Update: I will be speaking at RICH on Wednesday April 30, 2014 as part of the launch celebration of the Digital Library: Special Anniversary Edition.
For more information, please email Ms. Adrian Moore, Development and Communications Manager, RICH at adrian@rihumanities.org
The RICH - 40th Anniversary Report is now available online.
My essay on the history and impact of the experimental NEH state council system of grant making can be found there on pages 5-13, and excerpted here:
"Going the Distance
.....Today, Claiborne
Pell, Rhode Island’s longest-serving senator (1961-1997), is best remembered
for his advocacy of the so-called Pell Grant legislation that has enabled millions
of Americans to attend college. But in 1960, President Kennedy sized up the
quirky Pell as “the most unelectable man in America”. Rhode Island voters
proved him wrong, thus enabling the path for Pell to sponsor and help enact the
1965 legislation founding both the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and
the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).
Why were the arts and
humanities so important that such steps should be taken? The NEH mission statement
answers that for us: “The world leadership which has come to the United States
cannot rest solely upon superior power, wealth, and technology, but must be
solidly founded upon worldwide respect and admiration for the Nation's high
qualities as a leader in the realm of ideas and of the spirit.” The public
humanities provide the principled perspectives a free people need to go the
distance as they collectively confront those proverbial forks in the road.
Pell advocated for the
public humanities as an essential component of the American system of checks
and balances that our brawling democracy was founded upon as long ago as the
Rhode Island Charter of 1663. On the national stage, he championed the outlier idea
that the NEH was too important to leave only in the hands of experts in the
Academy. Rather, the mission of the new National Endowment for the Humanities would
be most fully realized in partnership with a system of affiliated but
independent State Councils attentive to community-initiated projects and
collaborative idea generation outside of but in partnership with the Academy. Quixotic
as it seemed to many at the time, between 1971 and 1976 all 50 states launched an
NEH-affiliated, independent State Committee for the Humanities. The Rhode
Island senator with a vision catalyzed this unprecedented national experiment
in grass roots support for the public humanities.
Making an Impact 1973-2013
The Rhode Island Council for the Humanities (RICH) was
founded in 1973 with a kind of home court advantage and a mandate to engage
in visionary grant making as a form of civic engagement. Pell had confidence
that the smallest state would develop templates for the nation. Curiously, no
one has written this history, or adequately conveyed the breadth and depth of
the Council’s impact on Rhode Island’s prosperity and progress. It is an
astonishing story of achievement that we begin to document here. For the Council’s 40th anniversary
in 2013, a portfolio of grants was selected to exemplify key aspects of this
larger history. The grants discussed here and more have been digitized into a
new Special Edition 40th Anniversary Digital Archive and organized
into three themes to more fully demonstrate grant making impact over time: “The
Lively Experiment” and Civic Literacy; Our Stories, Our Rhode Island; and Place
Making. This kind of documentation and thematic focus help to measure what
public humanities grant making has achieved, as well as the value of civic
engagement.
As RICH explores new
partnerships and funding sources, there are two compelling conclusions.
First, Council grant making has helped seed hundreds of local humanities
projects that collectively brought together new community partners, new ways of
working, and innovative ways of sharing the public humanities. RICH acts
as an experienced matchmaker helping coalesce a team of passionate people
around a community-generated project. The Council helps identify the broadly defined
knowledge experts each project needs for success, and delivers strategic resources
to the right people at the right time because of the connective infrastructure laid
down over four decades of community networking.
Secondly, as an institution that is both
privately and publicly supported, the Council efficiently delivers federal
dollars to local organizations in Rhode
Island and has the flexibility and independence to develop new approaches to
public engagement. RICH’s sustained involvement over 40 years has had a
demonstrated impact on the state’s cultural and economic development. It is a
connector, catalyst, incubator, and innovator working for the common good.
Moreover,
the Council’s position at the center of multiple sectors can play an important
role in the development of Rhode Island’s post-industrial knowledge economy. .... " [The entire 40th Anniversary Report is here.]
For more on the Digital Library: Special Anniversary Edition, please see here.
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