Connecticut Humanities (CTH) recently awarded $29,724 in COVID-19 related Quick Grants to six (6) humanities organizations in Connecticut. With projects addressing documentation of the coronavirus pandemic locally, women’s suffrage, and life in the Mark Twain era, these grants also support the organizations’ efforts to provide broad access to strong humanities content through virtual programming during this unprecedented time.
Greenwich Historical Society (Cos Cob, $4,999)
Funds will support the creation of a digital exhibition to extend the reach of An Unfinished Revolution: The Woman’s Suffrage Centennial. This digital platform will increase the exhibition’s audience in the wake of COVID-19 closures, offer alternatives to hands-on activities, permit the exhibition’s educational and interpretive content to exist indefinitely in a digital context, and enable GHS to build staff capacity to pilot new digital initiatives.
Connecticut Historical Society (Hartford, $4,729)
Funds will support the production of 3D virtual tours of four exhibitions to be experienced free of charge on the CHS website. These online tours will provide access to existing and upcoming exhibitions for people who may be unable to visit the museum in person due to travel restrictions, health concerns, or limited museum visitor capacity during the COVID-19 pandemic. The tours will also increase CHS’s digital content available to history enthusiasts beyond Connecticut.
Mark Twain House & Museum (Hartford, $4,999)
Funds support The Trouble Begins at 5:30 lecture series offering free lectures by humanities scholars that address subjects related to Mark Twain, his work, or his era. The Trouble at Home Conversations are free, online conversations with Twain scholars on topics related to the author. During the grant period, the museum plans to offer five on-site lectures that will be live-streamed, as well as six online-only conversations.
Madison Historical Society (Madison, $4,999)
Funds support the Society to document the effects of the pandemic on Madison. Working with Ciné Verité Productions, the short documentary film features key members of the community including business owners, frontline workers, school administrators, elected officials, civic and religious leaders, and students affected by this crisis. The documentary will be shown broadly for others to discover how one shoreline town responded to the pandemic and the community’s hope for a better future.
New Canaan Museum & Historical Society and The Glass House (New Canaan, $4,999)
Funds will support a series of ten talks presented via Zoom as part of “Glass House Presents,” an ongoing series of talks that sustain the site’s historic role as a platform for creative activity. These programs will take place in collaboration with community partners. Program dates are flexible due to COVID-19 considerations. All programs will be recorded and made available for free on the Glass House website.
Westport Historical Society (Westport, $4,999)
Funds will support Westport in Focus, a long-lens oral history project that the museum began in mid-March to document the town’s response to the coronavirus crisis through the images and words of residents, workers, first responders, politicians, and others. The aim of the project is to create a primary resource about this historic era in perpetuity for the benefit of future researchers.
As with this round of Quick Grants, the July and August COVID-19 Quick Grant application deadlines will also be COVID-19 related. Organizations are asked to submit grants for projects that address ways that they can best serve their community’s needs during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Project possibilities include, but are not limited to, moving an organization’s existing programs or exhibitions to an online/digital format; creating distance learning materials to support teachers and students; creating mobile tours for inclusion on CT Humanities’ ConnTours mobile app; displaying content in places where community members can access it despite social distancing; oral history or collecting projects to document the pandemic; etc.
For more information on all of our grant lines, visit our website, CTHumanities.org/grants.
