Spring 2024 Action Grant Awards

Humanities New York is delighted to announce Action Grant funding for 21 organizations across New York State.

Action Grants award $6500 to $10,000 to non-profits to bring to life programs that promote the exchange of knowledge, skills, stories, and ideas on themes endemic and important to their local communities.

“Each of these projects creates space for dialogue, critical thinking and reflection,” said Joe Murphy, Director of Grants. In this way, they “connect New York-based audiences more deeply to the communities in which they live.”

Among the projects awarded, prominent themes include the African Diaspora in New York, Indigenous history and culture, and environmentalism. In Newburgh, Safe Harbors of the Hudson will lead an initiative to design a monument to the deceased removed from the “Colored Burial Ground” beneath the city’s courthouse. In the Bronx, Women’s Housing & Economic Development Corporation will examine the roots and fruits of West and Central African influences on Afro-Latin culture.

The Iroquois Museum in Mohawk Valley will put its funding towards exhibitions and programming highlighting Iroquois contributions in underrepresented areas, such as circus arts and photojournalism. In the North Country, museum and architectural preservation society Historic Saranac Lake is planning an exhibition dedicated to Indigenous culture in the region, and Talking Rivers is preparing to host a series of virtual symposia to contemplate new approaches to the concept of environmental stewardship.

Lastly, the number of proposals related to the making and screening of films is noteworthy. From conversations at New York City’s Film Forum to Futuro Media Group’s production of a short documentary on Augusta Savage, grantees demonstrated their faith in the art form as a tool for collaborative sense-making.

Read on to explore the full list of projects.


Capital Region

New York Folklore Society

Along the River

Project Director: Anne Rappaport

Project Summary: Along the River connects residents and visitors to their watersheds, marking community place names and indigenous cultural heritage through “blueway” markers and through guides to watershed places delivered both in print and virtually.

Amount Awarded: $10,000

The Center for Photography at Woodstock

The Scrapbook Canon: Piecing Together A Post-Industrial People’s History

Project Director: Brian Wallis

Project Summary: CPW will host scrapbooking workshops, an exhibition, and moderated discussion with a goal to support youth in a post-industrial community as they explore creative personal narrative as a pathway to education, employment, and social equity.

Amount Awarded: $10,000

Hudson Area Library 

The Black Legacy Association of Columbia County Collection Exhibition & Community Interactions

Project Director: Brenda Shufelt

Project Summary: An exhibition with community interactions of the Black Legacy Association of Columbia County Oral History Project collection, which was gathered in the 1980s, donated to the Hudson Area Library and digitized, archived, and placed online in 2022.

Amount Awarded: $9,300


Long Island

Walt Whitman Birthplace Association

Whitman’s Long Island Environment – Then & Now

Project Director: Mark Nuccio

Project Summary: Our five-part Series compares Whitman’s poetic celebrations of his native Long Island environment with the musical, artistic, poetic, and scientific commentaries of the same environments two hundred years later.

Amount Awarded: $6,500

The Whaling Museum and Education Center

Special Exhibition: Monsters & Mermaids

Project Director: Nomi Dayan

Project Summary: A 2-year special exhibition project exploring sea-inspired myths and legends and their contemporary connections today.

Amount Awarded: $10,000

Mid-Hudson

Safe Harbors of the Hudson

From the Ground UP

Project Director: Alison McNulty

Project Summary: “From the Ground UP” is an artist-led convention of local stakeholders to imagine, render and present collaboratively designed concepts for a memorial to those disinterred from Newburgh’s “Colored Burial Ground” currently beneath the City Courthouse.

Amount Awarded: $9,554


Mohawk Valley

Iroquois Museum

Outside the Box

Project Director: Colette Lemmon

Project Summary: Exhibition and related programming showcases Iroquois who have chosen fields of expression such as photojournalism, circus arts, contemporary dance, claymation, and lutherie, where the presence of Native artists is both untraditional and unexpected.

Amount Awarded: $7,145


New York City

The Jewish Museum

Movies That Matter: Film Screenings for Schools

Project Director: Jamie Auriemma

Project Summary: Movies That Matter is a free documentary-screening program that engages middle and high school students and their teachers with social justice issues; each screening is followed by a Q&A discussion with the film’s director, subject, or topic expert.

Amount Awarded: $10,000

African Film Festival

AFF’s Annual Outdoor Summer Series Production

Project Director: Dara Ojugbele

Project Summary: Funds for outdoor screening equipment will allow AFF to consistently and effectively present our free annual summer series, bringing African and diaspora film and culture to NYC neighborhoods, especially to those where arts resources are scarce.

Amount Awarded: $10,000

Film Forum 

Film Forum Conversation Series

Project Director: Sonya Chung

Project Summary: Film Forum’s Conversation Series brings filmmakers, writers, scholars, and other luminaries in the arts and humanities to our theaters for talks and Q&As. These conversations enhance the power of a great film to challenge, nourish, and inspire.

Amount Awarded: $10,000

Downtown Community Television Center

Chinatown: At the Margins and the Center

Project Director:  Dara Messinger

Project Summary: Chinatown: At the Margins and the Center is a screening series centered on community resistance and resilience in the face of inextricably linked gentrification, displacement and incarceration in New York City’s Chinatown.

Amount Awarded: $10,000

Fort Greene Park Conservancy

Field Guide to the Cultural and Ecological Landscapes of Fort Greene Park

Project Director: Mia Rubin

Project Summary: To create a field guide to Fort Greene Park – with companion programming – featuring the work of local artists, storytellers, and students, highlighting ecologically and culturally significant features of the park.

Amount Awarded: $10,000

Waterwell Productions

Do Not Tell Them I Am a Prince by Edafe Okporo

Project Director: Lee Sunday Evans

Project Summary: Performances of a play by Asylee Edafe Okporo in Albany, Westchester and NYC to invite dialogue about the treatment of immigrants, including recent asylum seekers and longtime residents- part of efforts to build public pressure to end ICE detention.

Amount Awarded: $10,000

Futuro Media Group

Searching for Augusta Savage

Project Director: Charlotte Mangin

Project Summary: “Searching for Augusta Savage” (working title) is a 22-minute documentary film for PBS/American Masters about Harlem Renaissance sculptor and art educator Augusta Savage (1892-1962), the first Black woman to open an art gallery in the U.S.

Amount Awarded: $10,000

Women’s Housing & Economic Development Corporation

Congo Roots in the Diaspora- Going Further

Project Director:  Elena Martinez

Project Summary: Congo Roots in the Diaspora-Going Further is a three-part series that will explore the West and Central African influences on Afro-Latin culture and traditions prevalent in New York City and beyond.

Amount Awarded: $9,944

Museum of the Moving Image

Program X: Cultural Activism and Media

Project Director: Tiffany Joy Butler

Project Summary: Program X: Cultural Activism and Media, a program created by and for immigrants, will feature a documentary film workshop and short film showcase reflecting on culture, media representation and the historical significance of telling one’s story.

Amount Awarded:  $10,000


North Country

Historic Saranac Lake

Exhibit Development: Indigenous History in the Saranac Lake Region

Project Director:  Amy Catania

Project Summary: Historic Saranac Lake will collaborate with David Kanietakeron Fadden of the Six Nations Iroquois Cultural Center to create a new exhibit at Historic Saranac Lake that introduces visitors to Indigenous history in the Saranac Lake region.

Amount Awarded: $10,000

Talking Rivers

We are all in this Together: Standing up for the Guardians of the Natural World

Project Director:  Blake Lavia

Project Summary: In a series of three virtual events, humanities scholars and environmental activists will join to discuss how we can expand the conception of environmental stewardship beyond the human, and unravel the historical roots of the climate crisis.

Amount Awarded: $9,975


Western New York

Buffalo String Works

Burmese Composer in Residence Project

Project Director: Andrew Borkowski

Project Summary: Burmese Composer Wai Hin, working alongside students and families, will produce a special 10-year anniversary commission piece, celebrating one decade of igniting personal and community leadership through accessible, youth-centered music education.

Amount Awarded: $10,000

Just Buffalo Literary Center

The Civil Writes Project

Project Director: Barbara Cole

Project Summary: The 2024 Civil Writes Project—headlined by Kiese Laymon—will celebrate Black literary innovation, examine inequities, and inspire audiences to explore their own humanity as they read, discuss, and connect with his award-winning memoir, Heavy.

Amount Awarded: $10,000

Buffalo Arts Studio

1,849 Millas: Al otro lado del charco, A Diaspora Journey

Project Director: Shirley Verrico

Project Summary: 1,849 Millas: Al otro lado del charco, A Diaspora Journey is an exhibition, performance, discussion, and workshop series highlighting African and Indigenous cultural expressions from Puerto Rico, including bomba and the vejigante masks of Loíza.

Amount Awarded: $10,000

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