SC Humanities Awards $39,000 in Major Grants

SC Humanities Board of Directors awarded over $39,000 in Major Grants to 7 cultural organizations after a September 19, 2014 Board Meeting in Greenville.

The awards were selected through a competitive application and review process and are made possible by SC Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Matching community support for the 7 awarded projects totaled: $219,755.

A list of awarded grants is provided below:

Sponsoring Organization: Fort Sumter Fort Moultrie Historical Trust
Project Title: A Just and Lasting Peace? The Civil War After 150 Years
Project Director: Winfred B. Moore
Awarded: $8,000; cost-share: $20,100
The Fort Sumter Fort Moultrie Historical Trust will present a weekend of public programming about the impact of the Civil War on American history and American culture on April 18 – April 19, 2014 in Charleston, SC.

Sponsoring Organization: Historic Rock Hill
Project Title:
Black Street African American Business District in Rock Hill, SC During Urban Renewal
Project Director: Annemarie Beebe
Awarded: $2,000; cost-share: $18,495
Historic Rock Hill will facilitate an oral history project to collect memories of black business owners in downtown Rock Hill during the period of urban renewal, 1949 – 1974, with the goal of preserving unknown local history and widening understanding of Rock Hill’s history. The collected oral histories will be archived, shared through a public lecture , and possibly used to create an exhibit piece in the future.

Sponsoring Organization: Charleston County Public Library
Project Title: Charleston Tells Storytelling Festival
Project Director: Cynthia Bledsoe
Awarded: $7,873; cost-share: $64,369
The Charleston County Public Library will present the third annual Charleston Tells Storytelling Festival on March 13 – 14, 2015 in downtown Charleston. The event will feature four nationally-recognized storytellers (Charlotte Blake Alston, Michael Reno Harrell, Bil Lepp, and Corinne Stavish), four regional storytellers, as well as other local talent and musicians.

Sponsoring Organization: Upcountry History Museum – Furman University
Project Title: The Ripple Effect: How Saving a River Revitalized a Community
Project Director: Heather Yenco
Awarded: $5,203; cost-share: $54,441
The Upcountry History Museum – Furman University will create and present the exhibit The Ripple Effect: How Saving a River Revitalized a Community from February 21 – August 23, 2015. The exhibit will examine the environmental history of the Reedy River in Greenville and how the process of cleaning it up affected the community of Greenville. The exhibit will complement a large national Smithsonian exhibit titled Searching for the Seventies: The DOCUMERICA Photography Project that features a collection of photographs from 1972-1977 commissioned by the Environmental Protection Agency to document the decade’s environmental crisis.

Sponsoring Organization: Historic Columbia Foundation
Project Title: Columbia Commemorates: the Burning of Columbia
Project Director: Robin Waites
Awarded: $8,000; cost-share: $30,150
A coalition of local and statewide cultural organizations will be organizing public programming in commemoration of the sesquicentennial of the Burning of Columbia on February 17, 1865. These organizations include Historic Columbia Foundation, McKissick Museum, Nickelodeon Theater, One Columbia, Richland Library, River Alliance, SC Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum, South Caroliniana Library, and the University of South Carolina (multiple departments). All of these organizations will be sponsoring events, exhibits, and other programming on the topic of “Columbia Commemorates: the Burning of Columbia.”

Sponsoring Organization: Spartanburg County Historical Association
Project Title: Interpretive Enhancement at Walnut Grove and the Price House
Project Director: Caroline Sexton
Awarded: $5,925; cost-share: $9,200
Spartanburg County Historical Association will use grant funds to conduct changes and enhancements in the interpretation of two historic sites: the Walnut Grove Plantation and the Historic Price House. The re-interpretation will include inventorying, cataloguing, and organizing artifacts; updating exhibits, including installing new exhibit cases; revising tour scripts; and creating and installing outdoor interpretive signage.

Sponsoring Organization: Chester Downtown Development Association
Project Title: Celebration of “Chiefs”: Reflections on Chester, SC’s Past, Present and Future
Project Director: Catherine Fleming Bruce
Awarded: $2,000; cost-share: $23,000
This is a storytelling and reflection project focused on the filming in Chester, SC of the CBS mini-series, Chiefs, which aired in 1983 and featured Charlton Heston, Billy Dee Williams, and Keith Carradine, among others.

 

For more information about any of these grant-supported projects, please contact T.J. Wallace at 803-771-2477.