Mass Humanities has awarded nearly $135,000 in grants to eight Pioneer Valley organizations to support projects sharing the stories of underrepresented people and communities, from a formerly enslaved couple who escaped the U.S. South to today’s agricultural workers who help put food on our tables.
The grants are part of what the Northampton-based nonprofit calls the Expand Massachusetts Stories initiative, which was introduced last year. Greenfield, Ashfield and Shelburne Falls groups are benefiting from this most recent round of awards.
In Greenfield, The LAVA Center will use its $20,000 for a program that highlights people involved in agriculture by, as program notes put it, making visible “the too-often overlooked stories of indispensable, essential agricultural workers, primarily through oral history/story and photo documentation.”
“This is a wonderful opportunity to extend our project into doing a deep dive into the invisible and most indispensable people who live in Franklin County,” said LAVA Center Coordinator Jan Maher.
Piti Theatre Co. in Shelburne Falls received $11,500 to make a film about Greenfield resident John Putnam, a freed slave who owned a barbershop and became well-known for his contributions as a fiddler and square dance caller. The effort expands on last year’s work to make a film about scientist and abolitionist Dexter Marsh through Piti Theatre’s children’s program.
“The idea of this project is to engage younger people about the history here and be an outreach tool for the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association” in Deerfield, explained Piti Theatre Co-Artistic Director Jonathan Mirin.
Additionally, Ohketeau Cultural Center in Ashfield received $20,000 for its project, “The Living Presence of Our History.” This ongoing panel discussion with Indigenous leaders will share stories and struggles of Indigenous people living in Massachusetts and beyond on a conversational and intimate level.
In Hampshire County, Historic Northampton received $12,250 to record oral histories of lesbian women of color who moved to the city in the 1970s and ’80s, a time when lesbian culture was forming there.
Meanwhile, Self-Evident Education, an independent company in Florence that works with different school districts, has received $20,000 for “If You Cross This Boundary, We All Die.” The multimedia film and accompanying curriculum will be about William and Ellen Craft, an enslaved couple who made an ingenious escape from Georgia in the mid 19th century and came to Massachusetts.
“We see these projects as the sparks for a much-needed reimagining of our past and a new vision for our future,” Brian Boyles, executive director of Mass Humanities, said in a statement.
The grants come from a partnership between Mass Humanities and the Mass Cultural Council as well as a $700,000 partnership with the Barr Foundation of Boston.
This latest round of Expand Massachusetts Stories grants from Mass Humanities totals $713,876 and has been distributed to 42 nonprofit organizations in the state. The majority of funded projects include leadership roles for people who identify as people of color, according to Mass Humanities, which the group says “is a sign of progress toward one of the central goals for this new grant program.”
Other awards include:
■$10,900 grant to The Wistariahurst Foundation for “Reliquary of Blackness: A Dive into Black Families in Holyoke,” a project that seeks to establish the history of three Black families in Holyoke at the end of the 19th century and the turn of the 20th century.
■A nearly $20,000 grant to the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College for “Boundless: Indigenous Art and Stories Across Massachusetts,” an educational initiative that will expand the access and reach of local Indigenous objects and histories from the “Boundless” exhibit to K-12 classrooms through developing digital teaching resources and curricula.
■$19,920 to the Hampshire County Food Policy Council for “Seeding the Story Garden: Building a Community Food Story Archive in Hampshire County,” an effort to establish a digital repository of stories about food experiences and culture, focused on elevating the voices of underrepresented residents.
Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com. Bella Levavi can be reached at blevavi@recorder.com or 413-930-4579.