Maryland Humanities Awards $74,100 to Nine Maryland Nonprofits

Maryland Humanities is pleased to award a total of $74,100 in grant funding to organizations based or creating projects in Allegany County, Baltimore City, St. Mary’s County, and Wicomico County. The grant recipients are: Baltimore Museum of Industry; Bay Journal Media; CHARM: Voices of Baltimore Youth; Evergreen Heritage Center Foundation; Hippodrome Foundation; Historic Sotterley; St. Mary’s College of Maryland Foundation; and The Ward Museum of Wildfowl Art, Salisbury University.

Projects funded in this round of awards include a documentary film about an African American community in Wicomico County; a poetry project where Baltimore middle school students will dig into the Baltimore Sun archives; and the Remembering Bethlehem Steel Program Series, which is a photography exhibit examining the disappearance of industrial life and the neighborhoods surrounding Sparrows Point and public programming complementing the exhibit.

Maryland Humanities provides mini grants (up to $1,200) and major grants (up to $10,000). Funding goes to nonprofit organizations that use the humanities (literature, philosophy, history, etc.) to inspire Marylanders to embrace lifelong learning, exchange ideas openly, and enrich their communities. Grant criteria encourage free public programming in many forms.

Maryland Humanities’ Grants Program is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities; the Maryland Historical Trust in the Maryland Department of Planning; and the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing, and Regulation.

To learn more about our Grants Program, eligibility, and deadlines, visit www.mdhumanities.org/grants.

Spring 2019 Major Grant Awards

Baltimore Museum of Industry
Remembering Bethlehem Steel Program Series
Baltimore City
Grant Award: $3,000

The Baltimore Museum of Industry hosts Shuttered: Images from the Fall of Bethlehem Steel, a photo exhibition that examines the disappearance of industrial life and the neighborhoods surrounding Sparrows Point. A series of public programs on the history and legacy of steelmaking will examine the social impact of economic change and deindustrialization on the communities surrounding the now-closed mill.

Bay Journal Media
San Domingo
Out of State (Wicomico County)
Grant Award: $10,000

In early 2020, Bay Journal Media will premiere the film San Domingo, which tells the story of a vanishing African American community in Wicomico County. Founded in 1820 by free blacks from Haiti and the Dominican Republic, at its peak the town was home to a thriving community and included an extant Rosenwald school. The film captures the little-known history of the 200-year-old town.

CHARM/Writers In Schools
CHARM Voices of Baltimore Youth
Baltimore City
Grant Award: $10,000

CHARM will pilot two initiatives in Baltimore City Public Schools: Class Book Project and CHARM Clubs. The Class Book Project will support a teacher and class of students in creating a book over the course of a semester that connects to class skills and content. Students are part of the book’s creation from conception to publication and receive a free copy of their book. CHARM after-school clubs will meet twice a month and focus on developing discrete literacy skills—such as imagery or setting—using mentor texts as inspiration.

Evergreen Heritage Center Foundation
Living off the Land: A Western Maryland Experience
Allegany County
Grant Award: $8,000

The project includes establishing a museum in the lower level of the Evergreen Heritage Center’s barn. Together with the Evergreen House Museum, this will provide insight into the history, folklore, and traditions of life on a Western Maryland farm. There will also be a visitors’ guide that will include interpretive walking tours of the property and museums. In addition, an exhibit catalog detailing artifacts—including origin, use, historical details, and family stories—will be developed. These resources, along with historical documents and artifacts, will be used in an interpretive exhibit to explore the significance of agriculture to Western Maryland.

Hippodrome Foundation, Inc.
Behind the Mask: A Student Analysis of Works of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Edgar Allan Poe
Baltimore City
Grant Award: $4,000

The Hippodrome Theatre will host 8th-grade Baltimore City Public Schools students to work together to analyze how The Phantom of the Opera draws on themes, patterns of events, or character types from the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Students will attend a performance of The Phantom of the Opera, read The Masque of the Red Death, and—after study and discussion—write an analysis essay comparing Lloyd Webber’s and Poe’s works. Completed student projects will be showcased at the Hippodrome Theatre in January 2020.

Historic Sotterley, Inc.
Building Bridges to Common Ground
St. Mary’s County
Grant Award: $10,000

This year-long initiative will include a remembrance event on August 23, 2019 associated with Sotterley’s designation as a UNESCO Slave Route Site of Memory. The day is also the World Day of Remembrance for the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and Its Abolition. Then Sotterley will hold a three-day program September 5–7, 2019 that includes speakers, panelists, archeologists, historians, and Sotterley descendants bringing the stories and experiences of their collective research and memory of ancestors—both enslaved and free—to modern relevance.

St. Mary’s College of Maryland Foundation
From Invisibility to Remembrance: Commemorating Slavery in St. Mary’s City & Southern MD
St. Mary’s County
Grant Award: $10,000

St. Mary’s College will install an on-campus commemorative memorial to enslaved peoples of Southern Maryland. The public symposium, “From Invisibility to Remembrance: Commemorating Slavery in St. Mary’s City and Southern Maryland,” will coincide with or serve as a prologue to the unveiling of the commemorative project and site. St. Mary’s faculty, students, and visiting scholars will provide the general public with updates about the Seminary discovery, narratives about those enslaved people, and slavery in Maryland.

The Ward Museum of Wildfowl Art, Salisbury University
Community Story Quilts: A Joan Gaither Exhibit and Workshop Series
Wicomico County
Grant Award: $9,100

The Ward Museum will host a major exhibit, as well as a series of workshops and activities, engaging the public in community history. Community Story Quilts will feature biographical and community quilts made or led by Dr. Joan Gaither, a documentary quilter and 2017 Maryland Heritage Award winner. Eastern Shore cultural communities will be able to participate in the telling of their own stories and to have their work—guided by Dr. Gaither through quilting workshops—shown as part of the exhibit in an Eastern Shore community quilt.

Writers In Baltimore Schools
Neighborhoods, News: A Poetic Archiving of Baltimore
Baltimore City
Grant Award $10,000

From October 2019 through June 2020, Writers in Baltimore Schools will partner with The Baltimore Sun, Baltimore City high schools, Maryland Institute College of Art, and city neighborhoods on “Neighborhoods, News: A Poetic Archiving of Baltimore,” an archival-based poetry project. Students will serve as poets and then as facilitators of neighborhood programs to produce poems about the communities they choose to research in the archives. The poems will be illustrated by Maryland Institute College of Art’s Masters in Fine Arts students.

DISCLAIMER

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in funded grant projects do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities; Maryland Humanities; Maryland Historical Trust; Maryland Department of Planning; or the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation.