Humanities projects grants in DC for community groups

Eli writes:

I thought some of your readers might be interested in applying for oneof the DC Community Heritage Project Grants due May 1. There are three workshops this month on:

- April 14 at the Anacostia Community Museum from12:00 PM to 1:30 PM;

- April 14 at the Council of Washington, DC from5:30 PM to 7:00 PM; and

- April 21 at the Southeast Neighborhood Library from 5:30 PM to 7:00 PM.

For more information folks should contact Albert Shaheen. Here is a link to the Humanities Council of Washington, with additional details.
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Note that while I think this is an important program, there are a couple defects, which I have held off writing about since the last presentation I saw a couple months ago.

There is what I call history as community building or self-affirmation versus historicity and the quality of historiography. I wrote about this in response to a presentation in this series three years ago, in this post "Civic Tourism." Similarly, there is the same issue in arts, culture and the utilization of public art as a community building strategy vs. a "revitalization"" strategy (see "You Gotta Have Community Building" from 2007).

I was talking about this with a colleague a couple weeks ago, and she pointed out that most of the "professionals" working with community history projects aren't necessarily academics or professionals as much as they are interested amateurs.

But there is a difference in the results of the heritage trails "produced" by CulturalTourismDC, led by professional historians at CTDC, but with massive amounts of community engagement, versus the projects done by the Humanities Council. On the other hand, the Humanities Council projects are bootstrapped with minimal funds, while one heritage trail costs about $250,000 to execute (although this includes $108,000 for the production and the erection of the signs).

Anyway, the narrative content for the Deanwood Heritage Trail makes connections to the city and to urban history outside of the strict boundaries of Deanwood and a overly parochial focus on the neighborhood, while Humanities Council projects tend to focus on the neighborhood without assisting the community volunteers in making broader connections, in elucidating how the history of the neighborhood connects the neighborhood to broader trends throughout the city and region, in terms of urban history, etc.

Two examples:

1. The history brochure for the Woodridge community lists 10 significant neighborhood landmarks.

a. It discusses the Queens(') (Family) Chapel. But it fails to discuss how the example of the Queen family creating a home based chapel to practice their Catholic religion during the time when Anglicanism was the official church of Maryland is one of the many illustrations of why the U.S. Constitution enshrines the separation of church and state and the freedom of religion within the First Amendment to the Constitution.

b. The brochure also lists two prominent schools, Taft Junior High, and Burroughs Elementary, and a photograph of Taft. But in the context of the architectural history of DC schools, Taft Junior High uses a similar design to many other schools constructed in DC during this time period. On the other hand, Burroughs is completely unique within the city, designed in the style of an English tudor mansion, and taking up the entire square, making a kind of estate. But Taft, more important perhaps to the people producing the brochure, gets the photo. (Sorry I don't have photos of the two to illustrate the difference, as well as photos of schools like Francis Junior High, which look similar to Taft.)

2. Another project was of Eastlake Gardens in far northeast DC. The presenter discussed the uniqueness of the building stock, that the houses were constructed by African-American builders and designed by African-American architects.

But I wonder if they compared their findings to the building permits database in the city. Because the images they showed were of Colonial revival type brick boxes built in other parts of the city during the same period--at least, my "new" neighborhood of Manor Park is full of these kinds of houses, virtually identical, built during the same time frame.

I am willing to bet that no architectural historians participate as part of the Humanities Council projects.

I find these examples troubling. What I find interesting about neighborhood history is how it communicates about broader trends in urban history, that what happens in neighborhoods in DC is similar, still unique of course, to what has happened elsewhere, and how subtle differences in different places can yield different results--or not. Figuring out why is very interesting. But we can't figure out why if we never make connections.

Something that discusses this is the blog entry "Thinking about local history," based on a presentation, that was actually made in one of the meetings of the Humanities Council DC Community History Program, in the summer of 2007.

Lately, I am thinking that local historians need to interact more with urban sociologists...