Organization City Bridgeport

The Bridgeport Film Fest is a three-day short-film festival with both virtual and in-person viewing options, taking place between July 23-25, 2021 at the Klein Memorial Auditorium. Hosted in partnership with Groundwork Bridgeport, the festival will bring the community together and promote the humanities and arts through film screenings, workshops, and panel discussions. The festival will contribute to economic development and promote the city as a cultural and social hub for the entire region.

On November 20th The Bijou Theater and WPKN Radio, based in Bridgeport, CT will host a panel discussion on loss during COVID and the many ways that cultures use art and music as therapeutic and healing tools to collectively grieve and increase cultural sensitivity and awareness.

COVID Relief Fund for Museums grants are OPERATING SUPPORT grants for larger museums and other 501c3 nonprofit organizations that provide humanities-based projects and activities for the general public (i.e., museums, historic houses, historical societies, cultural centers, and other types of non-profit organizations that offer activities like interpretive exhibitions, discussion-based public programs, or walking tours to the general public). This funding was made available to larger organizations with full-time staff and annual operating budgets of at least $450,000, with priority given to those with annual operating budgets of $500,000 or more. *These grants are administered by CT Humanities, with funding provided by the Connecticut State Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD)/Connecticut Office of the Arts (COA) with funding allocated to the State of Connecticut through the CARES Act.

Funding allows creation of a companion neighborhood tour video to their Jane + Laurayne’s Walk. They will honor Laurayne Farrar-James, who embodies the principles of community-led change, and introduce new people to her story and legacy. The video tour allows participants to connect with the neighborhood while the COVID-19 pandemic continues to persist.

Funding for Connecticut nonprofit humanities and cultural organizations facing financial hardship resulting from COVID-19, funded by the CARES Act via the National Endowment for the Humanities.

* This relief grant was funded by the Connecticut Humanities Fund made possible by the Connecticut General Assembly.

Funding for Connecticut nonprofit humanities and cultural organizations facing financial hardship resulting from COVID-19, funded by the CARES Act via the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Funding enables the Council of Churches of greater Bridgeport (CCGB) to present “Her Time” from November 16-17, 2019. The production will serve to pilot the story of a fictional drama about prison reentry and obstacles faced in transitioning back to the community. “Her Time” is based on the film 5K motion, a story about a Connecticut teen mother who received a 40-year sentence for refusing to cooperate with legal authorities regarding her boyfriend’s role in a drug-related murder with an illegal firearm.

Funding will enable The Barnum Museum to acquire and present new and contextual information about the Museum’s 4000-year-old Egyptian female mummy. On December 8, 2019, Dr. Sahar Saleem, an Egyptian paleo-radiologist and scholar with expertise in mummies and ancient Egypt will give a public program about women’s lives in the Middle Kingdom era, incorporating her analysis about the Museum’s mummy. Both the program and a focused interview will be professionally filmed to acquire footage for the next phase digital project.

During the 2018/2019 academic year, Housatonic Community College (HCC) will host One Book, One College (OBOC) 2018/2019, its third annual community-read program, with Connecticut author Okey Ndibe and his memoir Never Look an American in the Eye, centered around immigrating from Nigeria to the United States. This cross-curricular program will include an author talk, book signing, lectures around themes in the book, and a meet-and-greet reception open to the public, free of charge.

The Barnum Museum plans to pursue an opportunity to engage a forensic imaging specialist in sculpting the face of the museum?s 4000-year-old Egyptian mummy using a 3-D print replica of the skull. Funding is requested to film the process, and to enable a live-streamed public program with facilitated discussion at the Museum. Filming will be done at the New York Academy of Art during a one-week course in forensic sculpting taught by the specialist, who will demonstrate with the mummy skull.

This project combines exhibition with public programming and hands-on instruction to tell the story of the Art Center, and the community it served from 1970 – 1986. By the time of its on-record closing of 1986, the Art Center had offered thousands of hours of art, photography, music and culinary instruction to city youth, adults, and senior citizens. The Art Center history is endangered in that there is no book, documentary, library archive or any other discrete medium in which its rich existence is recorded in full.