Posts Tagged ‘humanities’
From the Humanities Council of Washington D.C.
Beginning this year, in partnership with the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the Council will offer 5 grants of $2000 each to organizations and qualifying individuals developing projects that commemorate and remember local and national histories. Commemoration, though almost always celebratory, works in the intellectual sphere much the same way historic preservation does in the physical. If memories can only be preserved by remembering so collective memory can only be preserved by commemoration. Proposals must be submitted online at grantapplication.wdchumanities.org. Read more.
The Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities (MARCH) at Rutgers-Camden seeks bloggers on issues and trends in public humanities. Since the inception of the MARCH website, bloggers have written on such diverse topics as living history, copyright law, project management, and the viability of digitization and digital history projects.
Desired blog themes include (but are not limited to): civic engagement and shared authority; digital humanities, including reviews of innovative digital tools and/or projects; concerns of emerging professionals; new books about Mid-Atlantic history and culture; and public humanities in New York (city and/or state). Ideal candidates will have demonstrable expertise in their proposed topics and be committed to posting at least once per month, for a modest honorarium. The scope of coverage for MARCH is the region encompassing New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and the District of Columbia.
If interested, please respond by November 2 with an email (no attachments please) describing the scope of your proposed blog and briefly summarizing your credentials. Finalists will be asked at a later date to submit a sample post and resume. Send expressions of interest and questions to Mandi Magnuson-Hung, Digital Media Coordinator, Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities at Rutgers-Camden, by email: mandimh@camden.rutgers.edu
From the New Jersey Council for the Humanities:
The New Jersey Council for Humanities offers mini grants of up to $3,000 four times a year. The next deadline for application is August 1, 2012. Grants are awarded in support of public humanities projects by registered New Jersey nonprofit organizations and government agencies. First time applicants who would benefit from the assistance of a humanities scholar in developing a public humanities project may request funding for a planning mini grant. All drafts and applications must be submitted online.
For a PDF of the grant guidelines click here.
Note that the NJCH has special interest in funding projects that address the Council’s theme of Justice. Also, a draft narrative and budget must be submitted at least one month prior to the application deadline for review (the first week of July).
I was pondering what I would write about this month. Sitting at my desk, looking at my computer screen, I was going through a list of ideas in my head none of which excited me enough to start writing. Now, you have to understand the state of my desk. I have piles, not nice, neat piles just piles, of various documents and publications, binders and my engagement calendar is under there, too (I know, I do have a Blackberry and I try to use it to keep track of my schedule but I like my paper calendar). Read more.
Digital or not, all projects can benefit from good, solid project management.
In a previous career, I spent close to a decade honing my project management skills creating print publications for a large network of nonprofit organizations. My colleagues and I sent hundreds of items to print every few months, and each had to pass through a lengthy review process on the path from creation to final product. By trial and error, by formal training, and by informal observation, I learned how to plan, how to communicate options, and how to adjust when faced with unexpected roadblocks. Read more.
From the National Arts and Humanities Youth Program
The President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, and its cultural partners- the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services are proud to recognize 50 exceptional programs across the country for their work in presenting rich arts and humanities learning opportunities to young people. From small towns to big cities, the 2012 National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award Finalists reflect the diversity of disciplines and settings of these wonderful programs that are taking place from coast to coast.
Program finalists in Mid-Atlantic region (full list here):
BookUp National
Book Foundation, Inc.
New York, NY
The Great Debaters!
Bronx School for Law, Government, Justice – NYC Department of Education
Bronx, NY
Ifetayo Youth Ensemble
Ifetayo Cultural Arts Academy
Brooklyn, NY
Mural Apprenticeships
Groundswell Community Mural Project
Brooklyn, NY
Out of School Programs
DreamYard Project, Inc .
Bronx, NY
Paso Nuevo/Next Step
Grupo de Artistas Latinoamericanos, Inc.
GALA Hispanic Theatre
Washington, DC
Photography and Leadership Fellowship Program
Critical Exposure, Inc.
Washington, DC
Project Youth Art Reach
Class Acts Arts, Inc.
Silver Spring, MD
Publicolor Inc.
New York, NY
Student Historians High School Internship Program
New-York Historical Society
New York, NY
Teen Reviewers & Critics (TRaC) program
The ArtsConnection, Inc.
New York, NY
WPAS Summer Performing Arts Academy
Washington Performing Arts Society
Washington, DC
From the National Endowment for the Humanities:
The National Endowment for the Humanities announced $17M in grants for 208 humanities projects. The funding will support projects, fellowships for scholarly research, the creation of exhibits, digital tools and the preservation of humanities collections and reference resources. Institutions and independent scholars from 42 states and the District of Columbia will receive NEH support.
A list of the Mid-Atlantic region’s 57 recipients after the jump, full list of recipients available here.
Read more.
From Maryland Institute of Technology in the Humanities:
On Tuesday, April 3, 12:30-1:45 pm, the Maryland Institute of Technology in the Humanities is hosting “Historical Interactive Visualization: Coaxing Data to Tell Stories,” as part of its Digital Dialogue series. The speaker, Bill Ferster, directs the VisualEyes Project at the University of Virginia. His talk will look at interactive visualization projects done using the visualization authoring tool, VisualEyes, developed at UVa.
VisualEyes enables scholars to present selected primary source materials and research findings while encouraging active inquiry and hands-on learning among general and targeted audiences. It communicates through the use of dynamic displays that organize and present meaningful information in both traditional and multimedia formats, such as audio-video, animation, charts, maps, data, and interactive timelines.
The talk will be held in the Human Computer Interaction Lab, 2117 Hornbake Library (South). It is free and open to the public. MITH archives podcasts of their events for those unable to attend. They also encourage you to access their Digital Dialogues Twitter account, @digdialog (#mithdd) as a means of following the conversation.
Thinking about the audience for your digital history project is an important step in any digital history project.
Few of us, especially in the nonprofit world, have the luxury of creating these types of online projects without a defined purpose: to educate, to motivate, or to engage a specific population. We might hope to create a resource for students and teachers on a specific topic, or aim to persuade people to come visit our sites in person. In other words, we want to accomplish something specific with our digital projects.
So how do we know if we’re succeeding?
Audiences for digital projects are just as important as those for public events. You don't want to be talking to an empty house.
Once a digital project has launched, how can you make sure that your selected audience has not only noticed you, but also is acting or learning or thinking in the way you hoped they would?
First, you need to confirm just who *is* using your site. You can use a tool like Google Analytics to track numbers of users, which pages are getting the most traffic, how long users stay on the site, and much more.
You probably also want to reach out to users directly to get their feedback. SurveyMonkey is a simple, free tool for creating online surveys. Or you could email a questionnaire to users (or people you hope are your users). If you have access to potential audience members at public programs or other in-person events, you could ask them to fill out paper surveys or interview them directly.
But be prepared: you might not like what you hear. Users might misconstrue your main theme, or be confused by your site structure, or hate your color scheme. Heck, you might learn that your desired audience isn’t even using the tool you’ve carefully chosen, adapted or crafted for them.
All is not lost! Sometimes, you can get your goals back on track with a little strategic marketing. You can’t expect your chosen audience to stumble upon your digital history project on their own. You need to publicize it in ways that will connect with your chosen audience: on list-servs, in social media, in newsletters or in the media, at public events, etc. Make sure your new project is getting the attention it deserves.
If you’ve already marketed the heck out of your digital project and you still aren’t connecting with the right audience, you may need to get more creative.
Why else might your chosen audience not be using your site? Do they need additional training, or enticements for using the digital resource? For example, if you’re hoping to connect with teachers, would it help to hold training workshops to give them the confidence to use your site in the classroom? Or perhaps a digital scavenger hunt or other online contest could help encourage your selected audience to explore the new digital resource?
Worst case, perhaps you need to tweak either your tool or your ideas about who is your audience. But you might just learn something that will help make your current and future digital projects successful.
Image: Pixomar / http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=905
On Monday, February 13, 2012, President Barack Obama awarded the 2011 National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal. National History Day, a year-long academic program that encourages 6th to 12th grade students to engage in hands-on historical research, was awarded the 2011 National Humanities Medal. The offices of National History Day are based at the University of Maryland at College Park. Dr. Cathy Gorn, executive director of NHD, accepted the award on behalf of the NHD staff, board and honorary advisory council.
National History Day had its beginnings at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, but now operates in all fifty states, Washington D.C., U.S. territories. There are international endeavors as well, with expansion into Europe, China, Indonesia, and South Korea. In all, the program serves more than half a million children each year.
NHD culminates each year in a national competition held each June at the University of Maryland at College Park.
Read more about the program at National History Day.
A full list of recipients and their achievements is available at whitehouse.gov.
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