All of us want to increase the reach of our programs and strengthen our connections with our communities. In this Tools of the Trade session, a group of recent California Humanities grantees share how effective outreach and engagement strategies are enabling them to attract new participants and audiences as well as deepen their ties with established constituents.
Participants
Emily Cohen Ibañez is an Oakland-based Colombian-American filmmaker whose work pairs lyricism with social activism, advocating for labor, environmental, and health justice. As a video journalist her work is regularly commissioned by The Intercept, The Guardian, and Independent Lens. Her award-winning California Humanities-supported feature documentary, Fruits of Labor, premiered at SXSW 2021 and was broadcast on PBS POV | American Documentary.
Curita Tinker has served as a library aide, clerk, technician, assistant, & librarian at five California public libraries over the past fifteen years. With support from a Library Innovation Lab grant in 2021, she developed Ahlan Wa Sahlan! (Welcome!), in response to the needs expressed by immigrant community members in Anaheim for programs that will promote greater appreciation and understanding of Arab and Arab-American history and culture.
Tina Zarpour, PhD, is Vice President of Education and Collections at the History Center of San Diego. Her work has focused on making museums more accountable and accessible to the communities they serve, and in creating space for histories excluded from conventional narratives. Tina’s interest in the creative and emancipatory potential of memory work and story keeping led her to develop Welcome to the Mix: Each of Us Has a Story, a multifaceted exhibit and program series highlighting five underrepresented San Diego communities.
Cheryl Montelle directs Mil-Tree, a Coachella Valley-based organization which uses Joseph Campbell’s concept of “the hero’s journey” as a framework to understand the veteran experience through dialogue, art, and ritual. The Art of Resilience project brought veterans transitioning from military service to civilian life to explore, create and share their stories in a safe space with other community members.
Moderated by Dr. Oliver Rosales, PhD, History (UC Santa Barbara), Professor of History at Bakersfield College. Dr. Rosales holds a Whiting Foundation Fellowship for his current work on the project Mapping Common Ground: Agriculture, Labor, and Migration in Rural California. Now serving as Board Chair of California Humanities, he is also a past grant recipient and project director.
Recorded June 16, 2022.
About Tools of the Trade:
To support the public humanities field and promote its recovery from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, California Humanities organized and delivered a series of free online learning sessions in 2020-2022. Aiming to build and rebuild the capacity of individuals and organizations to provide relevant, responsive, and engaging humanities programs, Tools of the Trade enabled California Humanities’ grantees and partners to share their innovative and creative work with other humanities practitioners.
Tools of the Trade is made possible by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) as part of the American Rescue Plan (ARP) and the NEH Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan (SHARP) initiative.
