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Grants Awarded Idaho Humanities Council awards 24 grants at winter 2009 meeting
The Idaho Humanities Council awarded $52,546 in grants to organizations and individuals at its February 2009 board meeting in Pocatello. Twenty-four awards include seven to K-12 teachers and 17 for public humanities programs. The following projects were funded:
Clayton Area Historical Association (Clayton) was awarded $2,000 to produce an informational brochure and erect interpretive signage for mining equipment displayed around the museum. The museum is housed in an old company store along Highway 75 that has been restored by local residents as an early 20th century store with genuine historical artifacts and photographs. The project director is Jolene Ogden.
Teton Valley Historical Museum (Driggs) was awarded $1,920 to digitize and index 12 rolls of microfiche of the Teton Valley News. Planners have already digitized many rolls in their collection and need to complete the remainder. Funds will cover the cost of digitizing the papers. When completed, the museum will make the collection available to the public and will offer training to museum patrons. The project director is Gloria Hoopes.
Idaho State University (Pocatello) was awarded $1,200 to bring Cuban poet and scholar Enrique Sacerio-Gari to ISU in early April to celebrate The Arts in Contemporary Cuba. Sacerio-Gari will make three free presentations to the public including a lecture on the arts today in Cuba, a poetry reading, and commentary following the screening of the film Suite Habana. Sacerio-Gari’s visit coincides with the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, one of the most significant 20th century events in the history of Latin America. The project director is James Fogelquist.
Weippe Community Club (Weippe) was awarded $1,750 to help bring Nez Perce artist, storyteller, and culture bearer Nakia Williamson-Cloud and Nez Perce root gatherer Gwen Carter to Weippe for the 9th Annual Idaho Camas Festival in May. Williamson-Cloud and his family will demonstrate several Nez Perce traditions including: using and carving the hand drum, song, beadwork, painting, quillwork, and dance. The project director is Marge Kuchynka.
Malad Valley Welsh Foundation (Malad City) was awarded $2,000 to support the fifth annual Malad Valley Welsh Festival on June 26 and 27. The two-day festival features music, food, and a variety of workshops on the history, language, traditions, and culture of Wales and all things Welsh. The festival is free and open to the public. The project director is Mike Williams.
Idaho Botanical Garden (Boise) was awarded $2,505 to support its summer lecture series. Funds will help bring three speakers to Boise, including Richard Baker, who offers a Chautauqua presentation where he performs as Pierre Cruzatte, a fiddler from the Lewis and Clark expedition; and Sheila Roberts and Robert Thomas, two University of Montana geologists who have written about the diverse geology confronted by Lewis and Clark. The project director is Elizabeth Dickey.
Boise State University’s Story Initiative (Boise) was awarded $3,000 to support a two-day conference (tentatively slated for fall 2009) in Boise called “Great Adaptations,” which will explore how literary works are translated successfully into film. The conference will begin with an evening premiere at Boise’s Egyptian Theater of the forthcoming Hollywood film The Last Station, a film about Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy’s last years, by Boise-based film director Michael Hoffman. Funds will help bring two screenwriters to Boise: Middlebury College English Professor Jay Parini, author of the novel The Last Station, and screenwriter and former Boisean Judith Rascoe, who will participate in panels during the conference. The project director is Clay Morgan.
The Community Library and the Sun Valley/Ketchum Chamber and Visitors Center (Ketchum) was awarded $3,750 to support the annual Ernest Hemingway Symposium in October 2009, involving Hemingway biographer Scott Donaldson and Hemingway Review editor and scholar Susan Beegel. Presentations will be held at The Community Library this year and the symposium will be on a smaller scale from the festival of years past. The project director is Sandy Hofferber.
The Sawtooth Interpretive and Historical Association (Stanley) was awarded $3,000 to support the 2nd annual “Sawtooth Forum and Lecture Series,” planned for July through August of 2009 in Stanley. The eight-lecture series will take place on Fridays either at Stanley City Park or on the Stanley Museum complex and will be open to the public. Speakers include Kayaking Alone author Mike Barenti and College of Idaho English Professor Rochelle Johnson, speaking on “Our Complex Passion for Nature: A Sense of Place.” The project director is Vicki Jo Lawson.
Confluence Press (Lewiston) was awarded $3,500 to help bring novelist David Guterson to the Lewiston area to speak about his latest book The Other, selected for the “Everybody Reads” community reading project. Guterson, author of the bestselling novel Snow Falling on Cedars, will visit six communities in November, three in Idaho--Lewiston, Moscow, and Lapwai—and three in Washington—Clarkston, Pullman, and Colfax, along the Idaho border. The project directors are Heather Stout and Jennifer Ashby.
The Boundary County Historical Society (Bonners Ferry) was awarded $3,000 to support new outdoor railroad interpretive signage on the exterior back wall of the museum. The exhibit will explore the 100-year history of the railroads in Boundary County and the impact on the growth and development of the area.The museum also will create a brochure about the exhibit to be placed inside the museum, the visitors center, and surrounding hotels. The projector director is Mike Woodward.
Idaho State University (Pocatello) was awarded $2,000 to bring writer Rebecca Walker to Pocatello for a public lecture and classroom visits, as part of the 7th annual multidisciplinary two-day conference entitled “The Art of Gender in Everyday Life” in the spring of 2010. Walker’s lecture will focus on memoir writing and how the writing process informs identity. Walker is the author of several books, including Black, White, and Jewish: Autobiography of Shifting Self, and Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood after a Lifetime of Ambivalence. The project director is Rebecca Morrow.
The David Thompson Bicentennial Partnership (Hope) was awarded $3,962 to support its fourth annual conference/encampment near Hope, Idaho in June. This year’s three-day encampment will be hosted by the Kalispel tribe (near Kullyspel House on traditional tribal land) and will involve members of the tribe, David Thompson expedition re-enactors, and members of the public learning traditional crafts, food ways, and cultural ways in the tribe in the Pend Oreille area. Participants will learn about canoes of the fur trade, mapmaking, and study the Thompson journals. The project director is Bonner County Museum Director Ann Ferguson.
The Nez Perce Tribe (Lapwai) was awarded $3,100 to develop a traveling display about Nez Perce history that can be used at special events, at schools, at visitor information centers, and other venues. This exhibit will consist of fabric panels highlighting the history, cultural heritage, and self-government of the tribe. The project director is Farren Penney.
Lewis-Clark State College Continuing Education Department (Lewiston) was awarded $3,000 to support its regional Speakers Bureau comprised of 19 speakers and chautauquans who explore the Lewis and Clark story, Nez Perce history, mining history, and other topics. The bureau is available to area schools, libraries, and other organizations. The project director is Deborah Snyder.
The Lemhi County Historical Society (Salmon) was awarded $3,500 to support the first phase of the creation of a traveling exhibit about its vast collection of Lemhi Shoshone artifacts, including tools, beadwork, clothing, photographs, and other items. The exhibit will be accompanied by an exhibit catalog, posters, and other promotional materials. It is planned to tour in 2010. The project director is Hope Benedict.
Arctic Circle Productions (Bend, OR) was awarded $4,300 to support the production of a documentary film on the history of women in the golden age of rodeo, specifically the lives of three early 20th century women in rodeo: Idaho’s Bonnie McCarroll, Colorado’s Bertha Blancett, and Washington’s Mabel Strickland. All three are in the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame in Texas and the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma. The project director is Steve Wursta. Teacher Incentive Grants:
The IHC awards grants of up to $1,000 twice a year to K-12 teachers and educational organizations to enhance teaching of the humanities in the classroom. IHC made seven awards.
Jan Ward, a teacher in the Garden Valley School District (Garden Valley), was awarded $522 to enhance the 6th grade Springboard curriculum that focuses on how students as individuals change and grow over the year intellectually, physically, socially and emotionally. Ward will create a new month-long humanities curriculum based on the novel Summer of the Monkeys by Wilson Rawls. Students will analyze sections of the book weekly.
Sandra Gray, a teacher at Washington Elementary (Pocatello), was awarded $1,000 to purchase multiple copies of picture books and children’s novels for a teachers reading group. The group plans to meet monthly to read and discuss popular and award-winning books that will encourage and keep students reading. The selected books will focus on American history and human rights and will improve reading, literature and social studies curriculum.
Mary Lee Blackford, Library Director at Ola Free District Library (Ola), was awarded $728 to update and improve the Accelerated Reader program at the Ola School. Amy McBryde (K-6 teacher) and Blackford will work together to identify books for all levels of reading. Funds will be used to purchase new books and comprehension testing materials.
Marie Robertson, 3rd grade teacher at A.H. Bush Elementary School (Idaho Falls), was awarded $989 to purchase digital cameras and materials for third grade student projects. The cameras will enhance a current annual project where students study the history of structural changes in Idaho Falls over many decades. Students will conduct their own photographic research around town and compare structures to what are in the archive at the Museum of Idaho.
Barbara Burton, of the Eagle Arts Commission (Eagle), was awarded $500 to students to attend a summer writing camp held at True North Creative Learning Center in Eagle. The camp is open to students in grades four through nine. The weeklong camps are three hours a day and engage students in reading and writing.
Madelaine Love, teacher at Skyline High School (Idaho Falls), was awarded $500 for help with an interdisciplinary class blending Science and English. Students will read several literary selections related to their science classes on “aquatic and terrestrial environments,” including Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It and the Idaho essay anthology Written on Water. Students will keep field journals during several field trips, present their research papers and oral presentations, and share the results of the class at a Parents’ Night the last week of school.
Jamessa Williams, kindergarten teacher at Lapwai Elementary School (Lapwai), was awarded $820 to support a project profiling students’ families and cultures. Each student will take photos of their families, have each member answer a questionnaire and describe family traditions, memories, heirlooms, etc. Williams will assist students to create two copies of a family book that they would share with their families and place a copy in the school library.
The Next Deadline for IHC Grants:
The next deadline for Idaho Humanities Council grant proposals is September 15, 2009. IHC strongly recommends that prospective applicants contact staff to discuss their project ideas before writing their proposals. Applicants also are encouraged to submit a rough draft of their proposal for staff critique by mid-August 2009. |
