remember and create to survive and thrive? These considerations will be explored and celebrated through a series of public workshops. In addition, local Pilipinx artists, DJs, and historians’ work will be compiled in a communal archive of Pilipinx joy technologies, including funk/disco, fashion, dance, and environmental/political/social activism from Olongapo and San Diego from 1950 to the present.

Home Gardens: Photographic Discovery *
Riverside County Library System, Riverside
Project Director: Anna Bekker
Launching in the summer of 2022, Riverside County-area teens will take inspiration from award-winning local author Isabel Quintero’s graphic biography “Photographic: The Life of Graciela Iturbide.” Through an author’s talk, a professional photography workshop, a photography exhibit, and an electronic chapbook publication, the organizers of this project seek to preserve and share the image of the Home Gardens neighborhood as seen by the diverse group of young people who live here. By exploring their neighborhood through photography, teens will participate in community building, learn to articulate their sense of self better and find their original voice. In addition, photographic Discovery will increase visibility of Home Gardens Hispanic teens’ perspectives within the local context of Riverside County.

Bronzeville: Crossing bridges and honoring our shared past +
Casa 0101 Inc, Los Angeles
Project Director: Emmanuel Deleage
“Bronzeville: Crossing bridges and honoring our shared past” is a month-long series consisting of four community forums and a curated historical retrospective exhibit that will highlight the significance of the little-known cross-cultural history of the communities of Boyle Heights and Little Tokyo in Los Angeles. The forums will be multi-disciplinary, with musical and cultural presentations, dialogues with community members, guest speakers, and more. In addition to recognizing the historical contributions of the diverse members of this community’s past, this project hopes to educate and inspire the same community in its present incarnation. Programming will begin in May of 2022.

1619 Speaks: Anthology and Show +
Community Literature Initiative, Los Angeles
Project Director: Hiram Sims
Community Literature Initiative (CLI) will present the “1619 Speaks” project, which will result in a virtual gathering and anthology that aims to celebrate African American poets. CLI alumni and current students will be selected to read a poem from an African American poet that influenced them and write a poem on what that influence meant to them. During the week-long virtual event, five poets will read their tribute and poem on seven selected nights, resulting in a published anthology. Programming will launch in June 2022.

Filipinos of South Bay Exhibit
Pasacat Inc, San Diego
Project Director: Anamaria Cabato
The Filipinos of South Bay Exhibit (FOSBE) project is a collaboration with PASACAT Philippine Performing Arts Company and the Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS)-San Diego, produced in partnership with the Chula Vista Public Library and Friends of the Chula Vista Heritage Museum. “Filipinos of South Bay” will provide the stories and photos of Filipinos who shaped their communities by exploring the organizations, business, education, military, places of remembrance, and other themes of sports, innovators, technology, government, and the arts. The exhibit will be installed at the Chula Vista Public Library from October 2022 to December 2023.

Home/Land: Farmworker Perspectives +
Santa Paula Art Museum, Santa Paula
Project Director: Margaret Phelps
Santa Paula Art Museum’s “Home/Land: Farm Worker Voices” presents a platform for farmworker voices by providing opportunities for farmworkers and families to create visual responses to topics of identity, home, belonging, land use, and housing security and featuring the resultant imagery in both public art installations and at the Santa Paula Art Museum concurrent with the 14th annual “Art About Agriculture,” exhibition. In addition, a panel discussion will be held for deeper community reflection, including humanities experts, community leaders, and farmworker housing advocates to reflect on the artworks created and their relation to the more extensive exhibit, relevant discourses, and community impact. Programming will begin in August 2022 and run through January 2023.

Tenderloin Museum’s California Labor School Project +
Uptown Tenderloin Inc, San Francisco
Project Director: Alex Spoto
Tenderloin Museum’s “California Labor School Project” is an exhibit on the California Labor School (CLS) history organized with SFSU’s Labor Archives and Research Center and a program series that utilizes CLS’ curriculum as a frame for participatory arts activities. Active between 1942-1957, CLS offered programs to analyze social, economic, and political questions in light of the present world struggle against fascism. With roots in the TL and remarkably diverse for its time, CLS is an ideal subject to promote the Tenderloin’s history and character and study how communities organize, knowledge is shared, and social division is overcome. The programming is from July through September 2022.

NOT WORKING: Essential, Fired, and Forgotten workers in the time of Covid +
Asian Story Theater Inc, San Diego
Project Director: Kent Brisby
Asian Story Theater will lead a troika of arts producers in developing and producing a new musical play: “NOT WORKING: Essential, Fired, and Forgotten Workers in the time of Covid-19.” This project will produce the new musical “NOT WORKING,” doubling as a catalyst for discussions relating to working as an Asian American, Latino American, or African American from 2020 to 2023: before, during, and after Covid-19, developed in partnership with Teatro Máscara Mágica and the San Diego Black Ensemble Theatre Company. Participating directors will build on relationships with community organizations to identify stories, themes, and interviewees and rotate hosting a public discussion immediately after each performance. This project will culminate in a week of performances in the Lyceum Theatre or other downtown venue in October 2022; each performance will be followed by a hosted discussion of a topic or theme in the show. Before these centralized performances, there will be three previews in community centers around the city, plus three musical excerpts incorporated into other community events hosted by development partners.

La Raiz Magazine Poetry Workshops & Publication +
School of Arts and Culture at MHP, San Jose
Project Director: Elizabeth Jimenez Montelongo
“La Raiz Magazine Poetry Workshops & Publication” will provide interactive arts and literary engagement experiences to the community through culturally relevant bilingual workshops and a publication that amplifies the voices of BIPOC and women. La Raiz Magazine, in partnership with local organizations, will provide free poetry workshops to the public. Participating community members will receive free support to write poetry via guided, interactive poetry workshops that include prompts, samples, and opportunities to share their work. Programming will be accessible virtually and in-person between May 2022 and April 2023.

Chicana Revolution
California State University Los Angeles Auxiliary Services Inc, Los Angeles
Project Director: Dionne Espinoza Ph.D.
“Chicana Revolution,” organized by Dionne Espinoza Ph.D., will put the voices of Mexican American women at the center. A series of virtual and/or face-to-face dialogues and multimedia presentations dedicated to sharing the underrepresented stories of the mujeres (women) who formed student and community-based collectives in the seventies at universities and community sites throughout California will be presented. The dialogues will be accompanied by slide shows with archival photographs and documents from the time, recitation of poetry or short plays, and/or songs. Programming will be held in May 2022, October 2022, and March 2023.

African American and Asian American Navy Stories +
Aircraft Carrier Hornet Foundation, Alameda
Project Director: Anthony Wilson
The USS Hornet Museum’s “History of African Americans in the Navy” and “History of Asian Americans in the Navy” will develop permanent exhibition spaces with rotating artifacts and interactive content sharing the stories and history of African and Asian Americans within the US Navy. This exhibition will build on the awareness and respect for those African and Asian Americans who served in the Navy from the Revolutionary War to the present. In addition, these exhibits will introduce important historical figures who made groundbreaking achievements in diversity, equity, and inclusion. Exhibit receptions will also be held to tell these stories and increase awareness beginning in May 2022.

King of The Yees – Audience and Community Engagement Programs +
Sierra Madre Playhouse, Sierra Madre
Project Director: Beryl Tsang
Sierra Madre Playhouse (SMP) will further its mission to stimulate civic engagement through live theater by producing “King of the Yees” (KoTY) by Lauren Yee, directed by Tim Dang (running from May 20 – June 12). KoTY, based on Yee’s relationship with her father, reflects on intergenerational differences in immigrant communities and the value of ethnic ties in a changing society. This program seeks to contextualize the production of KoTY with five engagement programs that address the cultural, economic, and geographical transformation of Chinese American enclaves from LA to the San Gabriel Valley.

Immigrant Voices LIVE: A Storyshare Project Bridging Angel Island’s Immigrant Descendants and Current-Day Immigrants +
Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation, San Francisco
Project Director: Edward Tepporn
Building upon Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation’s (AIISF) existing collection of 250 oral histories, the “Immigrant Voices LIVE” project will incorporate digital storytelling to diversify our nation’s narratives about Asians and immigrants. This project will include in-person and online training to support community members in sharing their personal/family stories related to immigration through writing, video, or audio. Submissions will be featured in a permanent multimedia exhibit in the Angel Island Immigration Museum and AIISF’s online gallery in October 2022.

Mission Love +
Conscious Youth Media Crew, San Francisco
Project Director: Debra Koffler
“Mission Love” will screen rare 16mm films from the Ray Balberan Mission MediArts archive (RBMMA), accompanied by collective storytelling in late 2022 at Brava Theater in San Francisco’s Mission District. The RBMMA is a unique collection of footage from the 1970s-80s shot by Mission MediArts, a filmmaker collective of working-class Latino and African American students, artists, and activists. They create groundbreaking community television chronicling life in the Mission and showcase their cultural heritage from an authentic insider’s perspective. Footage includes the Mission’s early mural arts movement, lowriders, the local poetry scene, and activism around farmworker’s rights, police brutality, and family life.

Grants Awarded Winter 2022:

Visual Analogies: A Racial History of Oceanside+
Oceanside Public Library, Oceanside
Project Director: Monica Chapa Domercq

In partnership with the Hill Street Country Club, a non-profit arts organization, and Oceanside Historical Society, Oceanside Public Library will present an art exhibit titled, “Visual Analogies: A Racial History of Oceanside.” This project will develop an exhibit featuring photographs and personal stories contributed by community members pertaining to significant but not well-known events in Oceanside’s history. By creating this exhibition, this project seeks to fill important gaps in the city’s history and educate the general population about the contributions and legacies of Black, Indigenous, and people of color in Oceanside. All programs will be held April-June 2022 at local libraries and a community art space.

2022 Mojave Project Webinar Series+
Fulcrum Arts, Pasadena
Project Director: Kim Stringfellow

The “2022 Mojave Project Webinar Series, will consist of three free, virtual public panel discussions coinciding with the public exhibition of The Mojave Project at the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art at the University of Nevada Las Vegas on exhibit from February through July 2022. These Zoom webinars will bring together Indigenous culture bearers, scholars, researchers, and activists from the Mojave Desert bioregion spanning California, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah. The highlight of our programming is the Indigenous Perspectives of the Mojave Desert panel discussion includes Native American representatives whose current and traditional homelands are located within the Mojave Desert.

Story Ambassadors Program
Capital Storytelling, Sacramento
Project Directors: Lisa Cantrell & Betsaida LeBron

“The Story Ambassadors Program,” will train eight individuals in Sacramento to host open-mic storytelling events in their communities. 24 storytelling events will be held across Sacramento and culminate in a Main Event in July of 2022. The Main Event will bring together the members of the eight open-mic forums for a cross-community storytelling gathering with the goal of fostering connection, empowering individuals to share their personal stories, and increasing empathy and understanding across communities. The stories will be recorded, transcribed, and shared online.

1860 Kayseri to LA 2022: Mapping Culture and Sharing Stories
Ararat Home of Los Angeles Inc., on behalf of Ararat-Eskjian Museum
Project Director: Maggie Goschin

“1860 Kayseri to Los Angeles 2022: Mapping Culture and Sharing Stories” is a special exhibit and conference developed by the Ararat-Eskijian Museum in collaboration with the Armenian Dress and Textile Project. This exhibit will display ancestral textiles, rugs, costumes, and other items from the Telfeyan and Timourian families in Kayseri, Turkey, produced during the Ottoman period. The exhibit seeks to tell the human stories behind the items and probe themes of daily life, survival, and migration. The accompanying conference will present a contextual understanding of Armenian life in mid-19th century Kayseri to 20th-century immigration and the impact of these histories on Armenians in California today.

Sana, Sana: Hope and Healing for Latinx Communities in Times of Precarity+
Humboldt State University Sponsored Programs Foundation, Arcata
Project Director: Rachel Samet

“Sana, Sana: Hope and Healing for Latinx Communities in Times of Precarity” is a project that will blend music and poetry to promote healing, empathy, and understanding of current and historical challenges facing the Latinx community, such as the impact of COVID and racism. This project seeks to empower young Latinx poets by providing a platform for their voices; to center and value the unique individual experiences of members of Humboldt County’s Latinx community; provide opportunities for the broader community to interact with a successful, young, Latinx professional; and connect the whole community through amplifying the commonality of our challenges to build empathy and understanding of the specific challenges faced by each poet. Selected poems created through this project will be set to music by professional composer, Carlos Cordero, and premiered at public concerts where each poet will read and discuss their poem. Each composer will discuss their composition before the music is performed.

Sacramento Poderosas‡
La Familia Counseling Center Inc, Sacramento
Project Director: Rhonda Rios Kravitz

“Sacramento Poderosas” will create an original mural to give voice and awareness to historically marginalized Chicana/Latina ponderosas, powerful women in Sacramento. This project seeks to uplift the stories of Sacramento’s inspirational women to celebrate their achievements and inspire upcoming generations using murals to tell their stories. In addition, this mural will become the starting point for more extensive conversations about the future of our communities and the role of women of color as change makers, to highlight how they have secured transformative, equitable, and accessible justice for their communities through their accomplishments as educators, lawyers, scientists, politicians, authors, poets, and artists. These murals will be painted on the walls of community centers, schools, and businesses and will be accompanied by community workshops that will run from September through December 2022; and will also include a bilingual coloring book for elementary school children with the bios of the women displayed on the mural.

Appreciation: Rebuilding a Sense of Community through (Visual) Stories+
California State University Fresno Foundation, Fresno
Project Director: Ah Ran Koo Ph.D.

“Appreciation: Rebuilding a Sense of Community through (Visual) Stories” will feature facilitated community dialogues and visual art workshops led by California-based Asian/Asian American scholars, authors, poets, and contemporary artists. This project seeks to expand people’s understanding of Asian/Asian American communities in California. Participants will take part in profound conversations about isolated Asian/Asian American communities in California who are suffering during/after COVID-19 periods when Anti-Asian hate crimes have increased. This project aims to build a bridge between arts and humanities through the presentation of community dialogue and discussion sessions led by prominent ethnic and cultural studies scholars/researchers, and visual art workshops facilitated by contemporary AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) artists and scholars. The project will be held virtually through zoom sessions, and the outcomes will be exhibited through a virtual gallery and presented in the spring and fall of 2022.

Remembrance, Redress, and Reparations: Learning from the Past
Japanese American Historical Society of San Diego, San Diego
Project Director: Samantha Alberts

“Remembrance, Redress, and Reparations: Learning from the Past” will consist of a three-part series incorporating video, panel discussion, and community interaction to share personal experiences of Japanese American incarceration, post-WWII efforts for restitution, and how these experiences continue to offer vital lessons for Americans today. The Japanese American Historical Society will share the importance of first-person stories and the remembrances of ancestors to effect redress and change. In interactive sessions, participants will engage with questions of reflection to consider their own experiences, responsibility, and action. Programming will begin on February 19, 2022, to commemorate the signing of Executive Order 9066, which authorized the removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans in the United States. Subsequent sessions will occur during the spring and summer of 2022.

Emmy Lou Packard: Artist of Conscience+
Richmond Art Center, Richmond
Project Director: Amy Spencer

“Emmy Lou Packard: Artist of Conscience” is an interpretive exhibition – accompanied by a print publication and panel discussion event – to be presented at Richmond Art Center from June 21 to August 19, 2022. The exhibition will explore the legacy of Emmy Lou Packard (1914–1998), a remarkable, though overlooked artist known for her paintings, prints, murals, and social and political activism. Diego Rivera mentored Packard, and in turn, herself mentored a generation of primarily female and Chicana artists in the Bay Area.

Ferlinghettifest 2022
Chapman University, Orange
Project Director: Mark Axelrod

American poet, novelist, and painter, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, died in February 2021. To commemorate his passing, the John Fowles Center for Creative Writing plans to hold a “Ferlinghettifest in May of 2022,” honoring him with invited speakers to discuss his art and writing. Those invited include George Krevsky, Ferlinghetti’s gallerist from San Francisco; Robert Barsky, a literary critic and literature professor from Vanderbilt University; and Barbara Epler, editor of New Directions Publishing, the house that published much of Ferlinghetti’s work. This project seeks to recognize Ferlinghetti’s creative talents and will contribute to a broader understanding of Ferlinghetti’s work as an artist and humanitarian. Programming will occur in May 2022.

Public Art as Resistance in San José
San José State University, College of Humanities and the Arts, San José
Project Director: Katherine D. Harris and Alena Sauzaude

In collaboration with San José State University and local community arts organizations, “Public Art as Resistance in San José, will consist of a series of Spring 2022 activities that investigate the history of resistance embedded in downtown San José public art. Activities include a 3-hour walking tour of nine works; a self-guided audio tour using QR codes and a map available in both print and online; a culminating panel discussion about the art of resistance and resistant public art; and an exhibit at the downtown San José Hammer Theatre. The exhibit, curated from the social media hashtag campaign, invites participants to define resistance in public art for themselves.

Landscape & Life Talks+
Indexical Inc, Santa Cruz
Project Director: Gabriel Mindel

Indexical presents “Landscape & Life,” a series of visual art exhibitions and lectures that seeks to push back against the notion of landscape as “empty space,” to connect the exhibitions’ themes to the everyday social, political, and environmental concerns of community members. Programming will take place January through June 2022 and will feature humanities scholars, artists, and activists at the Tannery Arts Center in Santa Cruz, a low-income artist housing complex of 100 live/work units and 28 studios.

Dancing with the Ballot+
Playhouse Arts, Arcata
Project Director: Jacqueline Dandeneau

“Dancing with the Ballot, is a multimedia theater piece that incorporates historical research and community interviews to explore voter suppression in our local women from suffrage to today.
This project explores the suppression of women and voting beginning the suffrage movement of the early twentieth century, to the present. The organizers of this program will draw on the collaboration of community partners who will engage their constituents to gather personal stories and reflect on voting from their unique cultural perspectives. The performance will take place on the unceded territory of the Wiyot people in Guidi’ni (Arcata), to debut at the 02F Festival, March 4 through 6 of 2022.

MASCellaneous creative workshop series+
Intersection for the Arts, on behalf of Diamond Wave, San Francisco
Project Director: Kevin Seaman

“MASCellaneous,” is a creative workshop series exploring the intersections of queer masculinities. Hosted by Artistic Director Kevin Seaman and advisors Nick Ishimaru, Baruch Porras-Hernandez, and James Rouse Iñiguez, the program will create new queer masculine archetypes, shift existing queer masculine culture, and build affinity amongst cis and trans men and masculine of center women and nonbinary people. Programming will run from January through November 2022 and will include 12 digital and in-person events that center artists in conversation with community.

Migration: L.A. +
Center Theatre Group of Los Angeles, Los Angeles
Project Director: Luis Alfaro

Center Theatre Group’s “Migration: L.A.” project is a public event and installation that will explore the theme of migration in our production of ALMA the Kirk Douglas Theatre in March 2022. This project will feature an audience engagement exhibit at the theatre and a panel conversation by cultural historian Josh Kun; professor of American Studies Natalia Molina; playwright Benjamin Benne; and director Juliette Carrillo. The event will explore how L.A.’s landscape and history are shaped by factors such as class, culture, politics, race, and water rights over time through the lens of migration.

Grants Awarded Summer 2021:

Building Community: The Broadway Neighborhood‡
Santa Monica Historical Society Inc.
Project Director: Sara Crown
“Building Community: The Broadway Neighborhood” will focus on an area that from the 1920s – 1960s was home to thriving businesses, cultural ventures, social services, and faith-based institutions established and operated by the city’s African American residents. This project will explore what defines a neighborhood and its identity and how this intersects with urban planning and environmental equity. It will include oral histories, photographs, pamphlets, media, and other ephemera, as well as panel discussions, activity days, school visits, and online/digital content. “Building Community” will run from December 2021 through May 2022 at our museum site in Santa Monica, CA.

We Out Here: Diversity Summit and Film Festival+
Norco Library
Project Director: Ivan Aguirre
In collaboration with Norco College diversity organizations, Norco Library will present “We Out Here: Diversity Summit and Film Festival,” a free month-long virtual event in November 2021. This project seeks to empower and celebrate diversity in Norco’s unacknowledged and underrepresented BIPOC+ (Black, Indigenous, People of Color, and LGBTQ+) communities. “We Out Here” will provide four Good Docs documentary screenings by and about BIPOC+ members accompanied by virtual speaking engagements. In addition, the film festival will serve as a backdrop to a diversity summit with various BIPOC+ led workshops and panels that speak on themes of diversity, equity, inclusion, and the importance of archiving local BIPOC+ history.

Plague Stories: Gathering Our Community Narratives
University of Redlands
Project Director: Youna Kwak
The University of Redlands’ “Plague Stories” utilizes the humanities to understand our world as we emerge from the pandemic. Interconnected and interactive community-based activities create space to share stories from humanistic fields while collecting local stories of lived experience. Community forums, led by faculty “fishbowls,” will address uncertainty, loss, and rebuilding, followed by a One City One Book discussion of Emily St. John Mandel’s novel, Station Eleven. Simultaneously, we will collect individual stories via video for a community archive. These events explore how humanist practice illuminates our personal stories within the collective narrative of the Covid-19 pandemic. Programming will begin in January 2022.

28th Annual Mi Casa Es Su Casa/My House is Your House+
Pajaro Valley Arts Council, Watsonville
Project Director: Valeria Miranda
“Mi Casa Es Su Casa/My House is Your House” consists of a six-week art/installation exhibition; a one-day conference utilizing the historical, cultural, and religious icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe as a focal point to explore a variety of themes through readings, discussions, and art workshops. In addition, a candlelight vigil, and a book group discussion of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer are also offered. Inspired by the traditional Mexican holiday Día de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead), “Mi Casa Es Tu Casa/My House is Your House’s,” 28th annual exhibition and programs invite participants and visitors to celebrate ancestors and loved ones who passed away through the creation of altars/installations, and  2-D artwork. . Programming will run from October through December 2021.

West Oakland to West Africa International Poetry Exchange Book Forums+
Commune Foundation, Oakland
Project Director: Karla Brundage
West Oakland to West Africa (WO2WA) is a community of primarily Black writers living in Oakland that exchanges Renshi style poetry with poets and artists in West Africa. During the COVID pandemic, twenty-four Oakland poets who took part in this program exchanged epistolary poems with twenty-four Nigerian and Kenyan poets. “West Oakland to West Africa International Poetry Exchange Book Forums” will amplify the works created out of this exchange, hosting two free public poetry readings held via Zoom in partnership with the African American Museum and Library in Oakland. An anthology of these poems will be distributed free of charge to all participants, including those in Africa. These free, spoken word poetry reading events will include a community forum component, allowing our poets and audience to engage in meaningful dialogue around the Black experience. In addition, poets and audiences will engage in meaningful dialogue around themes of humanity, identity, and intersectionality. Programming will take place in September 2021.

Sudden Experiments: A Series of Student-Led Public Workshops on Art/Poetry-Making+
California State University Fresno Foundation
Project Director: Mai Der Vang
“Sudden Experiments: A Series of Student-Led Public Workshops on Art/Poetry-Making” organized by the Laureate Lab Visual Wordist Studio (LaLab) at Fresno State, is a public workshop space founded by Juan Felipe Herrera and housed at Fresno State, bringing together students, writers, artists, and community members to explore the dimensions of and connections between poetry, sound, movement, visual art, and performance. LaLab will present a series of creative art and poetry-making workshops in coordination with Creative Writing program faculty and facilitated by student leaders in the Lab. Workshops will be free, held on campus in fall 2021 and spring 2022.

Raíces de Long Beach: Roots of the Rancho Speakers’ Series
Rancho Los Cerritos Foundation, Long Beach
Project Director: Alison Bruesehoff
Rancho Los Cerritos will present “Raíces de Long Beach: Roots of the Rancho Speakers’ Series” that aligns with the upcoming “Raíces de Long Beach: Roots of the Rancho,” year-long exhibit. The “Speakers’ Series” will provide further context for the stories featured in the exhibition within the more extensive history of Mexican and Mexican American people in Southern California. There will be a total of four lectures hosted by RLC at the Rancho Los Cerritos site and will be virtually available. The series will take place between September 2021 – August 2022.

UCI PrisonPandemic in the Community: Programmatic Events & Participatory Activities
Regents of the University of California Irvine
Project Director: Keramet Reiter
University of California Irvine’s “PrisonPandemic” is a digital media archive of thousands of calls and narrated letters collected from people incarcerated in California’s prisons during the COVID-19 pandemic. The archive amplifies incarcerated people’s experiences and gives voice to the numbers: nearly 50,000 incarcerated Californians infected with COVID-19 and 224 dead since March 2020. This project will feature an exhibit and two associated public events – an opening event and a panel introducing an associated podcast – to increase awareness of and engagement with the PrisonPandemic voices. Events will take place in late spring 2022 on UCI’s campus (and virtually).

Resilient Women of California’s Chinatowns+
San Diego Chinese Historical Society and Museum, San Diego
Project Director: Anne Hoiberg
“Resilient Women of California’s Chinatowns” will uncover the stories of the Chinese women who lived in California’s Chinatowns through the creation of video and public programming. This project will highlight the story of Sue Leong, the “Mother” of San Diego’s Chinatown, “Honoring the First Mother of San Diego’s Chinese Community”; and will create a walking tour and video, “Women of the Gaslamp Quarter and Chinatown—a Walking Tour.” The goal of this program seeks to enrich the lives of all film viewers and walkers through these stories and the post-screening discussions, increase public awareness of the long history of anti-Asian racism and discrimination–and to discuss solutions to this bias and attacks on Asian Americans. Other outcomes include printing a brochure promoting the walking tour and a booklet about the women of the Quarter and Chinatown. Programming will begin in January 2022.

The Art of Disability Culture+
Palo Alto Art Center Foundation, Palo Alto
Project Director: Karen Kienzle
“The Art of Disability Culture,” will feature work in a wide range of media by artists from the Bay Area and beyond. At the heart of this exhibition is a robust celebration of the diverse, personal, and infinitely varied “disability experience.” The artists featured in this project have one or more disabilities, whether visible or invisible. Their work responds to this diversity of perspectives and experiences exemplified by these individuals’ creativity, vulnerability, and unique perspectives. This exhibition provides a safe space to come together and reflect upon the pandemic with a greater understanding of how disability culture can strengthen our communities through the practices of interdependence, accessibility, and inclusion. To celebrate and amplify the exhibition, the Art Center will present two hybrid programs to create opportunities to appreciate and celebrate the disability community. Programming will begin in fall 2021.

Korean American Young Adult Fiction Today‡
Gyopo, Los Angeles
Project Director: Yoon Ju Ellie Lee
The “Korean American Young Adult Fiction Today” event brings together five Young Adult fiction writers, whose books feature characters of Korean descent, to read their published works and reflect on their personal career journeys. In January 2022, at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles, this event will surface diverse perspectives in literature for young audiences both in and beyond the Korean diaspora. Prior to the event, two virtual reading groups of local secondary school students, facilitated by educators from community-based organizations, Koreatown Youth and Community Center and Sustainable Little Tokyo, will read a YA novel by a featured panelist.

Preserve Community Art: San Diego’s Chicana/o Cultural Heritage
Balboa Art Conservation Center, San Diego
Project Director: Bianca Garcia
Balboa Art Conservation Center (BACC) seeks to connect the field of art conservation to communities and collections that have been historically and institutionally underrepresented. Preserve Community Art: San Diego’s Chicana/o Cultural Heritage will partner with San Diego’s Centro Cultural de la Raza (Centro) to convene an online community conversation about historical efforts, current state, and future planning to conserve Chicana/o art and culture in San Diego. The dialogue will center the voices of community historians, activists, artists, conservators, arts administrators, educators, and culture bearers to respond to the question: What does Cultural Preservation look like for San Diego’s Chicana/o community? Programming will begin in April 2022.

Lit Crawl San Francisco 2021
Litquake Foundation, San Francisco
Project Director: Hunter Thomas
Litquake will produce “Lit Crawl San Francisco,” which will consist of a series of in-person, community-led literary events sourced via a public submission process and emphasizing the work of local, BIPOC/LGBTQ+ authors and arts organizations on Saturday, October 24th, 2021. The mission of this project is to bring together the greater Bay Area literary community to share their unique perspectives on the issues of the day via literature in all its forms (poetry, short stories, novels, memoir, storytelling, essays, journalism) and foster discussion, cross-cultural exchange, and community building.

Mariachi Women Warriors: Tradition and Innovation+
Mariachi Women’s Foundation, Los Angeles
Project Director: Leonor Perez
“Mariachi Women Warriors: Tradition and Innovation” will be an in-person community dialog with a panel of mariachi women speakers held during Women’s History Month. A performance by the all-female Mariachi Divas will add context to the panel. Community participants will increase their understanding of women’s experiences as they uniquely and innovatively engage and sustain the mariachi tradition rooted in Mexican masculine culture. The event will be held in March 2022 at La Plaza de Cultura y Artes in Los Angeles and streamed in April 2022.

Birth Happens
San Lorenzo Valley Historical Society, Boulder Creek
Project Director: Lisa Robinson
“Birth Happens” is a cultural project that includes an exhibition, associated programming, and the collection of oral histories. The exhibition celebrates the history of midwifery in Santa Cruz County from pre-contact to the present day. It examines midwifery legislation, especially focusing on the 1917 decision to identify birth as a medical procedure and its implications and the 1976 California Supreme Court decision to make the practice of non-medical midwifery illegal. It identifies those women, who took back the practice of home birthing and created The Santa Cruz Birth Center, but who were arrested and jailed for conducting non-medical home births. Programming will begin in September 2021.

Revitalizing and Celebrating Pomo Life Cycle Traditions+
Beauty & Love Publishing, Boonville
Project Director: Jeanine Pfeiffer
“Revitalizing and Celebrating Pomo Life Cycle Traditions” is a project that seeks to revitalize and celebrate Pomo life cycle traditions through diverse community outreach activities. Main events will include in-person and remote/recorded talks by Pomo culture bearers in collaboration with the Grace Hudson Museum (Ukiah); the Historic Courthouse Museum (Lakeport), the California Indian Museum and Cultural Center (Santa Rosa); and over twenty Pomo tribes and tribal communities located in Mendocino, Lake, and Sonoma counties. Our main events will be supplemented with round-table community dialogues centering on a locally written and published book on cradle basketry and short explanatory videos and imagery uploaded to individual and institutional Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter accounts, and websites. Programming begins September 2021.

Grants Awarded Spring 2021:

Cultivating Việt Mỹ Youth Identity‡
International Children Assistance Network Inc., Milpitas
Project Director: Amanda Doan
This project will engage Vietnamese American (VA) high school and college students in the San Jose area to share their stories in videos, images, and written passages revolving around Vietnamese American (Việt Mỹ) identity. “Cultivating Việt Mỹ Youth Identity” aims to encompass all forms of VA identity, including multiracial, LGBTQIA+, and ethnic minorities. This project aims to acknowledge and amplify the under-represented perspectives of VA youth and their journey in navigating home, belonging, and individuality in the United States. “Cultivating Viet Mỹ Youth Identity” will also include a community forum featuring guest speakers and participatory story-sharing testimonials that will be open to the public. Public programming will begin in November of 2021.

Sounds of Liberation: Discovering Wisdom and History in African American Music+
EcoArts of Lake County dba Middletown Art Center, Middletown
Project Director: Clovice Lewis
“Sounds of Liberation: Discovering Wisdom and History in African American Music” will feature taped and live performances, community conversations, and interviews that reveal the stories of African American musicians as they explore how their art responds to systemic racism, how they ended up in rural Lake County, and how they use their music as a storytelling device. In the light shed by Black Lives Matter, these music-based storytelling conversations will aim to strengthen this predominantly white county’s capacity for interracial support for all while strengthening the network of Black musicians who now live in this underserved and scattered low-income community. Programming will run from summer 2021 through early 2022.

Watsonville is in the Heart: A Public History Initiative
Regents of the University of California, Santa Cruz
Project Director: Kathleen Gutierrez
“Watsonville is in the Heart: A Public History Initiative” is a community-led project that seeks to uplift the Filipino labor and migration narratives found in the city of Watsonville. This project will undertake historical documentation in partnership with community members working toward developing an archive and exhibit on the history of Filipino labor and migration in the city of Watsonville and the broader Pajaro Valley. “Watsonville is in the Heart” will host a series of “TalkStories” with local families, develop a website featuring a growing digital archive, and mount an exhibition presented at the Watsonville Public Library, culminating the end of the project year. Each aspect of the program will be publicly accessible and will feature participatory components that invite community members to take part in the act of history-making. Programming will run from September 2021 through April 2022.

Contradictions – Bringing the Past Forward+
Fulcrum Arts, Pasadena
Project Director: Barbara Gothard
“Contradictions – Bringing the Past Forward” is a research-based multimedia Arts + Humanities project that will be the first project to explore the cultural relevance and interpretation of the history and stories of African American homesteaders in the Mojave Desert circa 1910. The project is explored through a framework of change and continuity, diversity, cause and effect, interconnectedness, community, identity, and belonging in the context of social, political, economic, cultural, and environmental factors prevalent in the early 20th century in the United States. “Contradictions” will include artist talks, community discussions hosted by public/nonprofit organizations, websites, and social media. A visual arts exhibition with a catalogue and a book will explore themes of hope, disillusionment, and strong family bonds based on homesteader descendants and archival research interviews. Programming will begin in spring 2021 through winter 2021.

Dear America: Telling the World We Lived+
Off Main: Ventura County Poetry Project, Ventura
Project Director: Marsha de la O
“Dear America: Telling the World We Lived” will use poetry and storytelling as vehicles for seniors to preserve a defining moment in their lives, specifically linked to a historical time and place. The project will celebrate and valorize senior voices while illuminating socio-cultural conditions in the past. Performances are recorded and interwoven into videos for online viewing and sharing. Youth will collaborate with elders to work on pieces that elucidate their critical moments and share poems and insights. This collaboration and its subsequent presentation to in-person and online audiences will build community, create empathy, and preserve wisdom. Programming will run from May 2021 through January 2022.

Shared Landscapes: Mapping Teen Altadena‡
Altadena Library District, Altadena
Project Director: Isabelle Briggs
The “Shared Landscapes” project is a teen-generated digital and print story map that will document the human geography young people create and inhabit in Altadena. In the first phase of the project, teens will use technology to create audio, visual, and written records of specific locations associated with meaningful experiences. In the second phase, a teen editorial board will create digital and print maps that plot the submitted locations and integrate the accompanying documentation. The public is invited to use the maps to explore a new emotional and memorial geography, a reminder that our inhabited landscapes share rich overlapping meanings. Programming will run from June 2021 through January 2022.

“The Mask You Live In” Screening & Talkback‡
Mid-Peninsula Community Media Center, Palo Alto
Project Director: Jesse Norfleet
Midpen Media Center will present a screening of the film “The Mask You Live,” followed by a guided discussion. This project will explore the challenges boys and young men face as they struggle to stay true to themselves while negotiating America’s narrow definition of masculinity. How gender stereotypes interconnect with race, class, and circumstance are examined, creating a maze of identity issues boys and young men must navigate to become “real” men. This program will provide participants with the space to witness and experience a work of art and build meaning around it with others, hear new voices, absorb other points of view, and process the meaning of a challenging, provocative, exciting idea with others. Programming will begin in May 2021.

Women’s Stories from the Gathering Place
Rancho Los Alamitos Foundation, Long Beach
Project Director: Katie Lowe
“Women’s Stories from the Gathering Place” is a four-part, interactive, virtual program series that celebrates the contributions of women at Rancho Los Alamitos. The series reflects a renewed commitment to honoring and sharing diverse voices and perspectives from Rancho Los Alamitos’ rich, 1,500-year history of continuous occupancy. Featured women will include Lydia Shinkle, the Rancho’s cook from 1920 to 1943; Cindi Alvitre, a Tongva educator/author who uses preserves and shares her native culture through storytelling; Florence Bixby, the matriarch who used her influence to educate and empower women; and Katharine, Elizabeth, and Deborah Bixby, Florence’s daughters, who grew up as cowgirls. Programming will begin in June 2021.

Undocumented Poets: In Writing & Performance+
Small Press Traffic, San Francisco
Project Director: Syd Staiti
“Undocumented Poets: In Writing & Performance,” curated by Small Press Traffic’s Spring 2022 Curatorial Fellow, Javier O. Huerta, is a performance and conversation series that will highlight the voices of currently and formerly undocumented poets. Presenting a range of styles—narrative, interdisciplinary, spoken word, and performance—this project will feature poets from the different diaspora who engage uniquely with immigration status and documentation in their work. Each event will conclude with an in-depth discussion and Q&A moderated by Huerta. A bilingual print publication will be produced that anthologizes the presenters’ work, including selected transcripts from the discussion periods. Programming will begin in spring 2022.

The Old Spanish Trail in the Mojave
Amargosa Land Trust, Shoshone
Project Director: William Neill
“The Old Spanish Trail in the Mojave” will consist of a short video that follows the Old Spanish Trail as it enters California through the Mojave Desert. This project will explore the Old Spanish Trail and its impact on the development of California, and the Native American population of California, with a special focus on how historical landscapes change over time. This video will be available in English and Spanish. It is accompanied by panel discussions and a field trip hosted by the Amargosa Conservancy, the Oregon-California Trails Association, and the Old Spanish Trail Association. This collaboration allows for a unique look at this historical trail and its environmental impact on the lands it crosses. Programming will begin in fall 2021.

Telling Our Story: The People of Northern Los Angeles County
Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians, San Fernando
Project Director: Pamela Villasenor
“Telling Our Story,” organized by the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians’ (FTBMI), seeks to promote greater community understanding about the First Peoples of the land. The FTBMI will co-host multiple community discussions within the FTBMI and local community partners to build bridges with other audiences. The project centers narrative change and uses a framework from the upcoming book release about the FTBMI. The book is the first of its kind, a collaboration with local university professors that offers a glimpse into rarely accessed historical records and a socio-political analysis of the Tribe. Programming will run from summer 2021 through winter 2022.

Somos Esenciales: Elevating Farmworker Stories‡
Cultural and Creative Arts Center of the Santa Maria Valley, Santa Maria
Project Director: Alex Espinoza-Kulick
The “Somos Esenciales” campaign is a local effort created to uplift the voices, stories, and narratives of farmworkers in Santa Maria. This project will amplify the stories of Latinx migrant farmworkers on California’s Central Coast in their own words. Led by youth artists collaborating with professional filmmakers, “Somos Esenciales” will create and share a guide for how to use video to tell compelling advocacy stories, as well as host screenings of the short film for local schools and community agencies. “Somos Esenciales” seeks to inspire the next generation of artists, leaders, and culture bearers to tell the stories of those who have not been heard. Programming will run from May 2021 through April 2022.

Firelighting: Wilder than Wild Film Screening and Panel Discussion*
Filmmakers Collaborative Inc, San Francisco
Project Director: Kevin White
Filmmakers Collaborative will organize three community screening events in wildfire-prone counties in Northern California. Their award-winning film, “Wilder than Wild: Fire, Forests, and the Future,” will be screened, followed by a panel discussion featuring diverse approaches to living with wildfire. “Firelighting” will explore topics such as cultural fire, an important example of traditional ecological knowledge where California Indians use fire as a tool for managing natural resources. Programming will be presented in Humboldt, Siskiyou, and Trinity counties—which have significant tribal populations, offering a unique opportunity for multiple stakeholders within these communities to find common ground in their approach to understanding and addressing wildfire. Programming will begin in fall 2021.

Hearts and Minds a Program of GAPA Theatre+
GAPA Fund, San Francisco
Project Director: Cesar Cadabes
“Hearts and Minds” will consist of a compendium of social/political/cultural (educational) community sessions, writing workshops, and a public reading of new works-in-progress that will feature facilitated conversations between program participants and audience members. “Hearts and Minds” will explore a diversity of topical sessions ranging from anti-racism work, COVID-19, and HIV pandemic correlations, to political extremism in Asian communities paired with creative writing workshops to construct a body of work that will share ideas and stimulate community conversations. Programming will run from June 2021 through February 2022.

Monterey County Community Journal Project‡
Western Flyer Foundation, Signal Hill
Project Director: Emily Gottlieb
Through a series of classes, workshops, and curricula, youth will create Community Journals containing observations and cultural reflection through art and writing. Participating youth will work with humanities scholars and arts professionals in a series of classes and workshops on sketching and writing creative nonfiction. They will observe their local environments: natural and built, human, animal, and plant. These journals will serve as records of youths’ perceptions of their communities and will be presented in a public event. Using humanities approaches, this project aligns with the Western Flyer Foundation mission “To stir curiosity by connecting art and science in the spirit of John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts and their journey on the Western Flyer.” Programming will run from May 2021 through April 2022.

No Word for “Art” +
Museum of Northern California Art, Chico
Project Director: Sara Smallhouse
“No Word for ‘Art’” is a multi-media art exhibition held at the Museum of Northern California Art (monca) that will feature the work of Hmong American artists. The objective of “No Word for ‘Art’” is to promote the visibility of artists from this marginalized ethnic group, highlight their complex identities through their art, and bridge generational gaps with Hmong elders. The exhibition programs include an opening event, an artist discussion panel, community art-making night, and cultural activities. This exhibit will highlight Hmong American artists’ talents and provide a unique educational opportunity for visitors of all kinds. Programming will run from July through September 2021.

GRANTS AWARDED IN SUMMER 2020 

Celebrating and Supporting Indigenous Foodways
Earth Island Institute Inc, Berkeley
Project Director: Jovida Ross

Celebrating Indigenous Foodways organized by Real Food Real Stories will consist of a series of three live gatherings in the Bay Area, each highlighting an Indigenous changemaker’s personal story of reclaiming their ancestral traditions. As many are seeking more sustainable ways to eat, these leaders are modelling the work to reconnect with culturally rooted, ecologically responsible practices. The series brings together curious eaters from the Bay Area and beyond and will serve as resistance to dehumanizing industrialization of food. This project seeks to spark both a deeper respect for and connection with the practices of Indigenous communities. Programming is scheduled to begin Fall 2020.

Mervyn M. Dymally Bridgebuilder and History Maker, Public Events and Exhibition
California State University Los Angeles Auxiliary Services Inc, Los Angeles
Project Director: Dawn Dennis

California State University Los Angeles will present Mervyn M. Dymally Bridgebuilder and History Maker, Public Events and Exhibition, which will consist of a three-part series of public events and an online exhibition featuring the work of civil rights pioneer Mervyn M. Dymally (1926 -2012), the first black Lt. Governor of California after serving in both the California State Assembly and State Senate. A Trinidadian immigrant at age 20, Dymally is known for breaking racial barriers in California and advancing civil rights and equality for people of color throughout the nation. The series will consist of an online exhibition, Community Speaker Panel, Virtual Gallery Tour, and Co-hosted Public Event with Educators and Curators from the Autry Museum in Los Angeles, featuring selected documents from the Dymally Papers. Programming will begin in January 2021.

Youth Resilience‡
Media Arts Center, San Diego
Project Director: Ryan Kuratomi

Media Arts Center in San Diego (MACSD) will present Youth Resilience, a virtual humanities storytelling series that will spotlight San Diego’s youth in the wake of COVID-19. Youth Resilience will engage participants in MACSD’s Teen Producers Project, who will gather digital oral histories from local youth, community organizations, educators, and youth advocates. With strong connections in neighborhoods such as Logan Heights, City Heights, and Southeast San Diego, MACSD will partner with local video teaching artists to work with our Teen Producers to document how COVID-19 has affected youth in these neighborhoods. Youth Resilience will highlight the innovative and creative ways youth are thriving during lockdown and social upheaval; seen recently in the many youth-led Black Lives Matter protests. Programming will begin in November 2020.

STAND UP AND BE COUNTED People of Color Writing Against Racism+
Intersection for the Arts, San Francisco
Project Director: Carol Shizue Seigel

STAND UP AND BE COUNTED, organized by Write Now! SF Bay will consist of a series of public events supporting the generation and presentation of new creative writing by writers/artists of color at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center and the San Francisco Main Library (onsite or virtually). This project will support creative writing workshops and panels, that will explore the police violence and systemic racism that disproportionately impacts people of color. STAND UP AND BE COUNTED contributors will feature the works of 40+ writers, that will include health care workers, educators, service workers and small business owners. Programming will run from October 2020 through May 2021.

Processing Sugar Notes+
Ma Series Art, Sacramento
Project Director: Bernard Brown

Processing Sugar Notes organized by Ma Series Art, will consist of a dance theater work and public dialogues that will examine the lasting effects of colonialism on global communities of color through the prism of sugar, the most important harvest crop to the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Through athletic and lush physicality, dancers of color will utilize the choreography to queer and reimagine the racialized (de)value system entrenched in Western society, to explore the depths of addiction, diabetes, and systemic racism ravaging communities. This project hopes to serve as an intervention leading to awareness, dialogue and advocacy surrounding health. Programming will run from March through October 2021.

Foster Youth Speaker’s Panel & Podcast Series‡
Voices for Children, San Diego
Project Director: Sabrina Goosby

Foster Youth Speaker’s Panel & Podcast Series organized by Voices for Children (VFC) in San Diego will consist of a multimedia production and speaker’s panel. Six foster youth will participate in a four week-long multimedia production class, to create a 6-episode podcast that will be shared with the broader community through iTunes, Spotify, and social media. This project will culminate with a speaker’s panel event that will be open to the public. Through these platforms, the foster youth featured will help to form a diverse community dialogue, which aims to better understand the common issues affecting our most vulnerable youth, and increase community understanding, tolerance, and civic engagement. Programming will run throughout October 2020.

SAVING STORIES: A Connection Toolkit in the Age of COVID-19
New Village Arts Inc, San Diego
Project Director: Aleta Barthell

SAVING STORIES: A Connection Toolkit in the Age of COVID-19 will create a toolkit and public performances to connect individuals in assisted living facilities and skilled nursing facilities in San Diego County with a diverse group of pair diverse interviewers and dramatists. Through these partnerships SAVING STORIES: A Connection Toolkit in the Age of COVID-19, seeks to create a collection of saved stories will be delivered virtually to the San Diego community through New Village Arts Theatre’s online theatre program. After these public performances, a virtual workshop will be held in collaboration with Dramatists Guild of America to reflect on project outcomes in order share how others can use the toolkit. Programming will begin in November 2020.

I Hear You: Stories, Dreams and Ambitions of Oakland Youth and Youth Adults‡
Story For All, San Mateo
Project Director: Ne’Quwan Taylor

I Hear You: Stories, Dreams and Ambitions of Oakland Youth and Youth Adults, organized by Story For All will consist of an oral history collection, film and website production project that seeks to promote the stories and ambitions of a diverse group of Oakland youth responding to this historic moment in our collective history. Led by two African American brothers from Oakland, this project will collect, share, and provoke contemplation and discussion around Oakland’s post-protest environment and how we can use this momentum to make progress on social, economic and racial justice issues that historically and continually oppress youth of color. Programming will begin in October 2020.

New Voices: Celebrating Diversity Through the Works of Thee U.S. Poet Laureates
California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks
Project Director: Jacqueline Lyons

California Lutheran University will present New Voices: Celebrating Diversity Through the Works of Three U.S. Poet Laureates, a three-part virtual series that will bring community members together to explore the works of poets Joy Harjo, Tracy K. Smith and Juan Felipe Herrera. At each program event, faculty and students will read the poet’s work, and faculty and guests will guide discussion to help participants understand the stories, traditions, and cultural experiences of these individuals. The goal is to explore the writings of each poet and come to understand different cultural viewpoints and their emotional contexts. Programming will begin in February 2021.

From the Ground Up: How Tongva Traditions Utilize California Native Plants ‡
Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation for Arts and Crafts, Rancho Cucamonga
Project Director: James Rawitsch

From the Ground Up: How Tongva Traditions Utilize California Native Plants organized by the Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation for Arts and Crafts in Rancho Cucamonga will present a research and teaching project. Participating teens will interview Native American elders and others on subjects of history, culture and environmental sustainability, resulting in a short video offered free to all via social media, and used in support of the Maloof Teen’s teaching of local elementary school students. From the Ground Up will augment the Maloof’s existing Tongva plant signage with a social media project through which teens will learn and practice basic techniques of humanities research, interviewing Tongva elders and documenting their memories of traditions in the use of native plants for food, medicine and basketry. Programming will run from September 2020 through May 2021.

Voces del Teatro: An Oral History of Latinx Theatre in Modern Los Angeles+
Grupo De Teatro Sinergia, Los Angeles
Project Director: Liane Schirmer

Voces del Teatro: An Oral History of Latinx Theatre in Modern Los Angeles organized by Latinx Theatre Alliance/Los Angeles (LTA/LA) will compile an oral history archive of Latinx theatre from the late 1960s to the present. Voces del Teatro will interview the artistic directors of some of the city’s oldest Latinx theatre companies to capture and share the stories of veteran performers. Through the collection of oral histories, and public discussions, Voces del Teatro seeks to preserve and share the rich history Los Angeles’ legacy of Latinx theatre to educate and engage the Los Angeles public in a shared dialogue regarding the rich cultural contribution of Latinx theatre to this city. Programming will begin April 2021.

Stories from the Sea: An Oral History Project+
Newport Beach Public Library Foundation, Newport Beach
Project Director: Margaret Linton

Stories from the Sea: An Oral History Project organized by the Newport Beach Public Library Foundation in Newport Beach in collaboration with the UC Irvine Humanities Center will compile the oral histories of community elders to record their personal histories and important encounters with the sea. UCI students will collect these histories that will be the focus of multi-media public or virtual presentation (pending public health protocols). The final research product will be posted on Newport Beach Public Library Foundation website and incorporated into the archives of community partners Newport Beach Public Library, Newport Beach Historical Society, and other appropriate related repositories. Programming will run from Fall 2020 through Spring 2021.

Cultivando Voz / Cultivating Voices‡
California State University San Marcos Corporation, San Diego
Project Director: Michelle Ramos Pellicia

California State University San Marcos will present Cultivando Voz (Cultivating Voice), a project serving Latinx youth in North County San Diego. Cultivando Voz (Cultivating Voice will create and produce videos documenting the everyday lives of participating youth during the COVID-19 global pandemic. Youth participants will work alongside Humanities faculty, community researchers, and professional videographers. The films created through this project will be featured in public film screening and discussion programs in San Diego area libraries and community centers with audiences of youth peers, multi-generational Latinx community members, educators, and regional leaders. Programming will begin in Fall 2020.

Queer Reads Library at WOMEN我們+
Chinese Culture Foundation of San Francisco, San Francisco
Project Director: Hoi Leung

Chinese Culture Center in San Francisco will present Queer Reads Library in conjunction with the exhibition WOMEN我們: From Her to Here, an art exhibition that centers around Asian Pacific Islanders’ perspectives on belonging and justice. This project will feature a reading station and public panel discussion in collaboration with Hong Kong-based Queer Reads Library and Oakland-based Mixed Rice Zine to present a library of queer zines, banned Chinese publications, and a special queer Cantonese lexicon zine to explore Asian and Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) zine movements in order to promote deeper understanding of on queer visual culture. Programming will run from February through August 2021.

Mas Puentes y Meno Muros / More Bridges and Less Walls‡
Pasadena Educational Foundation, Los Angeles
Project Director: Karen Anderson

Blair High School and the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena will present Mas Puentes y Meno Muros / More Bridges and Less Walls, which will consist of a research project and exhibition exploring the history of immigrant communities and race issues in the Pasadena area. This project will engage students at Blair High School in Pasadena to collaborate with writer and visual artist Sehba Sarwar to create an original visual art and language-based work related to students’ personal experiences as immigrants, descendants of immigrants, and members of a diverse yet fractured community. The project will culminate in an interactive public exhibition, workshop, and readings in collaboration with the Armory Center for the Arts. Programming will run from January through May 2021.

GRANTS AWARDED IN SPRING 2020

World on Fire: A Public Panel and Dialogue Program*
Eagle Rock Community Cultural Association, Los Angeles
Project Director: Melinda Ann Farrell

The Center for the Arts Eagle Rock will present World on Fire, a public panel presented in conjunction with a visual art exhibition. This panel will feature a conversation between interdisciplinary artists and scholars who will discuss the impact of fire and the destruction on our habitat. World on Fire, will explore the experience of fires in California to help audiences understand these overwhelming catastrophes and explore a science and humanities-based path forward. Programming is scheduled to begin in spring, 2021.

Conference on the American Short Story: A Diamond Jubilee for Postwar Short Fiction
Chapman University, Orange
Project Director: Anna Leahy

Chapman University will present the Conference on the American Short Story: A Diamond Jubilee for Postwar Short Fiction, which will examine and celebrate the reading and writing of short fiction in the United States. This gathering will bring together readers, scholars, students, and writers of all backgrounds into lively conversation to discuss how stories make sense of the world around us and explore the future of the short story form. This conference will work with the Literacies Partnership with Orange High School, Orange County School of the Arts, and Orange Public Library to provide young writers and the community the opportunity to work with California writers. Programming is scheduled for 2021-2022.

Memento: Archiving Memory+
Larry Spring Museum, Fort Bragg
Project Director: Anne Maureen McKeating

Memento: Archiving Memory, organized in collaboration between the Larry Spring Museum and indigenous filmmaker Jennifer Dysart will consist of a rich community-centered hands-on workshop series designed to acknowledge and foster awareness of the community’s multiple histories, experiences, and diverse social locations. Through hands-on art making activities, research and community dialogue, Memento: Archiving Memory participants will work with workshop facilitators to examine personal and public archives to consider the effect of archiving on memory. Programming is scheduled for 2020-2021.

Black Roses: A Trans History of Black California
Gender Health Center, Sacramento
Project Director: Blu Buchanan

Black Roses: A Trans History of Black California organized by Gender Health Center will consist of a digital pilot project focused on archiving and amplifying the voices of Black trans Californians. Black Roses seeks to celebrate and commemorate both the life and death of Black trans people, to trace the contours of the Black trans community in California through digital life course histories. These histories will then be freely accessible to the wider public through the Digital Transgender Archives, alongside a curated online audio-visual exhibition. Programming will begin in September 2020.

Santa Barbara Reads 2020: Create!
Santa Barbara Public Library, Santa Barbara
Project Director: Lisa Neubert

Santa Barbara Reads 2020: Create is the Santa Barbara Public Library’s annual community read program. Santa Barbara Reads 2020 will explore the creative process and will feature several books including: Questlove’s Creative Quest; Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic; Nnedi Okorafor’s  Broken Places & Outer Spaces; Felicia Day’s Embrace Your Weird, by; and other titles in English and Spanish. Programming for Santa Barbara Reads 2020 may include interactive events, book discussions, and workshops, slated to begin in fall 2020. The goal of these events is to engage the community with local artists and writers to explore creativity and hands-on creative production in formal and informal ways.

Voices of Hope: Holocaust Survivors Share Their Stories Lecture Series+
New Americans Museum, San Diego
Project Director: Polly Toledo

Voices of Hope: Holocaust Survivors Share Their Stories is a digital lecture series organized by the New Americans Museum. Throughout the year four Holocaust survivors will share their stories of loss, resilience, and survival during the Holocaust. The lectures will be presented on a digital platform and will be followed by an open dialogue. Programming will begin in June 2020, with a lecture with Dr. Edith Eger. Future events will include a combination of digital and in person programming.

Cruising Nikkei: Japanese American Car Culture in Southern California
YOMYOMF Foundation, South Pasadena
Project Director: Philip Chung

Cruising Nikkei: Japanese American Car Culture in Southern California organized by YOMYOMF Foundation will consist of a panel discussion and oral history project examining the social history of Japanese American car culture in Southern California, from the 1930s to the present. By drawing attention to the first-hand experiences of Nikkei car enthusiasts, this project will include customizers, designers, and racers, this project to enrich the public understanding of both American automobile history and Asian American cultural history over the past century. Programming is scheduled to begin in spring, 2021.

Portraits in Their Own Words+
Kern Community College District, Bakersfield
Project Director: Andrew Bond

Portraits in Their Own Words, is a visual art and writing project developed by select Bakersfield College faculty and students. Faculty mentor will work closely with formerly incarcerated student writers and art students to create an exhibit of portraits and autobiographical narratives. This project seeks to challenge the stigma associated with past imprisonment while empowering and lifting student voices in the arts, humanities, and broader public dialogue. Programming is scheduled to begin spring 2021, and will include public readings and exhibitions at the Levan Center for the Humanities, Stiles Hall at UC Berkeley, and the Bakersfield Museum of Art. The exhibit will be digitally archived for posterity and patron accessibility.

BACKBONE: The Uncelebrated Stories of Asian American Mothers & Daughters+
Family Bridges Inc, Oakland
Project Director: Lailan Huen

BACKBONE: The Uncelebrated Stories of Asian American Mothers & Daughters organized by the Backbone Collective, will bring together Asian American women from across Northern California to explore the relationships between mothers and daughters. BACKBONE will document the complex stories, diverse families, and the real relationships of mothering, nourishment, survival, and healing across generations and migrations. This program will include a convening of sister circles to share stories and pieces, and a digital zine of writing and visual art, which will be presented at a culminating exhibit of photography of mother-daughter portraits and multi-media art to spur community dialogue and interactive reflection inviting participants to share and document their own stories. Programming is scheduled to begin in spring, 2021.

Kronos Lab: At War With Ourselves — 400 Years of You ‡
Kronos Performing Arts Association, San Francisco
Project Director: Janet Cowperthwaite

Kronos Lab: At War With Ourselves — 400 Years of You, presented by artists from At War With Ourselves will consist of a free public discussion exploring race relations in 21st-century America. Youth and at-risk transition-age participants from community organizations such as 826 Valencia, Sunset Youth Services, and others will share original written works and music created during community partnership programs and workshops with the lead artists of At War With Ourselves. Discussions will include online digital engagement activities, and in-person programming. Programming is scheduled to begin fall, 2020.

The Stories Behind the Games: Exploring the Power of Narrative through the D4 Creative Conference: Discover, Discuss, Develop & Design Tabletop Gaming
Comic-Con International, San Diego
Project Director: Eddie Ibrahim

The Stories Behind the Games: Exploring the Power of Narrative through the D4 Creative Conference: Discover, Discuss, Develop & Design Tabletop Gaming organized by the Comic-Con Museum will examine the importance of narrative in today’s multimedia communication avenues through an innovative partnership with one of pop culture’s stealthy utilizers of story craft – tabletop Game designers. Using tabletop gaming as a starting point, this program will explore big questions such as how storytellers influencing us? Who controls the story? Whose stories are included or excluded? Which details are provided to the audience to produce what effect? How is good storytelling creating pathways for careers and education? Programming is scheduled to begin in summer, 2021.

Art of Resilience+
Mil-Tree Veteran Project, Joshua Tree
Project Director: Cheryl Montelle

The Art of Resilience organized by the Mil-Tree Veteran Project will use Joseph Campbell’s template of the hero’s journey as a structural framework to sanctify the veteran’s journeys through dialogue, art, and ritual. The Art of Resilience virtual retreat will bring together veterans transitioning from military service to civilian life with other community members. Facilitators will use a transformative approach combining various humanities-based learning modalities with rituals and psychological modes to engage individuals and encouraging them to explore, create and share their stories in a safe space. Programing will include dialogue, writing, performative storytelling, drumming, and singing. A community performance will be held on the final day of retreat. Programming will begin summer, 202o.

Wonderland Radio Hour: Jenner-by-the-Sea and Beyond+
Rural California Broadcasting Corporation / Northern California Public Media, Rohnert Park
Project Director: Rhian Miller

Begun in 2018, The Wonderland Radio Hour is an on-going series focused on the West Sonoma communities within the Russian River watershed that includes a variety of visual and performing arts including music, video, audio stories, audience participation, oral history, and a radio broadcast. In 2020, Wonderland Radio Hour: Jenner-by-the-Sea and Beyond will focus on the communities of Cazadero, Duncans Mills, and Jenner by the Sea. This project will highlight the history and contemporary life of the local Kashia Band of Pomo Indians. The story of these traditions intersects with and informs contemporary coastal environmental concerns, such as restoration of kelp beds and over population of purple sea urchin. Programming is scheduled to begin in 2021.

Bayview Foodways & Waterways: A Community Walk, Dialogue, & Dinner +
California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco
Project Director: Deirdre Visser

The Arts at California Institute of Integral Studies will present Bayview Foodways & Waterways: A Community Walk, Dialogue, & Dinner, a multidisciplinary experience centered around the social history, ecology, and foodways of the diverse African American and Asian American communities of San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood. Programming will include a guided walk around Heron’s Head Park and will culminate in a shared community dinner and dialogue. This free event will unfold in conjunction with a solo exhibition of artist Tia-Simone Gardner’s work, which explores the complex role that waterways play in African American culture and history and the uneven impacts of climate change and rising sea levels on Bay Area communities. Programming will begin in spring, 2021.

Reading By Moonrise
Clockshop, Los Angeles
Project Director: Julia Meltzer

Reading By Moonrise organized by Clockshop, will present a series of reading and discussion programs that will feature humanities experts reading from their work and in dialogue. Writers, journalists, and public intellectuals are invited to read original and favorite texts at Los Angeles State Historic Park. Each reading will feature two California-based or born humanities experts whose work speaks to questions of the environment, land use, race, and belonging. Through carefully curated public storytelling, Reading By Moonrise will invite local communities to take part in conversations around the site’s future development to increase community investment, pushing audiences to reflect on the land itself and what it might become. Programming is scheduled to begin in fall, 2020.

BEING WELL/ESTAR BIEN AND LA Portal at Mercado La Paloma+
Esperanza Community Housing Corporation, Los Angeles
Project Director: Aparna Bakhle

BEING WELL/ESTAR BIEN AND LA Portal at Mercado La Paloma organized by Shared Studios will install immersive audio-visual environments called Portals to connect cities, universities, and cultural spaces around the world through cross-cultural dialogues, shared meals, and discussion on a variety of topics. Using high-end audio, video, and projection technology to connect people around the world, Portals create life-size, natural connections between people who would not otherwise meet to inspire place-keeping, community building and revitalization. Programming will begin fall, 2020.

The Suffrage Project: Contextualizing the 100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment Through Dance+
Litvak Dance Arts Foundation, Encinitas
Project Director: Sadie Weinberg

The Suffrage Project: Contextualizing the 100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment Through Dance, is organized in collaboration between LITVAKdance and Mojalet Dance Collective. The Suffrage Project will consist of six free shows at county libraries throughout San Diego and one full length performance. Using stories of local and national historical figures, this program seeks to expand the idea of suffrage to consider prohibitions associated with not only gender, but also race, class, faith, sexual orientation, and gender identity and how those prohibitions continue to shape our society today opening dialogue about what it means to have a democratic society. Programming is scheduled to run from November 2020 through February 2021.

Zines to the Future! (Re)Making SoCal Futures+
CSU Fullerton Auxiliary Services Corporation, Fullerton
Project Director: David Sandner

Zines to the Future! will consist of a series of public and virtual events on science fiction zine making. This project will feature an exhibit at CSU Fullerton’s Atrium Gallery of the Pollak Library that will display the history of science fiction zines, original art, as well as new zines drawn from the work of participants. Drawing on the theme of “Imagining Diverse Futures,” this project will include both public and virtual zine-making workshops from the library’s new “Makerspace,” a presentation of new zines by participants, panels with local community creators/makers, and a reception. Programming will begin in fall, 2020.

American Indian Culture and Art as Pedagogy: A Teaching and Learning Exhibit+
California State University, Fresno, Fresno
Project Director: Leece Lee-Oliver

American Indian Culture and Art as Pedagogy: A Teaching and Learning Exhibit, will celebrate the unique contributions of American Indian artists, filmmakers, and cultural practitioners whose works explore and comment on the histories and contemporary realities of California American Indians, their homelands, ongoing cultural practices, and efforts towards self-determination. American Indian Culture and Art as Pedagogy will consist of a virtual exhibit that aims to reflect California tribal experiences as the peoples navigate and survive challenges in relationship to western expansion and California state formation explored through diverse topics. This project is the keystone event for the California Indian Conference, the only conference in the U.S. that centers California Indians and California state formation and development. The virtual exhibit will debut in October 2020, with continued programming in spring, 2021.

New Voices ‡
Santa Cruz Art League, Santa Cruz
Project Director: Angela Ciandro

New Voices, organized by West Creative Performing Arts is new-work theatre incubation program for LGBTQ+ youth that will produce a public storytelling showcase on themes relevant to young, queer audiences. The program is designed and implemented by and for LGBTQ+ next-generation artists, centering on personal stories and topics relevant to young, underrepresented queer artists and audiences. Through workshops in writing and storytelling and a culminating public performance, New Voices acts as a springboard to develop artistic voice and a platform in connecting the community through shared experience and addresses current cultural challenges as well as reflects upon their diverse culture. Programming will begin in fall, 2020.

GRANTS AWARDED IN WINTER 2020

Veterans Empowerment Theatre+
CRE Outreach Foundation Inc., Los Angeles
Project Director: Greg Shane
All veterans have memories from their time of service—everything from boot camp to returning to civilian life—and these stories are sometimes poignant, sometimes painful. Starting in September 2020, Veterans Empowerment Theatre will provide 20 veterans with the opportunity to work with creative writing instructors to draw on their personal experiences to create short stories. This program will assist participants in independently creating a short story and hone their writing skills. After concluding the writing workshops, program participants will present a series of five public performances around Veterans Day 2020 at the Blue Door in Culver City. After the performance, the short stories will be made available to the public via the CRE Outreach website. $5,000

Connecting Cultures: Barona Band of Mission Indians
The New Children’s Museum, San Diego
Project Director: Lynn Basquez
In fall 2020, The New Children’s Museum (NCM) of San Diego will present Connecting Cultures: Barona Band of Mission Indians, a series of “culture talks” presented in collaboration with the Barona Cultural Center & Museum meant to foster awareness around Indigenous Peoples’ Day. It will include a “culture talk,” creative activities, and a performance that will share the history and stories of local native peoples, celebrating their cultures, contributions, and traditions in family friendly and accessible ways. In October 2020, Barona will also participate in NCM’s Educators’ Night Out, presenting at the resource fair and leading a professional development session. $5,000

Revelation & Rebirth: The History & Practice of Collecting African American Art+
Richmond Art Center, Richmond
Project Director: Amy Spencer
Revelation & Rebirth, presented on February 1, 2020 by the Richmond Art Center, will feature a lecture and community discussion given by arts educator Nashormeh Lindo. In this lecture Lindo will examine the history of African American artists overlooked by major institutions. Revelation & Rebirth will also highlight important public and private collections of African American art, as well as discuss contemporary collecting practices that are shifting the status quo. This conversation will be held in conjunction with The Art of Living Black, an annual exhibition presenting work from 100 artists of African descent, on view January through March, 2020. $3,410

Califas Relatos Revelados: Stories Revealed*
Santa Cruz Public Libraries, Santa Cruz
Project Director: Susan Nilsson
Califas Relatos Revelados: Stories Revealed will comprise of a suite of public programs that seek to unite local artists, arts- and literacy-based organizations, along with children, teens, families, and community members to view, write, discuss, and express themselves through art. Programming will take place at Santa Cruz and Watsonville branch libraries and will run from June through October 2020. Califas Relatos Revelados: Stories Revealed will include the debut of the Califas Moveable Mural with an artist-led panel discussion, a teen writing activity coordinated by the Hablamos Juntos Young Writers Project, teen zine-making events led by Zine Fronteras co-organizer Lorena López Rivera, and bilingual interactive art activities for children and their families with printmaker and local artist Enrique López. $5,000

From Suffrage to #MeToo—Capturing the Stories of Groundbreaking Women in Sonoma County
Museum of Sonoma County, Sonoma
Project Director: Eric Stanley
Commemorating the centennary of the women’s constitutional right to vote, the Museum of Sonoma County will present a series of public programs complementing the exhibition From Suffrage to #MeToo, which explores the changing expectations, challenges, and obstacles to inclusion that women have faced over the past century—and the people who broke through those barriers. This series will run from February through May 2020, and will include an author lecture, community discussion, panel discussion, and family day presented at the Museum of Sonoma County, at the Sonoma County Library in Santa Rosa, and at the Rohnert Park Library. The programs are presented in collaboration with the Sonoma County Library, the National Women’s History Alliance, and the Sonoma County 2020 Suffrage Project. $5,000

Black is Beautiful: Black Power & Jazz Film Series
Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco
Project Director: Elizabeth Gessel
Throughout February 2020 the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) is will present Black Power & Jazz, a film series presented in conjunction with the exhibit Black is Beautiful: The Photography of Kwame Braithwaite, focusing on the Black Pride movement in fashion and jazz in the 1960s. Black Power & Jazz will consist of a four-week screening and discussion series exploring representative and still-influential jazz icons of the era that will include the films ABBEY LINCOLN IS (1998), HORACE TAPSCOTT: MUSICAL GRIOT (2017), and PASSING THROUGH (1977), and another film to be announced soon. MoAD’s exhibition and related public programming is part of a cross-institutional collaboration between the de Young Museum and SFMOMA celebrating Black art in San Francisco. $5,000

The Story of South Asians in Southern California+
South Asian Network, Artesia
Project Director: Shikha Bhatnagar
The Story of South Asians in Southern California is an archival project that will highlight the South Asian American story in Southern California, assembled through a combination of interviews and images from organization founders, community leaders, and individuals. Together these artifacts, images, and testimonies will develop a visual narrative of the collective story of South Asian Americans from their first arrival in the early 19th century to present day. This visual narrative will be used for a special exhibit that will debut in Los Angeles on Friday, September 11, 2020. Physical materials will be provided in English and various South Asian languages, and video clips will either be dubbed or subtitled. $5,000

Philippine National Day Association LahiARTS 2020 Season*
Philippine National Day Association, Sacramento
Project Director: Vince Sales
Beginning in May 2020, 1810 Gallery in Sacramento will host Kapwa, a multi-disciplinary exhibit featuring art created by Filipinx American women visual artists. This exhibition will be accompanied by a series of public programs that will include performances, author’s talks, and community workshops that explore themes of identity, movement, and migration, reclaiming space, community-building, civic engagement, intersectionality, and the role of women in cultural progress and equity. This program will also include a summer writing workshop for youth led by young adult fiction writer Randy Ribay, who will introduce youth participants to the arts as a career, as well as assist participants with a creative project. $5,000

BELONGING: Expressions of Black Empowerment and Possibility in San Luis Obispo+
R.A.C.E. Matters, San Luis Obispo
Project Director: Courtney Haile
BELONGING: Expressions of Black Empowerment and Possibility in San Luis Obispo presented by R.A.C.E. Matters, is a month-long, multi-location, multimedia arts experience in San Luis Obispo (SLO) that will take place during Black History Month in February 2020. Programs will include an evening of live storytelling performances by local Black community members, the premiere of a new documentary film about a black-owned SLO barbershop KUT TO BE THE BEST, and a photographic exhibit featuring portraits of Black community members at the SLO Library. All month, residents of can view a window exhibit at the Downtown SLO Office, exploring the work of underrecognized local Black heroes. $5,000

Taiko Swing Humboldt+
Humboldt Folklife Society, Humboldt
Project Director: Amy Uyeki
In January 2020, Taiko Swing Humboldt, a collaboration between San Jose Taiko and the the Humboldt State University Jazz Orchestra, will host Swingposium on the Road. Swingposium will consist of a four-day series of living history events set in a mess hall at a WWII Japanese American concentration camp. This program will use music and immersive theatre to tell the story of the big bands in the Japanese American incarceration camps to explore the injustices inflicted by an unconstitutional executive order against an entire group of people, two thirds of them American citizens. A shortened version of this program will be paired with student discussion about the immigrant experience presented for two high school performances and one at Humboldt State University. $5,000

SDFutures Collective: Teen Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing Workshops*
Regents of the University of California; University of California San Diego
Project Director: Patrick Coleman
The Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination at UC San Diego presents SDFutures Collective: Teen Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing Workshops, a teen-focused writing workshop series that will share speculative writing and reading techniques, help catalyze supportive and creative teen communities, and be an exciting, dynamic, fun, and challenging experience for students to work with established writers from the San Diego area who can understand their experiences. Workshops will begin in June 2020, presented across East County and South San Diego at public library partner sites in Chula Vista, National City, downtown San Diego, Ramona, and Vista. This program will conclude with a public reading and celebration at the UC San Diego campus in October 2020. $5,000

Amplifying Community: Recording the History of the San Joaquin Valley Armenian Music Production
California State University, Fresno Foundation
Project Director: Barlow Der Mugrdechian
Amplifying Community: Recording the History of the San Joaquin Valley Armenian Music Production is a public memory event that will take place in March 2020 at California State University Fresno. Amplifying Community is dedicated to recovering the history of Armenian-American music production in the San Joaquin Valley during first half of the 20th century. Drawing upon the reminiscences and expertise of local musicians, this event will provide a forum for the community to contribute their own recollections, contextualizing and bringing to life the little-studied early musicians, recording labels, and venues in California’s San Joaquin Valley. The one-day event will include a round table discussion moderated by Dr. Turkyilmaz, Prof. Barlow Der Mugrdechian, and Mr. Richard Hagopian and other community members knowledgeable in the history of the early local record labels. Participants can also take part in a public scanning station to scan photographs and ephemera relating to Armenian music production that will become part of an existing archive of 78 RPM records housed at the university. This program will conclude with a free concert and reception. $4,829

Into the Underworld and Back—Women’s Stories of Making Their Way Back From Death and Darkness
Mindful Veteran Project, Los Angeles
Project Director: Gail Soffer
Into the Underworld and Back—Women’s Stories of Making Their Way Back From Death and Darkness presented by the Mindful Veteran Project in Los Angeles will include a 15-session workshop series inviting women of all ages and background to read, view, and discuss various reinterpretations of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Participants will craft prose poetry and art born from their own experiences as reponses to the retelling of this ancient myth. In February 2020, these workshops will be accompanied by a panel discussion at the Los Angeles Opera’s performance of Eurydice and a reading and discussion event at the Pasadena American Legion Post #13 that will feature a short reading of the classical myth, a reading of short stories written by program participants, and a guided panel discussion. To culminate the series, the reflections and art will be shared at Los Angeles County’s Department of Mental Health’s We Rise event in summer 2020. $5,000

Amendment 19: Votes for Women*
Museum of Ventura County, Ventura
Project Director: Denise Sindelar
Beginning in April 2020, the Museum of Ventura County (MVC) will join in the national centennial celebration of women’s voting rights through the presentation of the exhibition of Amendment 19: Votes for Women. This exhibition seeks to enrich public understanding of individual and community values, provide people of all ages the opportunity to reflect on their responsibilities to others in local, national, and global communities, and to encourage community engagement through voting. In spring 2020 the public will be invited to share their historic photos, anecdotes and objects related to the topic during three Days of Collecting to locate artifacts and personal anecdotes related to the topic of women’s voting rights. Appointments will be held at MVC’s main location, downtown Ventura, and in Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley. Public programs supporting this exhibition will also include an opening reception celebrating the debut of the exhibition, and the Ventura Suffragette March. Select items from the exhibition will be included in a new bilingual interactive exhibition at the museum, which will also travel to all Ventura county high schools and libraries. $5,000

When We Hid in Plain Sight
J-Sei, Alameda
Project Director: Stan Yogi
When We Hid in Plain Sight, an exhibit on queer Japanese American or Nikkei history from the late 1880s through World War II, will illuminate how Japanese immigrant or Issei sexualities and gender presentations forged new ways of expression within the Japanese American community and the burgeoning white LGBTQ community. Programs associated with this exhibit will include a talk by Dr. Andrew Leong on Japanese immigrant literature as fundamentally queer, a presentation on male love and Orientalism by Dr. Amy Sueyoshi, screening and discussion of short films exploring LGBTQ Nikkei by artist and theorist Dr. Tina Takemoto, and an intergenerational panel discussion involving LGBTQ Japanese Americans. The exhibit and programs will take place between October and December 2020 at J-Sei, a multi-cultural, multi-generational organization with roots in the Nikkei community, located in Emeryville. $5,000

WordSpring Creative Writing Conference 2020‡
Butte College, Butte-Glenn Community College District, Butte
Project Director: Molly Emmons
The 2020 WordSpring Creative Writing Conference is a one-day creative writing conference held on April 25, 2020 in Oroville, California, hosted by the Butte College Main Campus, a designated wildlife refuge of 928 acres. WordSpring 2020 will feature a keynote speaker and 16 hands-on workshops led by experts in poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction. This year, organizers will bring in poetry and creative writing sessions to help heal communities devastated by the 2018 Camp Fire wildfire. Community members and students from high school through college are invited to join. $5,000

Sine Kuwento+
Bonita Historical Society, San Diego
Project Director: Wendy Wilson
In November 2020, The Bonita Historical Society will presents Sine Kuwento, which in Tagalog means Film and Stories, an exhibition exploring the history of Philippine cinema delving into the progressive creativity of Filipino nationals, Filipino immigrants, and first-and second-generation Filipino Americans. The exhibit will include curated film production props used in some of the films made by the global Filipino filmmakers. The month-long programming will also include film screenings of films created by global Filipino filmmakers, panel discussions with Filipino American filmmakers, musical performances, and spoken word poetry by San Diego Filipino American artists. $5,000

rasgos asiáticos+
California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles
Project Director: Marissa Chibas
Beginning in March 2020, California Institute of the Arts and the Center for New Performance will present the world premiere of rasgos asiáticos, a play by Virginia Grise and directed by Misha Chowdhury at Automata Arts in Los Angeles’ Chinatown. rasgos asiáticos traces one woman’s history back four generations to discover a cast of Mexican runaways, Chinese refugees, and fiercely independent women trying to break free of binding gender roles. The premiere and subsequent performances of the play will be accompanied by a series of community-focused conversations and activities beginning in February 2020, that will highlight the issues presented in Grise’s work, including the complex intersections of cultures that have shaped California’s history. $5,000

Your Carr Fire Story: Written and Heard*
Shasta County Arts Council, Shasta
Project Director: Kimberly Carlson
Hosted by the Shasta Arts Council, Your Carr Fire Story: Written and Heard is a five month writing workshop beginning in January 2020 for those affected by the Carr Fire, including survivors, evacuees, and first responders. Considered to be the seventh most destructive fire in California history, the Carr Fire of Shasta and Trinity County burned 229,651 acres, 1077 homes, and took seven lives. Your Carr Fire Story participants will gain tools to brainstorm, pre-write, and craft their personal narratives. Completed drafts will be workshopped in a safe, healing, positive room. In summer of 2020 facilitators and participants will hold a reading for the public at the McConnell Foundation. $5,000

Retablos: Student Matinees and Discussions*
Z Space, San Francisco
Project Director: JoAnne Winter
From February 19 to March 15, 2020, Word for Word Performing Arts Company, a critically and audience acclaimed program of Z Space San Francisco, will stage 14 chapters from renowned American playwright Octavio Solis’ memoir, Retablos: Stories from a Life Lived Along the Border. Four student matinées at the Z Below theater will include facilitated post-show discussions with Octavio Solis and other culture bearers. To inspire further thought, each student will leave with a humanities-based study guide addressing the historical, cultural, and sociological contexts of Retablos. $5,000

GRANTS AWARDED IN FALL 2019

100 Years of the Women’s Vote
California State University, Dominguez Hills, Los Angeles
Project Director: Jennifer Brandt
The exhibit, 100 Years of the Women’s Vote, will open in April of 2020 at the Faculty Development Center at California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) in Carson. The project will be a joint effort of the CSUDH Women’s Studies Program and the CSUDH Donald R. & Beverly J. Gerth Archives & Special Collections, who has lent materials to the exhibit. Public programming will include a screening of the film Knock Down the House, which highlights the primary campaigns of four working-class women who ran for Congress in the 2018 midterm election. Congressional candidate Amy Vilela will be present for dialogue. $5,000

A People’s History of Southern California Foodways
Occidental College, Los Angeles
Project Directors: John Lang, Jaletta White-Griego
A People’s History of Southern California Foodways, a two-day symposium at The Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles, will consist of a public exploration of the contributions that immigrants and people of color have made and continue to make in the development of California cuisine. Understanding the ways that people of color and immigrants have actively participated in the evolution of the state’s foodways can provide a better understanding of the ways in which these communities continue to impact California’s culture. On Friday, October 11, 2019, the symposium will include a screening and discussion of the film City of Gold, followed by a reception held in the Autry’s Gathering Circle. Saturday, October 12, 2019 will include a full day of presentations and conversations in The Autry’s Wells Fargo Theater, including lunch inside The Autry’s Heritage Court and a concluding banquet held in the Autry’s Gathering Circle. $5,000

Bird Songs—Native American Stories that Connect to Today, Tomorrow, and Yesterday +
Flights of Fantasy Media Company, Los Angeles
Project Director: Lorrie Oshatz
Bird Songs—Native American Stories that Connect to Today, Tomorrow, and Yesterday, will bring interactive theater presentations for children and families drawing on the stories and beliefs of the Gabrielino, Cahuilla, and Juaneño people. Bird Songs will be presented at five Pasadena public libraries in celebration of Native American Heritage Month throughout November 2019. Audience members will participate in an in-depth hour-long conversation with the storytellers after the performances that will delve into the content of the show, the social lessons and cultural beliefs illustrated in the stories, and the inherent similarities between these folktales and those from other parts of the world, connecting us all within the human experience. $5,000

Called to Rise: Chinese Americans’ Involvement in World War II
Chinese Historical Society of America, San Francisco
Project Director: Pam Wong
Called to Rise: Chinese Americans’ Involvement in World War II will be a two-day symposium in November 2019, hosted by the Chinese Historical Society of America (CHSA), in San Francisco. The symposium will explore Chinese Americans’ extensive involvement in the war effort during World War II. Military historians and veterans will share topics of service before 1941, during WWII, community activism at home, and the legacies of service. CHSA will display a travelling exhibit, screen WWII films, and rededicate the War Memorial at Chinatown’s St. Mary’s Square. The event will offer different learning opportunities for audiences to engage with World War II history. $5,000

Creative + Cultural Podcast Series—Japanese Internment Past & Present +
Eighteen Eighty Eight, Orange
Project Director: Jose Arriola
The 2019 Creative + Cultural Podcast will consist of a series of live conversations that will bring together community activists, scholars, and survivors to provide testimony and insight regarding the exclusion, forced removal, and internment of Japanese Americans. This program will draw connections between Japanese American internment to recent legislation such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in order to consider the lasting impact of these executive orders. Five live performances will take place between September of 2019 and May of 2020 throughout Orange County: Frida Cinema in Santa Ana, Wintersburg Japanese Mission in Huntington Beach, University of California Irvine in Irvine, the Muzeo Museum and Cultural Center in Anaheim, and the Muckenthaler Cultural Center in Fullerton. $5,000

Cultural Legacies and Speculative Futures: LGBTQ+ and / or Latinx History as Survival Strategies
The Santa Cruz Hub for Sustainable Living, Santa Cruz
Project Director: Kyle McKinley
In March 2020, The Hub for Sustainable Living will offer three public workshops at the Bike Church, Fabricá, and Sanctuary Santa Cruz, all located in Santa Cruz. These workshops will uncover the regional and transnational legacies of craft and creativity as tools for cultural survival in the face of climate change and political intolerance. Participants will create crafts while exploring LGBTQ+ and Latinx histories on the themes of women and trans folks in the early history of bicycling, embroidery and fabric-arts in story-telling and legacy-making among Chicanas/Mexican American women, and rasquache, or the practice of children’s handcrafted kites of the Puebla region of central Mexico. $5,000

Exploring the Literature of the California Desert
Wordsmith Productions, San Bernardino
Project Director: Davida Siwisa James
Exploring the Literature of the California Desert is a series of prose and poetry readings and discussions that will be presented at the October 2019 High Desert Book Festival at Hesperia Civic Plaza Park in Hesperia. Programs will include a featured presentation and writing workshop led by desert scholar Ruth Nolan, who will survey some of the 80 literary works featured in the anthology, No Place for a Puritan: the Literature of California’s Deserts. This programming will also include a panel of High Desert writers and journalists who will encourage community discussions about the lore, mystique, and history surrounding the literature of the California Desert. $5,000

Genocide Awareness Film Series +
Humboldt State University, Humboldt
Project Directors: Erika Wright, Kacie Flynn
The Genocide Awareness Film Series at Humboldt State University in Arcata will consist of a film and discussion series that will run from September 2019 through April 2020. The films selected for this series will range in topics from the origins of the word “genocide” to the local and global implications of genocide. Each film featured in this series will speak to a segment of the demographics of the population of California, a state that has become home to survivors of genocidal events from the Holocaust to the Genocide of the Tutsis. Film screenings will be followed by discussions moderated by faculty who work and teach in the field of Genocide Studies. $4,946

Geography Meets Humanities: A Focus on Social Justice
California State University, Stanislaus
Project Director: Dr. Jose Diaz-Garayua
Geography Meets Humanities: A Focus on Social Justice presented at Cal State University Stanislaus in Turlock will celebrate the annual Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Day, from November 11 through 15 of 2019. This world-wide annual event will bring together four geography scholars who will share their work and explore its application to social justice and the humanities. Participants will have the opportunity to reflect on the historical, social, economic, and cultural influences that shape their views on social and environmental equity to recognize themselves as active agents of change. The speakers will draw on a wide range of topics including film, fair trade, the role of big data and GIS in activism in disadvantaged communities, and climatology and inequalities. $5,000

L;ve To Tell Your Story*
Get Empowered Today, San Diego
Project Director: Julie Kendig
L;ive To Tell Your Story is a humanities and art initiative located in San Diego, that will engage teens and transitional-age youth in a series of public programs that will unfold during National Suicide Prevention Week in September 8 through 14, 2019. This project will use the power of the arts and humanities to address a disturbing rise in San Diego County’s youth suicide rate. Project programming will include a week-long series of gatherings, performances, and discussions that will be presented at Fair@44 in San Diego led by professional artists and highly trained and licensed clinical social workers. This program is designed for intergenerational groups of youth and elders who are encouraged to share their art and stories as a mechanism for healing and hope. $5,000

My Sad Captains: A Thom Gunn Poetry Film Series & Community Retrospective +
Fiscally Sponsored by Film Independent, San Francisco
Project Director: Ted Gioia
My Sad Captains is a multimedia retrospective on the life of Thom Gunn, one of the early chroniclers of San Francisco’s gay counterculture in the 60s and 70s that will include a series of two public facing events scheduled for June 2020. This program will include three short film adaptions of Thom Gunn’s poems “My Sad Captains”, “The Hug,” and “The Man with Nights Sweats” that will be screened at a community panel event at the Mechanics Institute in San Francisco. These screening and discussion events will feature local LGBT writers, colleagues of Thom Gunn, Bay Area historians, witnesses of the AIDS epidemic, and poetry fans who will celebrate Gunn’s lasting legacy on gay counterculture. $5,000

One County, One Book Community Reading Program
Ventura County Library, Ventura
Project Director: Ron Solórzano
Throughout the month of October 2019, The Ventura County Library system will host One County, One Book, a series of free public lectures, workshops, and film screenings related to The Library Book by Susan Orlean. Events will take place in all twelve branches of the Ventura County Library system in Ventura. Participants will have access to copies of the book that will be available to check out in multiple languages. As a capstone to the fall program, author Susan Orlean will speak at California State University Channel Islands in Camarillo on November 2.  $5,000

Oral History Initiative: Sacramento Movimiento Chicano and Mexican American Education Project +
La Familia Counseling Center, Sacramento
Project Director: Rhonda Rios Kravitz
Oral History Initiative: Sacramento Movimiento Chicano and Mexican American Education Project will present a one-day symposium on November 25, 2019 at the California State University, Sacramento (CSUS) Alumni Center. This program will include four panel presentations that will honor 99 voices of Chicana/o activists that were interviewed and videotaped from 2014 to 2016. This program will highlight four topics: developing, implementing, and sustaining effective partnerships between academics and communities to give genuine voices to the historical past, the interview process, making of the documentary, and hearing the audiotaped recordings of selected interviewees. Attendees will have the opportunity to speak directly with the activists during the lunch hour. In addition, there will be a formal transfer of the Audio/Video Recordings to the Special Collections/Archives at CSUS. $5,000

Recoding CripTech +
SOMArts Cultural Center, San Francisco
Project Director: Vanessa Chang
Recoding CripTech will consist of a month-long arts exhibit and three-part series of community events presented at SOMArts Cultural Center in San Francisco. This exhibition and programming will explore how disability and technology can help us think through access, communication, and the politics of representation in different ways. Working with a broad understanding of technology, from prosthetic tools to the built environment, Recoding CripTech examines how disability—and artists who identify as disabled—can redefine design, aesthetics, and the relationship between user and interface. This exhibition and related public programs will include works of visual art, installation, and multimedia projects that will feature ten artists with disabilities who use creative technologies in unexpected and transgressive ways. Programming is scheduled from January 24 through February 25, 2020. $5,000

The Blue Hour +
Plaza de la Raza Cultural Center for the Arts and Education, Los Angeles
Project Director: Claudia Mercado
The Blue Hour will consist of a documentary film and discussion series that will take place from September to November 2019 at Plaza de la Raza Cultural Center for the Arts and Education in Lincoln Heights, Los Angeles. The monthly film screenings featured in this program will provide a communal space to see compelling, award-winning documentaries that will examine the theme of immigration ranging from local to global perspectives. Films will be followed by moderated discussions that will include filmmakers, professionals in the field of immigration work, and the individuals featured in these films. $5,000

THE GOLDEN RULE +
Asian Story Theater, San Diego
Project Director: Kent Brisby
Asian Story Theater in San Diego will present THE GOLDEN RULE, a new theatrical production that seeks to personalize the Gold Rush period of California history from the perspective of individuals who lived through it. THE GOLDEN RULE will explore the lives of three individuals ranging from the first Chinatown madam, a runaway slave, and a Sandwich Islander (Hawaiian) who arrived in California before the discovery of gold, in addition to the presence of a fourth character who will represent mercurial role of the law in 19^th century California. Each performance will be accompanied by live music. San Diego-based organizations such as the Chinese Historical Museum, San Diego Chinese Center, San Diego Black Ensemble Theater, African Museum del Rey Moro, Hui O Hawaii, and Healii Polynesian Revue will provide research for this project. Programming will begin in June 2020. $5,000

I ACCEPT YOU PROJECT
dramaworks, Plumas
Project Director: Edie O’Connor
The I ACCEPT YOU PROJECT asks Plumas County youth: What would Plumas County be like if everyone accepted people of differing socioeconomic statuses, sexual orientations and identities, ethnicities, and age groups? Participating youth will work with a cadre of artists, youth counselors and health educators who will use a range of visual, written and performing art techniques to explore participants’ experiences with bias, promote empathy, and empower youth become change agents. Programming will start in January 2020. The resulting products will become part of the initial installation presented at Sierra West End Educational Theatre in Quincy, which uses a drama-based, peer-mentoring program to create visual, written and performing arts responses which will be shared in a free community celebration in summer 2020. $5,000

Veterans Write Their Poetic Myth
Returning Soldiers Speak, Los Angeles
Project Director: Leilani Squire
Debuting in September 2019, Veterans Write Their Poetic Myth will include a series of poetry writing workshops for Los Angeles-area veterans. Based on their military experiences and return to civilian life, the participants will explore, discover, and write their personal myth in eight weekly workshops. Veteran poets will explore the questions: How does my poetic myth shape my relationship to myself and others? What does “come home” mean for the individual, the family, and society? Handmade booklets exploring the participants’ poetic myths will be distributed during a culminating public performance and discussion event at the North Hollywood Library on November 23. $5,000

Visual Sovereignty: A Symposium on Contemporary Native American Art and Activism +
The Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento
Project Director: Lial Jones
The Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento will present Visual Sovereignty: A Symposium on Contemporary Native American Art and Activism scheduled for October of 2019. This program will consist of a one-day symposium that will include a series of lectures and panel talks designed to explore the powerful role art plays in keeping Native traditions and culture alive and thriving after generations of attempted colonialist erasure and genocide. The symposium is part of the educational humanities programming developed in conjunction with an exhibition of contemporary Native American art, When I Remember, I See Red: American Indian Art and Activism in California, which will be on view at the time of the symposium. $4,998

Writing Workshops for Communities of Color
California State University, Fresno Foundation, Fresno
Project Directors: Venita Blackburn & Doug Carey
California State University Fresno will present Writing Workshops for Communities of Color, comprised of a series of free writing workshops that will be presented at a public library in Fresno starting in October 2019 through Spring 2020. The workshops will delve into a variety of literary genres ranging from poetry to fiction, as well as creative non-fiction and memoir. Each workshop will be presented by a guest expert followed by small group reading of the participants’ work and onsite critique and evaluation. In addition to the intensive instructional writing workshops, these programs will also include a reading and discussion session led by a professional author of color. Participants will explore literary technique, form, publishing norms, historical contexts, and speculation about industry projections. $5,000

GRANTS AWARDED IN SPRING 2019

The Legacy Project: Voices Reflecting on the Fires*
The Sitting Room, Sonoma
Project Director: Maya Khosla
The Legacy Project: Voices Reflecting on the Fires will present a series of public poetry readings and storytelling events that will reflect on the 2017 Sonoma County fires, to encourage lively discussions centered on the post-fire recovery processes. Contributors to The Legacy Project will include contributors ranging from established and emerging writers, students, first responders, and other community members. Programming will run from May 2019 through April 2020, and will be presented at locations across Sonoma County, including the Fairfield Osborn Preserve, Sonoma State University, Glen Oaks Ranch, Sonoma Land Trust, Santa Rosa Junior College, Sebastopol Center for the Arts, Cloverdale Public Library, The Sitting Room Community Library, Santa Rosa Public Library, and La Luz Center. All program events will be recorded and made available to the public. $5,000

Centering the Masses+
Visual Communications, Los Angeles
Project Director: Francis Cullado
Centering the Masses will explore the histories and relationships that have strengthened some of Southern California’s ethnic enclaves, such as Little Tokyo, Boyle Heights, Crenshaw, and Long Beach—all of which are experiencing community redevelopment and displacement. Centering the Masses will comprise of an exhibition of photographs from the Visual Communications archives featuring historic photographs of Asian Pacific American communities from 1970 to 1990. The exhibition will also be accompanied by a series of book talks highlighting multiethnic stories that reinforce themes of community, film screenings, and live podcasts. These events will invite critical conversations to celebrate and interrogate the power of place and the possibilities that can occur when experiences and perspectives collide. Programming is scheduled for May 2019. $5,000

Humboldt History Symposium
Humboldt Historical Society, Eureka
Project Director: Katie Buesch
The Humboldt History Symposium is a regional conference that will launch in September 2019. This conference will connect professional and amateur local historians, as well as representatives of regional historical and tribal organizations, and university faculty and students with the local community, and with one another. Conference attendees will explore unique historical landscapes throughout the recently designated Eureka Cultural Arts District. Conference programming will include walking tours lead by local historians and storytellers of Eureka’s Old Town and Waterfront Trail, to showcase historical structures and introduce visitors to the “other side of Humboldt’s history,” with tales of historical instances of murder and mayhem that have evolved into local lore. Both walking tours will utilize original photographs and ephemeral materials from the hosting organizations’ archives and will inspire visitors and new residents to learn more about the history of this historic port city. $5,000

2019 San Diego Rep Latinx New Play Festival+
San Diego Repertory Theater, San Diego
Project Director: Maria Amon
The 2019 San Diego Rep Latinx New Play Festival is a celebration of Latinx playwrights and theater produced by the San Diego Repertory. Festival programming will begin August through September 2019. The festival will showcase four of the country’s strongest Latinx playwrights with music stand readings, playwright insight panels, historical context panels, a curated art exhibition, and a designer showcase. Featured playwrights will be selected from over 90 script submissions. The festival seeks to expand the presence of Latinx stories and artists on the American stage that spotlight the broad range of today’s Latinx experience thereby fostering greater understanding among people. $5,000

Public Reading & Conversation with Visiting Fiction Writer(s)
Fresno State University, Fresno
Project Director: Joseph Cassara
Fresno State University’s MFA in Creative Writing program will host Public Reading & Conversation with Visiting Fiction Writer(s) which will feature Tommy Orange, Jamel Brinkley, and R.O. Kwon. Programming will feature Orange, Brinkley, and Kwon in conversation with novelist Joseph Cassara, an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Fresno State. Each event will include a reading, craft talk, and discussion with the audience. A team of graduate students in the creative writing program will record the events in both audio and visual formats for the digital archives at the Henry Madden Library. These free events are a collaboration by CSU Fresno Foundation, MFA in Creative Writing, the Department of English, and the College of Arts and Humanities. Programming will begin in October 2019. $5,000

The Rooted Recipes Project x Collective // Memories Community Meal
Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center, San Francisco
Project Director: Kimberly Boral
In June 2019, the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center will present The Rooted Recipes Project x Collective // Memories Community Meal that will feature an afternoon of cooking, storytelling, and interactive stations. Participants will take part in creating a meal while learning how Asian American and Latino cross-cultural histories have shaped current social movements. This program will pay special attention to using the lens of cultural foods and land-based practices as a tool to build solidarity across movements. In preparing the meal, guests will participate in activities such as farm-based projects, sharing seed and crop stories, and cooking and learning about a dish. Through each interaction and each guest playing a part in creating the meal, creating a space to share cross-cultural food and knowledge, and work towards bridging the lessons of our collective memories and cross-cultural solidarity with visioning and practice in our work and daily lives. $4,950

Justin Favela: Birth, Death and Regeneration+
The Museum of Art and History at the McPherson Center, Santa Cruz
Project Director: Stacey Garcia
The Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH) will present an immersive, site-specific art installation by artist Justin Favela, that will reinterpret a 1976 mural by Santa Cruz artist and Professor Eduardo Carillo entitled Birth, Death, and Regeneration. The mural celebrated Mexican culture and called into question the incarceration of Chicanos at the nearby Santa Cruz County Jail, the site the MAH currently stands today. Carillo’s mural was whitewashed three years after it was finished. This exhibition and related programming will celebrate Carillo’s legacy and lasting impact on the Santa Cruz Community. By recreating and adapting the mural in an ephemeral paper-based installation, Favela’s work will explore the ways in which temporary forms of cultural expression have lasting impact. The exhibition and related events will take place July through October 2019. $5,000.

The 1947 Partition Archive: Pop-Up Community Museum+
1947 Partition Archive, Berkeley
Project Director: Guneeta Singh Bhalla
As part of The 1947 Partition Archive’s mission to share the stories of witnesses to the 1947 Partition of South Asia with the broader public, the Pop-Up Community Museum will present a series of events showcasing oral histories and artifacts and engaging in community conversation with Partition witnesses across the Bay Area. The Pop-Up Community Museum’s programming will include a mixture of video excerpts, exhibitions of photographs and old documents, and Partition witnesses themselves who will speak about their experiences and be available for questions and discussion with those in attendance. These events will offer a story booth, where second and third-generation descendants of Partition-impacted California families can record brief narratives of their own experiences growing up in communities in which these stories were paramount. Programming will run from August 2019 through May 2020. $5,000.

Imagining Home: The Stories Photos Tell+
CSU Fullerton Auxiliary Services Corporation, Fullerton
Project Director: Natalie Graham
Imagining Home is a two-day, interactive, multi-genre, creative arts workshop series that will examine the historical and contemporary representation of African Americans through photographs. Using discussion and interactive workshops, Imagining Home will explore how visual rhetoric has been used by iconic African American photographers to resist their exclusion from the cultural landscape. This series will help participants become more familiar with uses of storytelling, photography, and visual arts practice. Participants will engage in a range of activities that integrate humanities scholarship and artistic performance and production. Incorporating practicing academics, local artists, and national performers, these workshops will attract a wide range of community members and provide them opportunities to create and share new narratives of being and place. Programming will take place in July 2019, at the Fifth Street Senior Center in San Bernardino. $ 4,968.

Grassroots Literacy & Education Campaign+*
EastSide Arts Alliance & Cultural Center, Oakland
Project Director: Greg Morozumi
The Community Archival Research Project (CARP) working in collaboration with Holla Back, Mujeres Unidas y Activas, East Oakland Collective, Black Organizing Project, and Regina’s Door will present Grassroots Literacy & Education Campaign, a year-long poetry workshop with East Oakland residents. The series will consist of weekly poetry readings and the creation of chapbooks for both individual poets and group anthologies, accompanied by book launches. The project aims to reenergize interest and excitement in the written word, provide cultural literacy programming, and connect with East Oakland residents for whom access to the humanities is often impeded as a result of systematic marginalization. Programming will run from May 2019 through April 2020. $5,000.

Constitutional Convention Debates and the Constitution of California
Friends of Rancho San Pedro, Rancho Dominguez
Project Director: Luis Fernandez
In 1849, forty-eight delegates from California gathered at Colton Hall in Monterey, California for its Constitutional State Convention, a key event in moving California towards statehood. Among the forty-eight delegates that contributed to the discourse of the event was Manuel Dominguez, a prominent landowner, businessman, and three-term mayor of the Pueblo of Los Angeles. In an effort to educate the public about California’s rich history and encourage active participation in California’s political sphere, the Dominguez Rancho Adobe Museum will host a series of public programs that highlight the importance of the California Convention Debates and Manuel Dominguez’s contribution. Public programming will run from September 2019 through March 2020. $5,000.

Mapping Indigenous Pacific Islanders in Los Angeles+
Asian Americans Advancing Justice—Los Angeles, Los Angeles
Project Director: Natasha Saelua
Mapping Indigenous Pacific Islanders in Los Angeles will present a yearlong series of community convenings from May 2019 through April 2020.  Reflecting on the nearly 200 years history of Pacific Islanders in California, these convenings will the engage members of the public in dialogues on the rich history of Pacific Islander communities in Southern California. One of the central concerns informing this project will examine the unique history and struggles of Pacific Islanders in Los Angeles, whose histories have largely remained invisible. To address this problem, this project will implement a series of storytelling events to conduct oral histories, gather digital archive of photographs, flyers and ephemera about community histories throughout the region. These materials will be used to create a Pacific Island digital story map for the Mapping Indigenous LA platform, a photography exhibition, and a Community History Forum. $5,000.

Legend and Legacy: Jose Guadalupe Posada and Contemporary Latinx Art+
CSU Dominguez Hills Philanthropic Foundation, Dominguez Hills
Project Director: Roderick Hernandez
Legend and Legacy: José Guadalupe Posada and Contemporary Latinx Art will comprise of a multimedia exhibit tracing the influence of Mexican illustrator José Guadalupe Posada (1852–1913) on contemporary Latinx artists. Known for his animated skeleton figures—or calaveras—and their role in annual Day of the Dead observances, Posada chronicled and satirized his society in street art that appealed to the public during the reign of dictator Porfirio Díaz. In searching for the spirit of Posada in contemporary art, this exhibit also will explore scholarly debates on the legend of Posada as fomenter of the Mexican Revolution and will discuss the ongoing commercialization of Day of the Dead. This exhibition will feature a suite of public programs that will take place from October through December of 2019. $4,500.

Jiātíng gùshì: Intergenerational Oral History Project
San Diego Chinese Historical Society and Museum, San Diego
Project Director: Juliana Gay
Starting in May 2019, San Diego Chinese Historical Society and Museum will present Jiātíng gùshì: Intergenerational Oral History Project, which will comprise of an intergenerational oral history program that will preserve community voices. Taking place on the last Saturday of the month for a period of six months, each workshop session will engage youth in conducting oral history interviews with family members. Each session will be conducted in English and Mandarin or Cantonese. This program will mark the start of an ongoing oral history program, where Museum researchers, facilities and equipment will be made available to community members throughout the year. The project will also play an important role in the process of revisioning the Museum’s permanent exhibition. Program participants will learn more about the origins and ethics of oral history and examine the methodology for collecting, processing, and disseminating oral histories. $ 3,665.

The Chicana Project*
Makara Center for the Arts, Santa Ana
Project Director: Adriana Alexander
Hosted by Makara Center for the Arts in Santa Ana, The Chicana Project is an arts and culture laboratory that will use listening, reading, writing, and media-making to facilitate and share meaningful conversations around the topic of Chicana identity. This program will explore the current state of Chicana identity, what the term “Chicana” means to women living that identity, and what shared experiences, histories, ideas, and possible futures bind Chicanas in the current post-Chicano Movement context.  Programming will support offerings that will include a Community Listening Lab that will train community members to conduct documented, in-depth interviews with women-identifying individuals of Mexican and Latinx descent, as well as a DIY Media Lab that will explore and engage in media-making as another path of research and investigation into Chicana identity. A Chicana Futures Lab will conclude the program and will feature a one-day gathering that invites local scholars, artists, activists, and the community in general to discuss to reflect of the project. Programming will take place July 2019 through January 2020. $5,000.

GRANTS AWARDED IN WINTER 2019

Accoutrements: A Public Literary Series
Avenue 50 Studio Inc., Highland Park
Project Director: Jessica Ceballos y Campbell
Accoutrements will engage the community of Northeast Los Angeles in a year-long series of 16 poetry readings featuring bilingual (Spanish/English) chapbook publications, accompanying visual art exhibits and interdisciplinary events presented at Avenue 50 Studio and in collaboration with the Poetry Reading Series La Palabra. Art exhibits and poetry readings organized around the themes of the environment, mental health, displacement and technology and having an emphasis on the perspectives of communities of color will culminate in an event at the Audubon Center at Deb’s Park in 2019. $5,000

Black Joy: Poetry with Young Black Men*
Chapter 510 Ink, Oakland
Project Director: Janet Heller
Black Joy will engage young black men in Oakland, California in a ten-week poetry workshop facilitated by poet Daniel Summerhill in the winter of 2019. The poetry workshop is designed to be a safe space for young people to explore their voices and use poetry to express their perspectives. Readings will include selections from the canon of African American poetry and literature, and the workshop will also have a focus on the meaning of belonging and not belonging as experienced through microagressions. The participants will present their work at a reading in June 2019 and produce an anthology through a partnership with Nomadic Press. $4,790

Contemporary Chumash Culture Speaker Series
Oakbrook Park Chumash Indian Corporation, Thousand Oaks
Project Director: Barbara Tejada
The project is a nine-program speaker series highlighting a variety of contemporary Chumash tribal humanities practitioners discussing cultural revitalization, persistence and scholarship. Topics include: language revitalization, living maritime traditions, continuing effects of missionization on the California Indian community, traditional craftsmanship (e.g. basketweaving, stone carving), contemporary approaches to storytelling, indigenous archaeology, environmental stewardship from a native perspective and American Indian legal issues. The free evening programs will be held at the Chumash Indian Museum monthly in 2019. $3,378

Joe Turner’s Come and Gone by August Wilson+
Intrepid Shakespeare Company dba Intrepid Theatre Company, Encinitas
Project Director: Tiffany Tang
Intrepid Theatre Company will create three post-show discussions in February and March 2019 surrounding the production of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone to address themes central to the play such as race relations, social justice and how these issues resonate in current society. Three community panel discussions and pop-up performances from the play at libraries and community centers will catalyze community conversations. These discussions will lead to greater depth of understanding of the relevance of August Wilson’s plays and the enduring humanities work of this significant American playwright. $5,000

Mǝǝmento: Before and ‘Aksum Belle: Afterwards+
CSU Chico Research Foundation, Chico
Project Director: Kelly Lindner
The Jacki Headley University Art Gallery and Janet Turner Print Museum at California State University, Chico have partnered to present the exhibitions Mǝǝmento: Before and ‘Aksum Belle: Afterwards with indigenous artist Jacob Meders, a member of the Mechoopda Indian Tribe of Chico Rancheria, California. The coordinated exhibitions and related public programs will explore Native American identity and colonial and post-colonial mindsets through the print collection of the Turner Print Museum in conjunction with a site-specific work created by the artist. A curator walk and talk event and an artist talk in February 2019 will engage the public. $4,950

Our Community Reads
Friends of the Santa Cruz Public Libraries Inc., Santa Cruz
Project Director: Denise Ward
Our Community Reads launched in January 2018 by the Aptos Chapter of the Friends of the Santa Cruz Public Libraries and aims to promote the cultural, intellectual and emotional enrichment that comes from reading by hosting in-depth discussions around important and universal topics. In 2019, Our Community Reads will examine book The Death & Life of Monterey Bay: A Story of Revival by Stephen R. Palumbi and Carolyn Sotka. Associated programming will include a speaker series, documentary screenings, mobile library events, a trivia night, poetry event and two book discussion groups around the topic of the history of Monterey Bay and the future of water and land stewardship. $4,700

Portraits of Courage+
Veterans Memorial Court Alliance, Los Angeles
Project Director: Robert Horsting
Portraits of Courage is an exhibition and oral history project bringing to life the stories of three generations of Japanese American veterans and those of their fallen comrades. The Veterans Memorial Court Alliance, photographer Shane Sato, and oral historian Robert Horsting will present an exhibition at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center in downtown Los Angeles in Fall 2019. New portraits and interviews of Japanese American Korean and Vietnam War veterans will be presented as well as a short video documentary developed by high school and community college students addressing themes of the immigrant experience, wartime history, service to country and parallels to present day immigrants. The exhibit will also discuss the historical connection between the perception of ethnic minority groups’ loyalty to country, the rights of citizenship and military service. Programming will also consider contemporary immigrants serving in the military and their relationships to these issues. $5,000

REEL JAPAN: Stories from East and West
El Dorado Arts Council, Placerville
Project Director: Terry LeMoncheck
June 7, 2019 is the 150th anniversary of the founding of Wakamatsu Tea and Silk Farm Colony, the first Japanese colony in the US. El Dorado Arts Council and American River Conservancy will partner on REEL Japan, a festival aimed at understanding the Farm’s legacy which will include a three-day film discussion program. The series in June 2019 will focus on a Japanese American agricultural icon, aspects of the Japanese experience in rural California, and conclude with a lively screening of samurai films. Each film will include a conversation between the series curator and a principal connected to the film and audience Q&A. $5,000

Returned Citizens Theatre Troupe*
Marin Shakespeare Company, San Rafael
Project Director: Lesley Currier
The Returned Citizens Theatre Troupe is a group of formerly incarcerated actors who tell autobiographical stories through theater. Actors work with Marin Shakespeare Company staff to craft moving performances and are compensated for their participation in this program. The Troupe will develop and present two to three public performances, with discussions following in May 2019, and will also tour the performance and Q&A in four youth correctional facilities in Marin, Sonoma and Stockton to engage with the incarcerated youth population and the broader public. Past autobiographical vignettes have explored what it’s like to spend a year in solitary, getting clean and sober in prison, reuniting with family and the bus ride from the youth facility to the “big house” at San Quentin. $5,000

Spanish Language & Linguistics Speaker Series at CSU Bakersfield
CSU Bakersfield Auxiliary for Sponsored Programs Administration, Bakersfield
Project Director: Maryann Parada
Spanish Language & Linguistics Speaker Series will engage the Bakersfield community in discussing and reflecting upon the social, education and economic importance of Spanish and bilingualism in local context presented in a series of four lectures from March to November 2018. Speakers will include researchers, scholars and practitioners and will highlight the vital functions of Spanish in areas such as the courts, community health and K-12 dual immersion bilingual education. This project seeks to increase public awareness of Spanish language social services and educational programs, build connections between employers and potential employees in these areas and facilitate dialogue on these topics following the lectures. $5,000

Stories on the Sidewalk
Arts Council of Kern, Bakersfield
Project Director: David Gordon
Stories on the Sidewalk is an educational and entertaining walk through history. The guided walk will lead groups on a stroll through downtown Bakersfield in February 2019, stopping at eleven sidewalk stages featuring actors portraying Kern’s famous and infamous residents who shaped the history of the county. Employing scripts written by Kern authors based on research support from journalists and historians, local thespians will portray significant local historical figures from Larry Itliong, co-founder of the United Farmworkers Union, to Alfred Harrell, founder of the Bakersfield Californian newspaper. $3,000

The Latin Quarter: Maclovia Ruiz and the Missing Beat+
Museum of Performance & Design, San Francisco
Project Director: Kirsten Tanaka
The Museum of Performance + Design will present The Latin Quarter: Maclovia Ruiz and the Missing Beat, which will include an audience Q&A immediately following the performance. The performance will take place at 8 pm on April 25, 2019 at the Brava Theater located in San Francisco’s Mission District. Written by San Francisco Poet Laureate Emeritus Alejandro Murguía and based upon archival research of personal papers, periodicals and oral history interviews, the play will take the audience on a tour through the Latino community and nightclub scene of San Francisco’s North Beach district during the 1940s-1950s and explore the life of Mexican-born, North Beach-raised dancer, Maclovia Ruiz. $5,000

Voices of Wisdom: Writing Classes for Seniors 55-plus*
Manzanita Writers Press, Angels Camp
Project Director: Monika Rose
Voices of Wisdom will engage seniors in Calaveras and neighboring counties through weekly free writing classes for seniors in memoir and story preservation from May to November 2019 which will culminate in a public presentation and community anthology showcase at Central Library in San Andreas in December 2019. Workshops will be facilitated by expert writing and editing coaches assisted by student interns to support participating seniors in recording their memories and community-based history and to connect people across generations. $4,825

Vote! Your Vote is Your Voice/ ¡Vote! Su Voto es Su Voz
Pajaro Valley Arts Council, Watsonville
Project Director: Judy Stabile
Vote! Your Vote is Your Voice is visual art and history exhibit which seeks to educate, inspire, and develop greater interest in the democratic process. Art and stories featured in the exhibit will detail the involvement of Monterey Bay residents in historic and current voting rights efforts including the voting rights issues of the 1960s and the 1970s struggles in Watsonville culminating in the Gomez v. City of Watsonville Supreme Court case.  The exhibit will also feature contemporary art addressing the theme of participatory democracy. Educational panels, a book reading, and viewings of documentary films will complement the exhibit. $5,000

Working Together: Aircraft Manufacturing in Southern California 1939–1945
Planes of Fame Air Museum, Chino
Project Director: Brian Finnegan
The Working Together exhibit will tell the story of the people who worked at manufacturing plants in Southern California to design and build more than 40% of the aircrafts used by Allied nations during World War II. Visitors will learn about centers of production in Southern California during the war years and the labor forces hired to perform the work. The public will discover how this labor force changed throughout the war with respect to the wider role of women in the workforce and increased opportunities for people of color in manufacturing and reflect on the impacts these changes had on the region, the country and the world. Working Together will open June 2019 at the Planes of Fame Air Museum. $5,000

GRANTS AWARDED IN SUMMER 2018

A Woman’s Place is in Her Home
Arcata House Partnership, Arcata
Project Director: Jacqueline Dandeneau
A Woman’s Place is in Her Home is a theater work based on interviews with homeless women, providers, and community members, which is followed by a 90-minute talk back. The ensemble includes women who have been, or currently are, experiencing homelessness, in addition to edited audio interviews, photos, aerial dance, and original music. This play will be produced in Arcata, Eureka, Petrolia, Garberville, Santa Rosa, at various venues including Playhouses and Humboldt State University, and will be open to the public (September 2018). Homeless people and their providers will be provided free admission. $5,000

Angels of the Epidemic: An Oral History of API AIDS Activism in Los Angeles
Special Service for Groups Inc., Los Angeles
Project Director: Jury Candelario
This project will implement the public dissemination of Angels of the Epidemic, a multi-media documentary project on the history of AIDS activism in the Asian and Pacific Islander community in Los Angeles. AIDS was both a disease and a movement. While it drove many to die alone in shame, AIDS also compelled many others to become political actors in our democracy, setting the stage for broader social struggles for years to come. There will be two community dialogues (December 2018 and May 2019) that feature oral history interviewees, two podcast episodes, and web-based documentation of project activities. $5,000

Camptonville: A History in Objects
Camptonville Historical Society, Camptonville
Project Director: Stephanie Korney
This project will identify and exhibit iconic objects unique to the history of the town of Camptonville, located in Yuba County. Public forums and collection events (October 2018 to March 2019) will involve community members in identifying objects of historical significance for further research, which will be exhibited with interpretive texts in the Leland K. Pauley Museum in the Camptonville Community Center. The objects will reflect the people, activities, industries, and changes affecting the town over its history. This project has the goal of stimulating residents to recognize how their own experiences contribute to the larger historical picture. $5,000

Edward R. Roybal Exhibit, Boyle Heights Museum*
USC Center for Diversity and Democracy (CDD), Los Angeles
Project Director: George Sanchez
The Boyle Heights Museum is a research, exhibition, and educational project that preserves and celebrates the multi-ethnic history of Los Angeles’ Boyle Heights neighborhood. In fall 2018, the museum will present its third exhibition, an in-depth look at the rise of prominent Mexican American politician Edward R. Roybal, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives for three decades (October- December 2018). The bilingual (Spanish and English) exhibition and public events (panel discussions and docent-led tours) will consider Roybal’s contributions to social justice in Los Angeles, his family’s multi-generational political legacy, and the impact of his coalition of progressive, multi-racial grassroots activists. Coinciding with the 2018 midterm elections, the project will emphasize the importance of voting and civic participation, particularly among local youth. $5,000

Faces of Folsom*
Folsom Public Library, Folsom
Project Director: Amanda Perez
Faces of Folsom is a photojournalistic study of the people in the city of Folsom, through the eyes of Folsom teens. In the vein of Humans of New York, the aim of this project is to educate teen participants in the arts of photography and journalism, providing them with hands on experience documenting the stories and portraits of the people who live in Folsom. The photographs will be featured in a month-long exhibit at the Folsom Public Library in April 2019 and launched with a reception. The goal of this project is for the public to see the individuals who reside in Folsom, providing the attendees with a glimpse into the daily lives of their neighbors. $4,100

Gaming, Immigration, and Aztec Heroes: (Re)humanizing the Undocumented Immigrant Experience
CSU Fresno Foundation, Fresno
Project Director: Daniel Calleros Villarreal
Artist and game designer Gonzalo Álvarez will deliver a lecture discussing his past projects, including a video game that attempts to generate awareness of immigrant deaths when crossing the border. Álvarez will talk about his background as a son of Mexican undocumented immigrants and detail the process that led to the creation of the game. Accompanying this lecture in early November 2018, there will be an exhibition showcasing his artwork. $4,666

History from Different Angles: South Asian American Stories in California
Regents of the University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles
Project Director: Michelle Caswell Ph.D.
During this one-day symposium in January 2019, UCLA will invite descendants of South Asian immigrants to California to meet with academics and archivists to discuss how South Asian Americans have shaped California history and explore the role that California has played in creating the South Asian American experience. The symposium will include five moderated conversations centered around significant South Asian American historical figures: Bhagwan Singh Gyanee (Indian nationalist and president of California-based Ghandar Party), Bhagat Singh Thind (WWI veteran and plaintiff in 1923 Supreme Court decision on citizenship rights), Kala Bagai (one of the first South Asian women to immigrant to the U.S. in 1915), Dalid Singh Saund (first Sikh-American and South Asian-American to be elected to the US House of Representatives), and Amarjit Singh Marwah (chair of Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Council and cabinet member for Mayor Tom Bradley). $5,000

In K’inalo’on Bejla’e (Our Day)+
Asociacion Mayab, San Francisco
Project Director: Alberto Perez Rendon
In K’inalo’on Bejla’e (Our Day in the Maya language from Yucatan) will be a celebration of newly adopted Indigenous Peoples’ Day in San Francisco that will feature traditional forms of music and dance alongside indigenous artists performing different contemporary styles of music such as hip-hop, pop, romantic, and cumbia in the Maya language. The event (October 2018) will be preceded by a panel discussion with three guest artists that will address the role of their art in language and cultural preservation, struggles for gender equality, racism, and organizing for immigrant and workers’ rights in the United States. $5,000

Mexican Serenade Revisited: The Padua Hills Theatre and the Mexican Players+
Claremont Heritage Inc., Claremont
Project Director: David Shearer
Claremont Heritage will present a community event at Pomona’s Fox Theater, focusing on the history and influence of the Padua Hills Theatre and the Mexican Players performance group on December 8, 2018. This performance group has performed a variety of Spanish-language plays, romantic comedies, historical dramas, and Mexican folk songs and dances that were intended to create cross-cultural understanding amongst the performers and their audiences from 1931 to 1974. The event will feature a panel discussion that will bring together historians, former Mexican Players, and children of performers to discuss the impact of the Padua Hills Theatre in the Latinx community and as a site of cross-cultural experience. The program will also feature traditional folklorico dance performances in the vein of the original Mexican Players. $5,000

Picture Bayview Hunters Point+
Zaccho Dance Theatre, San Francisco
Project Director: Joanna Haigood
Picture Bayview Hunters Point is an interdisciplinary, site-specific performance that focuses on the dreams and aspirations of local residents as the neighborhood undergoes a period of economic and demographic change. This project was conceived and directed by Joanna Haigood of Zaccho Dance Theatre in collaboration with video artist Mary Ellen Strom, composer Walter Kitundu, and digital media organization BAYCAT. The artists have documented local histories and the community’s vision through various methods including a call in line, community council, interviews, and historical archives. A panel discussion in October 2018 will discuss community history, activism, redevelopment, and future direction. The final performance will feature the collected stories and research using video, sound, and dance at the Bayview Opera House, October 11-21, 2018. $5,000

Raising Zoey*
California LGBT Arts Alliance, Los Angeles
Project Director: Jess Castillo
The California LGBT Arts Alliance (“The Alliance”) will organize three, free community discussions accompanied by a film screening of Raising Zoey, a 54-minute film in East Los Angeles (October 2018), Palm Springs (January 2019), and San Diego (April 2019). Raising Zoey documents the life of a high school-aged, Latina, transgender teenager and her family’s acceptance of her identity and civil rights. The screenings will be followed by a question and answer session with film subject Zoey Luna, her mother, and the filmmaker. $5,000

Salinas Valley JACL Flower Grower History Project: Exhibition & Program Series
Salinas Valley Japanese American Citizens League, Salinas
Project Director: Daryl Osaki
In September 2018, the Salinas Valley JACL will partner with California State University Monterey Bay (CSUMB) to open an exhibition and program series that explores the story of the Japanese immigrants who arrived in California after World War II and built a successful flower growing industry in the Salinas Valley. The exhibition will include a programmatic series exploring the history of this community and Japanese-American culture and will run through January 2019. Programming will include a panel discussion with members of the original flower grower community and conversation about the history of Japanese immigrants in the Salinas Valley. $5,000

Spotlights Projects- Playwriting and Panel Discussions with Immigrant Students from Oakland International High School *
Intersection for the Arts, San Francisco
Project Director: Monica Doherty
Spotlight Projects will focus on the development and performance of a play that centers immigrant youth voices, relaying the complexity of their experiences and perspective. Created in collaboration with 10 students at the Oakland International High School, the play will be rehearsed and performed by theatre professionals for two community presentations and five to ten in-class performances at Oakland International High School, one community performance at San Francisco International High School, and three community performances throughout the Bay Area (November 2018). Panel discussions will follow the performances. $5,000

Talk Back Theatre Presents: Good Bad People+
Arts Orange County, Irvine
Project Director: Emily Gibson
Talk Back Theatre will present a staged reading of Good Bad People by playwright Rachel Lynett at the Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana, California (September 8, 2018). The play, which follows the sisters and mother of a young black man killed by a white police officer, investigates the complicated relationship between grief, the press, and justice. The performance will be followed by a panel-led conversation around the themes and topics of the play, bringing together humanities professionals and community members to dive into the issues Good Bad People presents on stage. This discussion will consider topics such as the role of journalism in tragedy, politicization of gun violence, and grappling with grief. $2,520

The Sweet Breathing of Plants Program Series
Los Angeles Arboretum Foundation, Inc., Arcadia
Project Director: Susan Eubank
The Arboretum Library at the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden will host The Sweet Breathing of Plants Program Series to engage indigenous people and other Los Angeles County residents intrigued by the indigenous history and culture of Southern California. These new audiences will take part in guided discussions, multisensory experiences, and an indigenous ceremony in the context of the “Sweet Breathing of Plants” exhibition that will be on view from October 6 through December 21, 2018. Programming will explore the environmental knowledge of indigenous peoples, the spiritual relevance of California native basketweaving, environmental stewardship, and horticultural heritage. $5,000

GRANTS AWARDED IN SPRING 2018

A Life in Service: Stories from the International Voluntary Service*
University of La Verne, La Verne
Project Director: Dr. Felicia Beardsley
High school and undergraduate students will conduct life history interviews with former members of the International Voluntary Service (IVS) in La Verne (Oct-Dec 2018). IVS volunteers were generally conscientious objectors, serving as teachers and on village improvement projects in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Project goals include 1) connecting youth with seniors who served in IVS, 2) promoting connectedness between generations, 3) providing hands-on experience collecting life histories, 4) launching an interactive web resource of interviews/stories for community access. Public presentations and panels (March-April 2019) will present the collected stories and clips to the public and launch an interactive website with transcriptions and contextualizing information. $5,000

Anthem: Music of the Spirit Through the Ages+
Golden Gate Men’s Chorus, San Francisco
Project Director: Mr. Andrew Berger
Anthem: Music of the Spirit Through the Ages will explore the role of music in religious observance through the centuries, across denominations, and in a variety of cultures. Two concerts at Mission Dolores Basilica in San Francisco (May 2018) will explore how different composers set religious texts to music. The program will feature pieces by Italian, Franco-Flemish, English, German, Finnish, Estonian and Lithuanian composers. Program notes will contextualize the musical pieces in time period and artistic tradition including works of visual art and historical figures. An accompanying facilitated discussion will illuminate the role of music across different traditions, including Gregorian chant, Jewish cantillation and Islamic chant traditions. $5,000

Awl Y.E.A.H : Youth Engaging in Arts History
California Indian Basketweavers Association, Woodland
Project Director: Ms. Rebecca Tortes
Awl Y.E.A.H (Youth Engaging in Arts History) will increase youth engagement in traditional practices through hands on workshops on traditional basketweaving practices including the gathering, preparation, and storage of basketweaving materials in addition to the actual weaving process as well as connections to language and oral traditions. The project will offer three, free “hands-on” inter-generational and youth-led basketry workshops as part of the 28th Annual Basketweavers Gathering to be held at Berry Creek Rancheria in Oroville, California (June 2018). $5,000

Back to the Land in Mendocino County
Mendocino County Public Broadcasting – KZYX, Philo
Project Director: Ms. Kate Magruder
Back to the Land in Mendocino County will engage community members in an in-depth exploration of the Back to the Land Movement, the legacy of that period, and how the achievements and values of that era continue to shape the county and the wider culture of California and our nation.  Field interviews will be edited into an audio series (June – Sept 2018) and culminate in a live storytelling performance in Ukiah, California (Sept 2018) followed by public discussion, based on twenty oral histories gathered from people who experienced the cultural phenomenon from different perspectives. $4,990

California History and Culture through The Old Ball Game: Establishment of the Central Valley Association for Vintage Base Ball
Yolo County Historical Society, Davis
Project Director: Mr. Matthew Stone
This project will establish the Central Valley Association of Vintage Base Ball and four baseball clubs which will play baseball games in fall 2018, playing on the field as if it were 1864. Teams will place emphasis on understanding the history and diverse culture of the game and the region. Players, interpreters, umpires, and fans will be recruited to learn about the Central Valley as it was being established as an agricultural region where farmers played baseball during their downtime. Audience members will learn how people behaved and what was important to California in the 19th century. The public will be able to experience period-correct baseball games in Davis, Dixon, Sacramento and Woodland, cities that had teams in 1864. Associated programming will include lectures, demonstrations, and workshops on early baseball history to engage people of all ages. $4,999.23

In the Sunshine of Neglect: Defining Photographs and Radical Experiments in Inland Southern California, 1950 to the Present+
Riverside Art Museum, Riverside
Project Director: Mr. Douglas McCulloh
In the Sunshine of Neglect is the first exhibition to survey the remarkable history of established photographic artists and rising experimentalists that have long used Inland Southern California as a laboratory. Although home to more than four million people, the region is also a periphery, residing in the shadows of Los Angeles. Curated by photographer Douglas McCulloh, the interpretive exhibition (Jan–April 2019) will include photographs from the 1950s to the present, including works Ansel Adams, Lewis Baltz, Laurie Brown, Judy Chicago, Joe Deal, Lewis deSoto, Judy Fiskin, Anthony Hernandez, Sant Khalsa, Richard Misrach, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and others. Public programming will include gallery tours with curator and artists, panel discussion on the topic of identity, place and Inland Southern California, and photography workshops for children and for adults. $5,000

La Ultima Parada – La Viejada Workshops+
School of Arts and Culture at Mexican Heritage Plaza (SOAC), San Jose
Project Director: Mr. Chris Esparza
La Ultima Parada is a two-day event that will take place at the Mexican Heritage Plaza in East San Jose in late October 2018, showcasing Mexican culture through the traditions of Día de los Muertos and exploring the human experience through reflection, study, and visual, performing and literary arts. Through a series of workshops (August 2018), this project will prepare community members for participation in La Viejada (community masked dance) where over 200 community members will create traditional masks and writing to honor a deceased loved one. The processional will feature live folk music of La Huasteca Veracruzana as well as handcrafted altars. Following the event, masks and writing will be accessible through an online gallery. $5,000

Over Here: Nevada County’s Experience of World War I
Nevada County Historical Society, Nevada City
Project Director: Ms. Linda K. Jack
As part of the 100^th anniversary of the end of World War I (Armistice Day), Nevada County Historical Society and community partners will engage the public in reconnecting our community to this transformational event, reflecting on the lingering effects of the war in our community today, and recording our findings for future generations.  Public programs will include lectures on Native American soldiers portrayed in graphic novel form, U.S. immigrant populations’ experience of the war, and the impact of WWI on the formation of the Modern Middle East. Additionally, exhibitions on local experiences of WWI and contemporary veteran photography (Nov 2018), musical performances and school-aged youth programming will engage people of all ages in drawing connections to WWI history. $5,000

SoCal Perspectives on Black Masculinity Summit
Pepperdine University, Malibu
Project Director: Dr. Joi Carr
The SoCal Perspectives on Black Masculinity Summit (Sept 2018) will examine the notion of black masculinity and its depiction in media arts, specifically depictions that explore how young black males in Los Angeles negotiate their historically articulated, tenuous relationships with the Los Angeles law enforcement community. Hosted at Pepperdine’s West LA campus, the Summit will encourage participants—community members, civic officials and law enforcement personnel– to confront core questions about what it means to be human and to develop a deepened understanding of the value of every person. Using film and discussion, story slam and lived experience, Krump dance and facilitator-led break-out sessions, the Summit will allow participants to analyze how black masculinity is experienced, understood and misunderstood, and ultimately unite the community under a shared sense of humanity. $5,000

Social Justice Music Workshop*
Digital Monkey School Foundation, Belmont
Project Director: Ms. Hannah Young
The Social Justice Music Workshop Series hosted at the Foster City Public Library (July and August 2018) will guide middle and high school-aged youth in a series of six workshops to learn about the history of the relationship between social justice movements and music across different historical periods and musical genres. Youth will be guided by professional musicians and educators in their research and analysis, collaboratively develop a musical piece which conveys a specific social justice message and host a culminating performance in Foster City. $5,000

South of Fletcher: Stories from the Bowtie
Clockshop, Los Angeles
Project Director: Ms. Julia Meltzer
South of Fletcher: Stories from the Bowtie is a project that explores the past, present and future of a post-industrial brownfield on the banks of the LA River through the experiences of the communities that cherish it, including youth, railyard works and graffiti artists. Clockshop and photojournalists Fonografia Collective will stage a series of public interpretive walking tours of the Bowtie in Los Angeles (Sept 2018) led by community members and with interpretation in Spanish.  An outdoor photography exhibit and podcasts will also engaged audiences. The project provides a platform for exploring the wider complex effects of LA River Revitalization for communities throughout Los Angeles. $5,000

Speak Up – Take a CHANCE Summer Storytelling Workshop*
Chance Theater, Anaheim
Project Director: Ms. Karen O’Hanlon
Over six weeks, a diverse group of youth in North Orange County will participate in storytelling workshops (June-July 2018) and collaborate together to create a work of devised theater that is entirely their own words and ‘Speak Up’ on issues that are important in their lives. Their work is then presented through 4 public performances in Anaheim, which will generate opportunity for the community to explore these teens’ issues and encourage a greater understanding and empathy between people of different generations and cultures. $5,000

The Community Salon: Home+
Jazzantiqua, Inc (JazzAntiqua Dance & Music Ensemble), Los Angeles
Project Director: Pat Taylor
The Community Salon: HOME is a communal conversation and exchange of ideas centered on the theme “home,” hosted by JazzAntiqua Dance & Music Ensemble at the Nate Holden Performing Arts Center in Los Angeles (September 2018). Expanding upon JazzAntiqua’s first Community Salon with the theme “breath” (2016), this project provides an opportunity for intergenerational dialogue with conversation groups comprised of a mix of residents from the immediate neighborhood and beyond, visual and performing artists, scholars and cultural bearers. The event is in two parts: small conversation groups led by facilitators, followed by a JazzAntiqua jazz performance and a discussion of the work, historical and social context and theme. $4,250

The Fire in Me: A Theatrical Exploration of Domestic Violence in San Diego’s Filipino Community
Access Inc., San Diego
Project Director: Mrs. Thelma de Castro
The Fire in Me is a theatrical exploration of domestic violence in San Diego’s Filipino community. Through a process of community engaged theater, community stories will be developed into a theatrical performance piece. The public will be engaged by a series of performances (March 2019) followed by facilitated talk backs with interviewees whose interviews on domestic violence provide the basis for the development of the performance. The performances and discussions will allow the public to discuss the topic of domestic violence in the context of culture, immigration status, and gender roles. $5,000

VOLUMINOUS ART Public Programs
Mingei International Museum, San Diego
Project Director: Ms. Shannon Foley
Mingei International Museum is launching a summer series about the art of the book which will touch on writing, book design, typography, binding, printing, book selling, and original artwork including comics and artist notebooks.  Programming will investigate how books have influenced lives, how we define literature and the role of women in the history of book.  In conjunction with the exhibit VOLUMINOUS ART of 25 books (March- September 2018), public programming will include a “Story Concert”, a Comic Book panel, an original performance, and a public panel discussion with university librarians and independent bookstore owners. $5,000

GRANTS AWARDED IN WINTER 2017

Bars, Bans & Walls: Re-Imagining the Bridge as a Model for Justice & Inclusion (aka Beyond the Bridge)
Women’s Center for Creative Work, Los Angeles
Project Director: Ms. K. Bradford
Based at four sites across greater Los Angeles, Beyond the Bridge uses storytelling, image-making workshops and culture-sharing community forums to generate new symbols of solidarity and understanding across racial, cultural and community lines. In community forums in Pasadena, Watts, Santa Monica, and Frogtown participants will reflect on, discuss, and create work in response to critical moments of racial exclusion and inclusion in California history. A final multi-media installation & festival will incorporate stories and images from the workshops and live storytelling and image-making activities will offer a transformational experience for all ages. $5,000

Cops and Communities: Circling Up
Community Partners for Center for Council, Los Angeles
Project Director: Mr. Jared Seide
Cops and Communities: Circling Up will bring together a team of ten local law enforcement officers and ten community activists/organizers for a day-long session to explore where there is common ground in their diverse experiences and how compassion-centered storytelling can bridge their perceived differences. The project will employ the technique of hosting a council circle, an age-old tradition of bringing people together in a circle to listen non-judgmentally and to speak authentically. Council provides a tool for exploring and diffusing tension resulting from bias and misunderstanding. The project will culminate in a free public panel discussion in Fall 2018. The entire project will be documented in a short video. $5,000

El Tímpano: Vivienda
Accion Latina, San Francisco
Project Director: Ms. Madeleine Bair
El Tímpano—Spanish for “eardrum”—will use  the innovative civic engagement project, “Listening Post,” developed by Internews in New Orleans, to engage Oakland’s Latino immigrant community and other residents in a month-long series of dialogues about housing, the rising cost of rent, and displacement.  By collaborating with community institutions and local media partners and using a mobile recording booth to gather and disseminate stories, the project will provoke reflection, support understanding, and elevate marginalized voices on this urgent and important issue. The initiative will bring together residents, civic leaders, and scholars concerned about the housing crisis and its impact on the Latino immigrant community and enable Oakland’s Latino immigrants take part in developing solutions. $5,000

Fabric of Our Heritage
Sarah A. Mooney Museum, Lemoore
Project Director: Mrs. Lynda Lahodny
Fabric of Our Heritage will engage community members from Lemoore Senior Citizens, Inc., West Hills College, Lemoore High School, the Lemoore Recreation Department, Lemoore Naval Air Station, and community organizations in planning and creating a mural comprised of “quilt squares” depicting the rich cultural heritage and diversity of Lemoore. The mural will include representation of the Tachi Yokut Indians, white immigrants, Mexican farm workers, Portuguese farmers and dairymen, Chinese railroad workers, and many other ethnic groups.  Local artist Mario Gonzalez will assist with the design and oversee the creation of the 30 foot by 8-foot mural to l be mounted on the wall of historic Odd Fellows building in Downtown Lemoore. An interpretive brochure will be developed and made available onsite as well as through the Lemoore Chamber of Commerce and the Sarah A. Mooney Museum. $5,000

Fruitvale Day Laborers Tells Their Stories
Friends of Peralta Hacienda Historical Park, Oakland
Project Director: Ms. Holly Alonso
While fueling our economy, many Central American and Mexican day laborers work in the shadows as so-called “illegal aliens.” Street Level Health Collective and Peralta Hacienda are collaborating with Fruitvale day laborers to create an exhibit that will share their stories and place them in historical context. A series of four community dialogues and film screenings will provide opportunities for day laborers, scholars, and members of the public to connect, and enable the public to gain greater insight and understanding about the experiences of one of the most isolated immigrant groups in the United States. $5,000

Latin American Studies in Motion
Regents of the University of California, Irvine
Project Director: Dr. Catherine Benamou
Latin American Studies in Motion is a partnership between the UCI Latin American Studies Center and the Bowers Museum to provide the local community access to filmmakers, artists and scholars who visit UC Irvine. The project will present two film screenings and a lecture at the Bowers Museum and three film screenings at the Frida Cinema in Santa Ana.  The partnership presents programming of contemporary interest and relevance to Latin American and Latinx residents of Santa Ana, as well as community members interested in learning about Latin American history, culture, and recent social and environmental change. $5,000

Mapping Arts OC
California State University, Fullerton
Project Director: Dr. Jamila Moore-Pewu
Mapping Arts OC is a public digital humanities project produced in collaboration with students at California State University Fullerton, artists and community partners throughout Orange County that aims to enrich the public’s awareness and understanding of the contributions of underrepresented cultural groups to the region’s art history. This project will build an interactive, digital map that will link information about Orange County artists from the nineteenth century through the present, to specific locations. This map will be a cloud-based web and feature a mobile application that engages the public through independent learning/exploration and self-guided walking tours through local neighborhoods. $4,989

Native Peoples of Santa Cruz Program Series
Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History, Santa Cruz
Project Director: Ms. Felicia Van Stolk
The Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History will collaborate with local Amah Mutsun Tribal Band leaders and Native American scholars on a series of programs to amplify the voices and increase understanding of the history and presence of the native peoples of our community. Programming will include a pine needle basket-making workshop, an outdoor walk discussing history and contemporary land stewardship, interactive stations on the properties of native plants, a learning workshop for educators on integrating local Native American history into curriculum, and an event public talk on misconceptions about indigenous peoples. By creating learning opportunities for the community and by supporting Tribal representatives, we can support the conservation of customs, language, oral histories, and traditions that are so important to this area. $5,000

Out and About: Queer Caribbean Film, Music, and Poetry at Home and Abroad
Queer Cultural Center, San Francisco
Project Director: Mr. Rudy Lemcke
The Queer Cultural Center will host two evening events as part of its Queer Caribbean/Caribbean Diaspora program: a music performance and poetry reading by queer poets of the Caribbean diaspora and a screening and discussion of short videos by contemporary LGBTQ filmmakers based in the Caribbean or of Caribbean heritage. The Queer Caribbean/Caribbean Diaspora program will target members of the San Francisco Bay Area-based LGBTQ Caribbean/Caribbean Diasporic community to provide opportunities for participants to experience, engage with, and participate in queer Caribbean culture to promote greater understanding and knowledge. $5,000

Sights & Sounds of Richmond: Leading with Love
San Francisco Unified School District, San Francisco
Project Director: Ms. Jennifer Chien
Sights & Sounds of Richmond: Leading with Love is a partnership between San Francisco public radio station KALW and Richmond youth empowerment organization RYSE Center that will engage young adults from underserved communities in thoughtful consideration and expression about one of the most profound subjects addressed by the humanities: the multi-faceted meaning of love. The project will encompass an eight-week audio storytelling workshop for Richmond youth, subsequent presentation of the youth’s audio pieces at live public events in Richmond, through KALW’s website and potential broadcast. $5,000

Sin Filtro: Workshop, Readings, and Discussion Series
PoetrIE, Loma Linda
Project Director: Ms. Isabel Quintero-Flores
Sin Filtro will celebrate the power of the written word through a series of workshops, readings, and discussions focused on the work of emerging writers, particularly Latinx writers, from the San Bernardino region and greater Inland Empire.  Each event will include a writing workshop for the public led by the featured writer. The writer will then read from their work, and engage in discussions about their craft and process with the public (workshop participants will also have the opportunity to share their work at the reading). All events will be free and open to the community, and at least three events will be conducted in Spanish. $5,000

Songs and Stories: Refugee Artists in San Diego
Center for World Music, San Diego
Project Director: Mrs. Monica Emery
Over the past seven years, San Diego County has welcomed more refugees than any other region of California. In order to build bridges between San Diego’s refugee population and the broader community, The Center for World Music will collaborate with refugee communities to offer a series of public performances and discussions featuring accomplished musicians and other performing artists from these communities.  Through this project we aim to (1) Educate the public on refugee experiences and contributions, and (2) Reduce the social distance between San Diego public and its refugee communities. $5,000

The Humboldt County Homeless College Student Photovoice Project
Humboldt State University Foundation, Arcata
Project Director: Dr. Pamela Bowers
The Humboldt County Homeless College Student Photovoice Project will address an important issue in the community: the absence of safe and accessible 24-hour spaces for homeless college students in Humboldt County. Our primary goal is to recognize homeless student experiences, highlight the challenges faced in our rural community related to housing, and seek solutions through action research. Photovoice will be utilized not only as a critical reflection strategy to support story development and photographic analysis, but also to provide visual information for key stakeholders. Stories and photographic data will be presented at several gallery events throughout Humboldt County in Spring and Summer 2018. $4,091

Time Travel
The City of Pasadena—La Pintoresca Teen Education Center, Pasadena
Project Director: Ms. Elizabeth Luna
The Pasadena Teen Ed Center will host the public engagement component of Time Travel, a public art project by artist Deborah Aschheim that explores the collective memory of local civil rights activism through poster installations on Pasadena Transit buses and at bus stop and city libraries. Accompanying public programming will include a free public panel discussion between historians and activists that will take place in April at Pasadena’s La Pintoresca Library, and four-week hands-on intergenerational oral history and art-making workshop for youth at La Pintoresca Teen Ed Center in April-May 2018. $5,000

Veterans Write A Play
Returning Soldiers Speak, North Hollywood
Project Director: Ms. Leilani Squire
Veterans Write A Play is a series of intimate 3-hour weekly writing workshops and rehearsals for veterans, who will write a play together. The focus of the workshops to provide a safe environment where veterans will explore through reading, writing and discussion a meaningful story they want to tell and to inspire and empower each participant to engage in dialogue about their military experience and the challenges of reintegration into society after service. The project will culminate with the participants reading the play on stage before a live audience, followed by discussion between the veterans and our diverse community focusing on the following questions: How does story shape our relationship to self and others? How does the military shape our understanding of war and peace? What does “to come home” mean for the individual, the family, and society? Has reading and/or listening to this play evoked in you a new understanding or awareness? $5,000

GRANTS AWARDED IN SUMMER 2017

Cannery Workers, Cannery Lives
San José State University Research Foundation, San José
Project Director: Dr. Margo McBane, Ph.D.
“Cannery Workers, Cannery Lives” is an oral history and photography project to retrieve and share stories through two community conversations during October 2017 Hispanic Heritage Month on the topic of cannery workers’ contributions to the heritage of Santa Clara Valley.  Programming will include mini-documentaries, company film clips, a scholar-facilitated panel of cannery workers presenting their experiences, three photo displays and participatory story sharing by the audience. $5,000.00

CHOJ: Culture, Heritage, and our Journey
California State University, Fresno Foundation, Fresno
Project Director: Professor Davorn Sisavath
“CHOJ: Culture, Heritage, and our Journey” (CHOJ) is an intergenerational storytelling project that brings together the older generations of Southeast Asians who came as refugees and their more Americanized children. CHOJ will ignite a conversation where the act of remembering bridges intergenerational lives through the sharing of material artifacts, migration stories, memories of homeland, and experiences of resettlement and adjustment in Fresno and the Central Valley. The project includes an exhibit expansion to highlight the experiences of Lao, Khmu, Mien, and Cambodian communities in the region. $5,000.00

Compton’s Cafeteria Riot
Tenderloin Museum, San Francisco
Project Director: Katie Conry
“Compton’s Cafeteria Riot” is a public program series and interactive play inspired by the eponymous 1966 uprising for LGBT rights. Through high quality theatrical production and learning opportunities, audiences will be educated about a milestone civil rights event that took place in the Tenderloin neighborhood. $5,000.00

Getting Here: L.A. Stories of Immigration
Craft in America, Los Angeles
Project Director: Brenda Cruz
“Getting Here: L.A. Stories of Immigration” is an interactive story-sharing component of two counterpart exhibitions about Mexican and American craft confluences, identity and the migration of ideas, to be held at the Craft in America Center and El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historic Monument. “Getting Here” will engage Los Angeles immigrants to document their journeys in the form of handwritten letters to be displayed in the gallery spaces and in a virtual gallery on Craft in America’s website. This community history collection project will be complemented by a series of related public discussions about immigration, art, and storytelling. $5,000.00

In Plain Sight: Mexicano\Chicano Stories in San Diego
La Jolla Historical Society, La Jolla
Project Director: Heath Fox
“In Plain Sight:  Mexicano\Chicano Stories in San Diego” will explore the often overlooked contributions of Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and Chicanos in San Diego’s rich cultural, political, and military history in the 20th century. The project combines narratives, photographs, and artifacts to document the Mexicano\Chicano role in building San Diego communities and their complex and diverse civic life. The project is supplemented by a collaborative youth project and commissioned art works. $5,000.00

Past and Future Connections to Pond Farm Pottery
Stewards of the Coast and Redwoods, Duncan Mills
Project Director: Michele Luna
“Past and Future Connections to Pond Farm Pottery” is a 5-week exploration of how the lives of students of Bauhaus-trained master potter Marguerite Wildenhain were transformed by their experiences at Pond Farm, located within Austin Creek State Recreation Area. Activities include: Sebastopol Center for the Arts exhibition of works of Wildenhain and her students, school group Pond Farm tours, new Pond Farm video and Pond Farmer oral history presentations, in-person Pond Farmer stories, and youth discussions around historic influences and the social structure of Pond Farm life. $5,000.00

Redding LGBTQ+ Film Festival
Norcal Outreach Project, Redding
Project Director: Frank Treadway
The first annual “Redding LGBTQ+ Film Festival” includes a variety of films and conversations covering a range of sexual and gender identities, races/ethnicities, and ages. The film festival, an integral part of local Pride celebrations, will bring a rich educational experience about LGBTQ+ issues to rural Far Northern California. $1,500.00

Supak’a: A Chumash Gathering
Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, Santa Barbara
Project Director: Stefanie Coleman
The second annual “Supak’a: A Chumash Gathering” will provide a day of opportunities for people of all ages to learn about the Chumash culture including elder-led ceremonies, musical and storytelling sessions, native craft-making, a Chumash veterans photo exhibit, panel on teaching Chumash culture in the classroom, and many more activities as well as free access to the museum. $5,000.00

The Helena María Viramontes Annual Lecture in Latina/o Literature
California State University, Long Beach Research Foundation, Long Beach
Project Director: Dennis López
“The Helena María Viramontes Annual Lecture in Latina/o Literature” is dedicated ssing to the creation of a public space for community members and students to engage with and discuss issues related to Latina/o literature and culture with some of the most important writers and scholars in the field. The daylong event in comprises a creative writing workshop for students, a free public reception, and a free public lecture and performance by renowned Latina/o writers, poets, and Humanities scholars. $5,000.00

Umyuangvigkaq: Long Table and Durational Sewing Bee
Los Angeles Performance Practice, Los Angeles
Project Director: George Lugg
Umyuangvigkaq is “a place to gather ideas,” and this free, day-long Long Table and Durational Sewing Bee gathers indigenous thinkers and practitioners and a broad public, to engage in learning, community building and conversation. The Long Table places indigenous voices, values and practices at the center, offering a rich encounter with contemporary ideas, while fostering a participatory process of quilting, conversation and imagining new futures. $5,000.00

Visions of Magulandia: The California Journey of Chicano Artist Gilbert ‘Magu’ Lujan from Los Four to Mental Menudo
Community Partners, Santa Ana
Project Director: Victor Payan
“Visions of Magulandia: The California Journey of Chicano Artist Gilbert ‘Magu’ Lujan from Los Four to Mental Menudo” will produce three public activities promoting the appreciation and understanding of renowned California artist Gilbert ‘Magu’ Lujan, including a panel discussion; recreation of Magu’s famed Mental Menudo community conversations; and free screening of never-before-seen archival and interview footage, that will take place during the 2017 OC Film Fiesta Festival in Santa Ana.  “Visions of Magulandia” will coincide with and broaden the impact of the Aztlan to Magulandia exhibit at UC Irvine, which is part of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time L.A./L.A: Latin American & Latino Art in LA initiative. $5,000.00

Voices against Violence
Inlandia Institute, San Bernadino
Project Director: Nikia Chaney
“Voices Against Violence” is a workshop and exhibition program that seeks to highlight the voices and personal experience of individuals who have been affected by violence in the community of San Bernardino County and two of its outlying cities, Redlands and Riverside. San Bernardino is still healing from the 2015 Dec. 2 terror attack, and the 2017 North Park Elementary School shooting. “Voices Against Violence” seeks to contextualize the impact of violence through a humanities framework by providing a program that supports reflection, conversation, and self-empowerment. $5,000.00

GRANTS AWARDED IN SPRING 2017

9066:13769 (Executive Orders that Exclude)
Grand Performances, Los Angeles
Project Director: Leigh Ann Hahn
Grand Performances, a presenter of free, outdoor summer performing arts programs in downtown Los Angeles, will produce a multimedia program that connects the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII with the current threats to Muslim Americans through museum experiences, a film screening, performance art and an academic humanist-facilitated post-performance discussion with related educational materials. The project will be implemented in collaboration with the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center (JACCC), the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) and Muslim for Progressive Values (MPV). $5,000

Anonymous Art Revealed: The Stories Behind the Emeryville Mudflat Sculptures
California College of the Arts, Oakland
Project Director: Annemarie Haar
“Anonymous Art Revealed” is a multifaceted project to document the importance of the Emeryville mudflat sculptures on contemporary art and local history. An oral history project will produce recorded interviews will capture the stories of 10-20 sculpture creators who were influential in the founding and development of the mudflat sculptures. The interviews will provide context for photographs in the CCA Libraries’ Robert Sommer Mudflats Collection, and provide additional content for multimedia and interactive physical and virtual exhibitions. $5,000

Barriers & Breakthroughs in Identity & Culture: Has the Needle Shifted for Filmmakers of Color? A discussion and film screening series
Frameline, San Francisco
Project Director: Jon Carroll
“Barriers & Breakthroughs in Identity & Culture: Has the Needle Shifted for Filmmakers of Color?” (working title), will present a series of 3-5 film screenings and 1-2 free participatory discussion/forum panels to examine the intersectionality of ethnicity, gender and gender identity, sexuality, and cultural authenticity primarily among queer and trans filmmakers of color. The project will promote engagement with the work of queer filmmakers of color who seek to explore and grapple with these important and oftentimes underrepresented topics among the LGBTQ community. $5,000.00

Community Stories in Middle Eastern American Documentary Film
SF Filmmakers Collective, San Francisco
Project Director: Jennifer Crystal Chien & Sabereh Kashi
Re-Present Media will work with partner organizations to create a series of panel presentations with four documentary filmmakers who represent diverse religious and ethnic perspectives in the Middle East, and whose films are focused on personal narratives rather than overtly political or religious themes. Facilitated by a community humanities expert and with commentaries provided by an academic humanities expert, these events will create dialogue around cultural representations in media; assumptions and misunderstandings of Islam and Muslims in American media; complex personal responses to social and political issues; and the impact of globalization, cultural imperialism, and post-colonialism in media representations. $5,000.00

East LA Interchange: The Past and Present of an Immigrant Community
East LA Community Corporation, Los Angeles
Project Director: Betsy Kalin
A screening of the ten-time, award-winning documentary East LA Interchange will followed by a panel discussion with notable scholars who each have a personal connection to the Boyle Heights neighborhood, the subject of the film. The documentary follows the evolution of this working-class, immigrant community from multiethnic to Latino while showing how the neighborhood survived the construction of the largest freeway system in the nation. The event offers an illuminating reflection on the problems of racial and class discrimination, and the structural disadvantages they impose, throughout the twentieth century and into the present day. $5,000.00

Island of the Blue Dolphins: The Lone Woman at the Crossroads
Chinese Historical Society of Southern California, Los Angeles
Project Director: Linda Bentz
Island of the Blue Dolphins, a novel taught in nearly every elementary school in the country, is a fictionalized account based on the life of an American Indian girl who lived alone on San Nicolas Island, one of the Channel Islands, in the early nineteenth century. Recent historical research reveals that this young woman witnessed commercial sea otter hunting, and likely Chinese abalone harvesting, two interactions that highlight the multicultural contacts that took place on the west coast of North America. Two interactive programs will bring these new findings to the public and related K-12 lesson plans will be created for the National Park Service’s Island of the Blue Dolphins web-resource. $5,000.00

Language in Latina/o Lives On California’s Central Coast: An Interactive Bilingual Exhibit
Regents of the University of California, Santa Barbara
Project Director: Mary Bucholtz
The project will produce an interactive bilingual exhibit focusing on the linguistic practices of Latina/o communities on California’s Central Coast. Building on an existing community partnership program fostering college preparation among first-generation college-bound Latina/o students, youth participants will collaborate with graduate and undergraduate students on research, community action, and creative projects, using the humanistic perspective of sociocultural linguistics. The work will be shared with the local community through a series of interactive bilingual events at libraries and schools, including “slam”-style spoken presentations coupled with poster exhibits, and disseminated online. $5,000.00

Let’s Talk About the Middle East
Humboldt State University Sponsored Programs Foundation, Arcata
Project Director: Leena Dallasheh
Screenings of films about the Middle East, followed by discussions with Humboldt State University Professor Leena Dallasheh, a specialist in the region, will engage people from the local community in  thoughtful discussions about the people and events they depict, and the films’ larger geographic and historical context. Held at a popular local venue to facilitate public participation, the film series will offer both campus and community members a point of connection and an opportunity for learning and discussion about a topic so central to contemporary American life. $5,000.00

Mapping Asian And Pacific Islander Historic Sites of Resistance And Struggle
Asian and Pacific Islander Americans in Historic Preservation, Los Angeles
Project Director: Michelle Magalong
Through participatory and interactive humanities experiences such as story-collection and sharing, facilitated conversations and hands-on digital archive website workshops, project participants will explore the power of place and history in the Asian and Pacific Islander communities across California through a participatory community history digital archive. This project will organize a series of public events on the power of place and history, using a multi-disciplinary humanities lens to explore the diverse and complex histories of Asian and Pacific Islanders in California through the lens of place-making and historic preservation. $5,000.00

Native Voices in the Central Valley
California State University, Stanislaus, Turlock
Project Director: Sari Miller-Antonio
Stanislaus State, a diverse University community in the Central Valley of California, will honor the contributions of the indigenous peoples of North America through two public programs. Two events — one in rural Turlock and one in urban downtown Modesto – will feature performances by Native Voices, a theatre company dedicated to producing original works by Native Americans, Alaska Natives and First Nations playwrights, with accompanying discussions. Outreach publicity activities for both performances will target an economically challenged audience who are not usually theater-goers. $5,000.00

On All Day: A Desert Reflection at Llano Del Rio
Arts Connection of San Bernardino, San Bernardino
Project Director: Karyl Newman
On All Day: A Desert Reflection at Llano del Rio will provide a means to celebrate and co-create a public memory for “the site of the most important non-religious Utopian experiment in Western American History,” as noted by the California Office of Historic Preservation. Situated in the Antelope Valley in North Los Angeles County, the community, founded by attorney Job Harriman, had grown to 900 inhabitants by 1917. Tours, talks, and an online, map-based exhibit will offer ways for locals as well as people interested in the history of utopian movements to learn more about this fascinating but little-known chapter in California history. $5,000.00

SCOTUS Theater: You Should Have the Body
Z Space Studio DBA Word for Word Performing Arts Company, San Francisco
Project Director: Becca Wolff
SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) Theater is a project of Word for Word that brings together communities of thinkers, artists, activists and concerned individuals to hear and consider Supreme Court cases for ourselves. This fall, we will host “You Should Have the Body”, a free event at Z Space in San Francisco’s Mission District to examine the ethics and history of the concept of habeas corpus (“you should have the body”) in the Supreme Court, and open a space for discussion about the rights of criminal defendants, especially non-citizens and immigrants. $5,000.00

The “Home Project”
So Say We All, San Diego
Project Director: Justin Hudnall
“Home” is a community story-telling project that will engage multigenerational residents from Southeastern San Diego in writing and presentation workshops of true stories related to their experiences in this revitalizing urban area. Performances of completed works by the authors before live audiences in venues in Southeastern San Diego and beyond, broadcasts/podcasts of recorded stories told by the authors through partnerships with KPBS Radio, and a hard copy anthology. $5,000.00

Understanding The Lived Experiences Of Grandparents As Parents And The Children In Their Care Through Their Visual Stories And Testimonies
The University Corporation, Northridge
Project Director: Scott Appelrouth
This visual storytelling project aims to illuminate the multi-layered experiences of grandparents as caretakers and the experiences of the recipients of care (the youth) through photovoice methodology. The visual voices of project participants will be shared through a campus-based photography exhibit at California State University Northridge gallery in Oct. 2017; a conference/community engagement event,  a community-based photography exhibit at ArtShare Gallery in downtown Los Angeles (also in the Fall of 2017); an interactive website with visual and oral testimonies (to be launched in Dec. 2017). $5,000.00

Vanishing Point: The 3.9 Art Collective Reflects on Black Communities In San Francisco
Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, San Francisco
Project Director: Thuy Tran
With increasing gentrification in the twenty-first century, the African-American population of San Francisco is increasingly marginalized and invisible. Vanishing Point is an exhibition that explores proposals for the survival of black people and artists in the city and seeks to open a public conversation about black history and the future of its black populations. A series of dinners with members of Black communities encouraging them to share their memories, stories, and recipes will engage residents of Bayview/Hunter’s Point, The Fillmore/Western Addition, culminating in a final event at the JCCSF. $5,000.00

GRANTS AWARDED IN WINTER 2016

A Place to Call Home
KVMR-Voice of the Community, Nevada City
Project Director: Betty Louise
Stories by and about homeless people in Nevada County, including of those living without a home, organizations working with homeless people, officials charged with finding solutions to homelessness, and community members confused or scared by homeless people, will be collected and shared by the station through multiple means (audio, video, photographs, essays, and music programming). An interactive live event with perception-challenging exercises will further raise awareness of the issue and inspire respect, empathy, civic participation, and compassionate action on the part of the community. $5,000.00

BARAKA AND SAMSARA Film Screenings and Discussions at OACC 
Oakland Asian Cultural Center (OACC), Oakland
Project Director: Donna Khorsheed
Combining film screenings, dance performances, and community conversations, this multimedia project will provide an opportunity for a diverse audience in Oakland to consider a variety of topics related to race and ethnicity. Free community screenings of two award-winning independent films (“Baraka” and “Samsara”), accompanied by traditional dance performances by local artists, will visually transport audience members, and provide a platform to explore the complex subject through cross-cultural and intergenerational discussion. $4,925.00

Border Click
The AjA Project, San Diego
Project Director: Rebecca Goldschmidt
Border Click is a participatory photography project that involves a group of 20 young San Diegans who regularly cross the border in the course of their day-to-day lives. Using photography and facilitated discussion (in partnership with San Diego State University scholars and Southern California artists), these “transborder” youth are creating a living archive and large-scale installation which captures the everyday aesthetic and experience of the ‘transfronterizo’ life. California Humanities funds will support culminating installations (both digital archive and public-facing installation) and three community conversations which will further examine how identity, profiling and racism are experienced by these young people. $4,500.00

Chicano Legacy of Fresno County
El Concilio de Fresno, Inc., Fresno
Project Director: Eddie Varela
Through the means of in-depth oral history collection, an interactive website, and a community-facing public program, the project team seeks to educate and engage the public about the history of the Chicano Civil Rights movement and the social justice issues that gave rise to it. The project aims to bridge generational, racial, and economic divides, create greater cultural awareness and empathy, and offer valuable historical insights to the entire community, including students at local high schools and colleges. $4,847.50

Circling Back: Black Farmers in California
Farms to Grow, Oakland
Project Director: Gail Myers
A mobile art and historical photography exhibit to be installed in accessible venues, including the Oakland Farmers Market, will provide opportunities for the community to learn about the history of African American farming, experience art, and consider and discuss a variety of topics including food policy, health and well-being, environmental stewardship, and careers in agriculture and sustainable practices. Presenters will share their first-hand experiences and knowledge to educate, inspire and empower attendees. $4,000.00

Democracy and Equity Initiative: Conversations on Race And Immigration†
Dominican University of California, San Rafael
Project Director: Laura Stivers
Throughout the 2016/17 academic year, Dominican University is hosting over twenty events related to the theme of “Democracy and Equity.” Discussions and presentations focusing on youth justice movements, political participation, and homelessness will connect students, faculty, staff and community members. Programming in March and April 2017 will address topics of race, immigration, and the relationship between communities of color and law enforcement. $5,000.00

Dismantling Archetypes
Friends of the La Habra Library, La Habra
Project Director: David Elliott
Films communicate stories, help us explore deeper truths, and break down barriers. They spark discussions that allow us to grapple with important social issues, both past and present. In this spirit, the La Habra Library will present a monthly film and discussion series focusing on issues such as racial injustice, police brutality, LGBTQ civil rights, and other subjects of community interest. Local film makers and film experts will lead the discussions following the screenings, using the lens provided by the arts and humanities to broaden community understanding. $4,400.00

Engaging Critically with Urban Humanities: Shaping San Francisco’s Public Events
Independent Arts & Media/Shaping San Francisco, San Francisco
Project Director: LisaRuth Elliott
Shaping San Francisco conducts an annual series of public talks and tours that encourages Bay Area residents to engage critically with their daily urban experience. Drawing on themes from our participatory community history digital archive, FoundSF.org, we offer free public humanities forums and tours investigating and analyzing transformations of place over time and how our choices have shaped, and continue to shape the urban environment and the human lives within it. This twelfth year of public programming, supported by California Humanities, will add video documentation as a new resource to further engage participation. $5,000.00

Engaging Families in Literacy
Flights of Fantasy Story Theatre, Sunland
Project Director: Lorrie Oshatz
Engaging Families in Literacy provides workshops for families to learn about the importance of daily storytimes with children and the significant impact parents have on their child’s education. In partnership with the Los Angeles Public Library, we will present workshops at 8 branches located in low-income communities throughout Los Angeles to demonstrate techniques for creating positive reading experiences that will enhance family relationships and promote academic success. Participants will receive resources including a quality picture book to take home and follow-up support. $5,000.00

Film Series: The Fiftieth Anniversary of The Summer Of Love
Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco
Project Director: Elizabeth Gessel
The summer of 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the “Summer of Love” in San Francisco. In commemoration of this historic moment, a major outreach, public engagement and artistic collaboration led by the DeYoung Museum, California Historical Society, San Francisco Arts Commission and SF Travel will engage more than 50 institutions in presenting programming and exhibitions. As part of this celebration, Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) will present a six-part film and discussion series exploring the influence of Black culture on the counter-culture of the time and its subsequent influence on art and popular culture. $5,000.00

Foster Young Justice Dialogue Project
Beyond Emancipation, Oakland
Project Director: Sherry Congrave Wilson
The Foster Youth Justice Dialogue Project will foster understanding and communication between youth with experience in the foster care and juvenile justice systems and law enforcement officials. Through participatory and interactive humanities experiences such as story-collection and sharing, facilitated conversations and hand-on art workshops, youth and officials will explore identity, stereotypes and community.  Organizers hope the project will foster greater understanding, empathy, and critical consciousness for all participants, as well as forge authentic relationships between them. They believe that this project has potential to literally save youth lives and hope that some participating youth might consider careers in law enforcement and social services as a result. $5,000.00

“Griots of Oakland” Story Circles
Story For All, Oakland
Project Director: Angela Zusman
Since its release in 2013, the book and exhibit produced by The Griots of Oakland story-collection and sharing project have brought the stories and voices of Oakland young men of color to the wider public, inspiring empathy, reflection, insight, analysis, and dialogue. Now, in partnership with the Oakland Public Library, a series of community readings and facilitated discussions will answer the call from students, teachers, parents and many others to listen deeply to these young people, challenge perceptions, provide a safe space for healing, and confront the realities faced by our youth that profoundly affect us all. $5,000.00

Gun Violence in America
Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley School of Law, Berkeley
Project Director: Alexa Koenig
The Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley will organize a series of public events on gun violence and safety, using a multi-disciplinary humanities lens to explore the history and current realities of gun violence in American and what can be done to prevent it in the future. Through live streaming, op-eds, blogging, and social media, the event and film series will reach a national audience and feed into a larger dialogue about gun violence and gun safety. $5,000.00

History in Motion
California Agriculture Museum, Woodland
Project Director: Lorili Ostman
A temporary exhibit of historic farm machinery, manuals, and broadsheets will be curated and installed by museum volunteers and staff at the Best of the West Show at historic Rancho Santa Margarita near Paso Robles in May 2017, which is hosting the annual Antique Caterpillar Machinery Owners Club national show. Over 6,000 people are expected from California and around the world for the event. The museum intends to utilize the exhibit and related story-sharing programs to connect with a wider audience and further a dialogue with culture bearers, historians and the general public about California’s rich agricultural historical legacy. $4,928.08

I Am Your Neighbor—A Tale of Two Cities
Yolo County Library, Woodland
Project Director: Meredith Beales
Yolo County Library will act as the lead agency for a project titled “I Am Your Neighbor-A Tale of Two Cities”. This project seeks to humanize the homelessness experience and bring heightened awareness to the community about the difficulties of breaking the cycle of poverty and homelessness. We will do this by providing stories through films, documentaries, books and panel discussions of thinkers, practitioners, and homeless/formerly homeless from the community. $5,000.00

Illuminating the Navy & World War Ii In Long Beach
Historical Society of Long Beach, Long Beach
Project Director: Julie Bartolotto
To complement our exhibition “Long Beach Remembers Pearl Harbor,” the Historical Society of Long Beach will organize three free public events that will provide opportunities for the community to learn more about how the Second World War changed the city. Panel discussions and presentations will share stories of Japanese citizens and residents interned or imprisoned, Mexican Americans and immigrants, and explore how demographic and economic changes that transformed the city laid the groundwork for today’s Long Beach. $5,000.00

Japanese Americans on the Peninsula: Learning from Our Past To Look To Our Future
Palos Verdes Library District, Rolling Hills Estates
Project Director:  Laura Ishizaka
To serve our growing, changing, and diverse community on the Peninsula, including a growing Asian Pacific population, the Palos Verdes Library District will host a series of public programs exploring the Japanese American experience and influence in Southern California. In commemoration of Asian Pacific Heritage Month in May 2017 and in recognition of the important role Japanese Americans played in the area’s history, programs will share stories about the experience of local Japanese Americans before and after World War II internment, explore topics of race, culture, and ethnicity, and illuminate aspects of Japanese music, art, and cultural heritage. $5,000.00

Legacies of The Street: Seeking Transportation Justice
Feminist Research Institute at UC Davis, Davis
Project Director: Adonia Lugo
This three-part traveling public conversation will explore the racialized past and present of roads in three California cities: San Francisco, Fresno, and Los Angeles. Communities of color suffered disproportionately from the creation of California’s transportation infrastructure, as highways carved up urban communities to facilitate suburban commuting to employment hubs. Each event will begin with a dialogue between humanities scholars who are experts in each region’s transportation history and local mobility advocacy leaders which will set the stage for the facilitated discussions of what it means to reclaim the streets for people. $5,000.00

Lifers: Life Stories from The Inside/Out
Ensemble Studio Theatre, the LA Project, Los Angeles
Project Director:  Susan Franklin Tanner
This project will enable residents of The Francisco Homes in Los Angeles, a diverse group of  Latino, African-American, Asian and Caucasian men who have been paroled after serving life in prison, to share their stories through a documentary theatre project. A series of workshops will provide the participants with skill building activities including improvisation, writing, movement, vocal expression and performance techniques. The project will culminate in a series of short performances and discussions for high school and college students, residents and staff of The Francisco Homes, and the public. $5,000.00

Mixed Remixed Festival
Mixed Remixed, Inc., Los Angeles
Project Director: Ms. Heidi Durrow
The Mixed Remixed Festival is an annual cultural arts festival showcasing stories of the mixed-race experience through films, books and performance. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, the historic Supreme Court decision that struck down barriers to interracial marriage across the nation, the 4th annual event will take place on June 10, 2017 (the eve of the decision’s anniversary) at the SAG-AFTRA Foundation Screening Room in Los Angeles. The free day-long event that will feature two film programs with discussion and Q&A, as well as a live performance and reception. $5,000.00

MXLA2017: Year of Mexico in Los Angeles
UNAM Los Angeles, Los Angeles
Project Director: Alda Espinosa
Within the framework of MXLA2017, the Year of Mexico in Los Angeles, a project organized by the Consulate General of Mexico in Los Angeles and the City of LA, the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Los Angeles (UNAM-LA) will host a series of activities to share and reflect upon important aspects of Mexican culture: music, the virtual arts, and literature. In collaboration with CSU Northridge and other local educational and cultural organizations, the programs will provide interesting perspectives on Mexican culture and heritage and contribute to a rich discussion about Mexican identity. $4,990.00

One Story One City Program
City of Santa Clarita, Santa Clarita
Project Director: Phil Lantis
This annual citywide read encourages discussions and engagement with stories by residents across the spectrum of age and interests. For 2017, the featured book will be Rise of the Rocket Girls by Nathalia Holt, a nonfiction work that tells the story of women “computers” who handled complicated math problems at Pasadena’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, contributing to the success of the country’s space program. During March, coinciding with Women’s History Month, the Library is planning a host of programs for all ages, and will be giving away free paperback copies of the book as a further incentive to encourage people to read the book. $3,500.00

Passing It On: Other Feminist Futures: A Conversation with Angela Davis, Margaret Rhee, and Audee Kochiyama
Asian American Women Artists Association, San Francisco
Project Director: Michelle Lee
A panel discussion will complement the exhibition Shifting Movements: Art Inspired by Life & Activism of Yuri Kochiyama (1921-2014), organized by the Asian American Women Artists Association and scheduled for May 2017 at SOMArts Cultural Center in San Francisco. Presented in a “living-room” style format inspired by the Kochiyama family’s tradition of radical hospitality, the panel will explore the intersection of a variety of feminist perspectives with regard to envisioning a new democratic future in the context of Kochiyama’s life and legacy. $3,500.00

Public Safety for Real†
Los Angeles Poverty Department, Los Angeles
Project Director:  John Malpede
The Los Angeles Poverty Department, the first performance group in the country made up of homeless and formerly homeless people, will organize a series of five public presentations and community conversations led by humanities experts addressing the concept of “public safety” in Skid Row. This topic is of great concern to communities–particularly communities of color–throughout the country. Our desire is to draw upon the insights of humanities scholars to analyze the history of the concept and the operative assumptions in the current implementation of public safety, and to generate a framework that will allow community members to create their own vision of public safety, one that reflects the realities of the Skid Row community. $5,000.00

Race and Space in Los Angeles
Echo Park Film Center, Los Angeles
Project Director: Lisa Marr
Exploring the theme of race, ethnicity and the urban environment, this project will provide a stimulating series of free screenings at venues around the city, featuring 16mm films curated from Los Angeles university and community archives. Each event will include a discussion between diverse audiences, scholars, archivists and filmmakers that invites contemporary commentary on past cinematic representations of minorities and marginalized populations in Los Angeles, and the many ways issues of race, ethnicity, identity, culture and access to public/private space continue to engage and shape our city. $4,000.00

Rolling Counterpoint
Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga
Project Director:  Donna Conwell
A collaboration with artist Taro Hattori, this project draws on Japanese tradition to reimagine the teahouse as a meeting space and dialogical zone where diverse people from all walks of life can come together to share their stories about belonging and unbelonging. Central to the project are a teahouse housed in Montalvo Art Center’s 175-acre public park and a mobile teahouse that will travel to and engage with various Bay Area communities. Using the artifact of the teahouses as catalysts, the project aims to spark cross-cultural conversations with various communities of inquiry to explore questions of belonging and community and address wide ranging issues such as hate speech, social exclusion, gentrification, homelessness, and income inequality. $5,000.00

Shout! For Women Veterans Art Exhibit and Panel Discussion
Swords to Plowshares Veterans Rights Organization, San Francisco
Project Director: Britta McClure
SHOUT! for Women Veterans is an annual art exhibit and panel discussion illuminating the experiences of women veterans, as well as their challenges and relationship to military and veteran culture. Every year, members of the public mix with the veteran community to explore the intersections of art, community, health and healing through the unique lens of women veterans at this annual event. This year’s theme, “Self and Transition,” will explore the beginning and end of military service. The event will showcase the artwork of four women veteran artists, and include a moderated panel discussion featuring the artists. $5,000.00

The Oresteia Trilogy & Symposium: Art to Activism to Change†
Oakland School for the Arts, Oakland
Project Director: Matthew Travisano
In partnership with Ubuntu Theater Project, the OSA will present a new version of Aeschylus’s The Oresteia as reimagined by School of Theatre Chair Matthew Travisano. The trilogy is a forceful and poetic response to the social and political concerns of today, drawing parallels between the Athens of Aeschylus and issues we are wrestling with in contemporary Oakland. The goal is to harness the power of live theatre to engage communities around shared experience. We will also present a public symposium designed to address key themes of the trilogy and spur further conversations about a variety of topics impacting our community. $5,000.00

The Upland Public Library Latino Veterans Oral History Project
Upland Public Library/Friends of the Upland Public Library, Upland
Project Director: Lorene Broersma
This project will interview and record oral histories of local Latino military veterans and their families to preserve history for present day audiences as well as for future generations. Collecting the stories and accounts of these veterans will pave the way for a series of community conversations, dialogues, and programs for all ages, that will expand knowledge about the military experience, foster a deeper understanding about the role of ethnicity in the military and the challenges of returning to civilian life. Partnerships with local veterans’ organizations, schools, colleges, and other public agencies will enrich the project. $4,198.00

¡TU CINE! Film Showcase
Media Arts Center San Diego, San Diego
Project Director: Moises Esparza
¡Tu Cine! is an educational track of the annual San Diego Latino Film Festival program aimed at engaging a diverse and underserved audience of local youth. In addition to enabling these young people to see and discuss films that explore the dynamics of race and ethnicity in the border region, the program provides them the opportunity to meet professional filmmakers who are sharing the realities of their communities by telling their stories. California Humanities funds will help support screenings, discussions with filmmakers and humanities experts, and the development of discussion and resource guides. $5,000.00

Understanding and Learning Our History: California’s Bilingual Constitution
Centennial Heritage Museum dba Heritage Museum of Orange County, Santa Ana
Project Director: Kevin Cabrera
In September and October 1849, 48 delegates from ten districts of California gathered at the Colton Hall to begin the California Constitutional State Convention to move California towards statehood. What resulted was a document written in English and Spanish, the first bilingual constitution in the United States. Although this is an important moment in California’s history, few people know about it, nor is it included in the state framework for teaching history and social studies. To raise public awareness, the Heritage Museum, in partnership with Santa Ana Unified School District and city agencies, will offer a series of public programs reenacting the Convention Debates for our community. $5,000.00

We Who Work: A Collaborative Project About Labor in Santa Cruz County
The Museum of Art & History at the McPherson Center, Santa Cruz
Project Director:  Stacey Garcia
This interdisciplinary project, featuring historical artifacts of labor, objects and stories from contemporary laborers, and art from internationally-acclaimed artist Hung Liu, will enable the public to explore how labor shapes our experiences – past, present, and future – as individuals and as societies. California Humanities funds will expand public participation through 10 interactive events and bring more people – and perspectives — into the dialogue. Our objectives are to ignite shared experiences, empower 1,000 laborers, invite visitors to build social capital together, and to spark unexpected connections between art, history, ethnicity, and politics – all to build a stronger community. $5,000.00

Who Controls Racial Meanings? A Humanistic Socially Engaged Collaborative Project
California State University, Dominguez Hills Foundation, Carson
Project Director: Vivian Price
Who controls racial meanings? is a public humanities project undertaken in coordinated with our surrounding communities in search of understanding historic and present meanings of race and ethnicity. As humanities scholars have argued, race and ethnicity are social constructions with fluid meanings, but the oppression that people of color experience is real and has profound effects. We propose a series of interactive workshops, lectures, and performances that will engage local high schools, community centers, and our university community in considering the history of criminalization of communities of color, and the role of community counter-narratives in redefining racial and ethnic meanings. $5,000.00

Women of the Northwest
Playhouse Arts, Arcata
Project Director: Jacqueline Dandeneau
This project aims to further document and share the history of women in rural Humboldt County pre 1950. California Humanities funds will enable the theatre to collaborate with the Native Women’s Collective, Native Studies Department at Humboldt State University, and the Equity Alliance on research and production of a work that will incorporate the stories and experiences of Native American, African American, Hispanic and Asian women from the region. The work will be performed at the O2F – Oriented to Female – Festival, accompanied by a public discussion drawing on the insights provided by contributing scholars and culture bearers. $4,700.00

Projects denoted by an dagger (†) were funded through the “Exploring the Legacy of Race and Ethnicity in California” track, with special support provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities for community dialogues and discussions focused on the legacy of racial and ethnic relations in California, including the relationship between communities and law enforcement authorities.