2024 Winter Grants
PUBLIC HUMANITIES GRANTS:
Kohala Voices: Youth Documentary Film
North Kohala Community Resource Center
$10,000
This grant will support the training of Student Participants who will collect narratives from Kōhala kūpuna for the “Local Heroes” program fostering understanding and empathy between youth and kūpuna. The narratives will be compiled into digital videos that will serve as records of memories of local heroism and achievements of Kōhala’s kupuna. The videos will be posted on the Kōhala Oral History Project website where students across Hawai‘i can access the history, culture, and experiences of Kōhala.
The grantee will partner with Kōhala Unupa‘a, a youth program that connects students to cultural, historical, and environmental resources in North Kohala.
Filipino Voices in Hawai‘i
Filipino Association of University Women
$10,000
This project is focused on the Filipino experience in Hawai’i and will serve as an impetus to enhance understanding of the Filipino experience in Hawai‘i and its contribution to the history, values, and traditions of our State. An anthology of the stories will be made available to the public, along with a study guide to be used by teachers as tools to introduce Filipino history, culture, and values.
Celebrating Micronesian Voices
East-West Center
$10,000
This day-long celebration features live, in-person and live-streamed programming of performances from cultural and modern dance groups, cultural booths presentations, community partner demonstrations, food vendors, and tents housing weavers and carvers inviting conversations with members of the public sharing stories about sustaining their cultures. The project will also feature panel discussions sharing stories and lived experiences of Micronesians in Hawaiʻi generating dialogue about issues relevant to our community.
1898 Project
George and Marguerite Simson Biographical Research Center
$10,000
Supporting four scholars traveling from different locations around the United States and its territories who will participate in the culminating event of the 1898 Project, a multi-month observance and series of discussions and events. This five-day public conference focuses on the occupation and annexation of Hawaiʻi, Guam, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines by the United States in 1898 and the superimposition of American cultures over those of Indigenous peoples and other citizens.
Pigs from the Sea
Maui Academy of Performing Arts
$10,000
This play written by Maui playwright Kathy Collins, explores the role of cultural values in shaping a society’s response to momentous historical events and in forging connections between its constituent communities. The cultural values highlighted in the project are the Okinawan concept of yuimaaru (working together to help each other) and its Hawaiian analogues, aloha and kokua; and their juxtaposition illustrates that recognizing our shared values and shared humanity can serve to bridge divides between different cultures. The telling and sharing of our stories illustrates resilience and points the way to recovery, thereby leading us back to a sense of meaning and value in our lives.
Limuhinaula
Malama Learning Center
$10,000
This project is about the relationship between wāhine (women) and limu (seaweed) in past, present, and future Hawaiʻi. Wāhine have long been recognized as gatherers and holders of limu knowledge, yet they have not been celebrated and uplifted. Limu in Hawai’i is long celebrated as a dietary, social, medicinal and spiritual element in Hawaiian culture, but it also connects the mountain to the sea as limu is born in part from a healthy interaction between fresh and saltwater. This story will be shared through a 5-10 minute video about historical and contemporary issues through the relationship of wāhine and limu and the future of Hawaiʻi.
Korean Art & History Across the Pacific
University of Hawaii System
$10,000
This project is focused on the Korean (ethnic) history of Hawai‘i Island and issues at the heart of Hawai‘i’s development as an American territory which affected who came to Hawaii and how specific communities (such as Koreans) used the Islands as a base for activities that were cultural or political extensions of their homelands. These events also directly influenced American involvement in Asia and the Pacific. Public programs will include art exhibitions, traditional music performance, and lectures at Wailoa Art Center.
Asia Pacific Dance Festival 2024
University of Hawaii System
$10,000
This project focuses on hula and the many ways in which it is embedded in the history, culture, physical environment, traditional belief systems, and transformations of the Hawaiian Islands. These elements will be inter-connected with the relevance of hula in the past, the present, and the future, its contribution to how the Islands are presented and represented, and its continuing importance in such issues as land use and climate change. Project attendees will have the opportunity to listen to the voices of many generations and hear from experts who explore history, analyze literature, and describe philosophies, and they will be exposed to some of the ways in which these things impact today’s community, and how they are physically presented in hula.
Lauhala Weaving Knowledges/Practices
Enlivened Cooperative
$10,000
This project supports research and development of a co-designed exhibition that celebrates hala, a plant central to traditional Hawaiian material culture and cosmology. Ulana lauhala – the weaving of the hala (Pandanus tectorius) leaves is a key Hawaiian cultural practice kept alive by practitioners, communities and intergenerational learning spaces. This project addressees neglected questions relating to the impacts of colonialism and capitalism on craft history in Hawaii; it engages ulana lauhala as lens to research the destruction of hala through plantations and development as well as the possibilities for hala reforestation and ulana lauhala regeneration.
Hawai’i’s Untold Africana Experiences
Obama Hawaiian Africana Museum
$10,000
Celebrating the 250th anniversary of Anthony Allen’s birth (1774-1835), this project highlights the humanities by focusing on our kuleana to the community by creating spaces for more diverse voices, to learn about the Hawai‘i Africana experiences and their interconnectivity with the Indigenous Hawaiian people, and ground the community in understanding this history through two public programs, and one in-school program at Washington Middle School.
AI Impact on the Humanities
Hawaii Book & Music Festival
$10,000
This project supports two-day programming within the 2024 Hawai‘i Book & Music Festival focused on diagnosing the impact of AI in a wide range of the Humanities and addressing the potential for AI to enhance human agency and creativity. Other topics that may be explored in these discussions are: the impact of AI on journalism, social media, and PR; impact of AI on Hawai‘i’s political discussion; distortions of historical narratives, among many others.
Printer Lei Project – Risography
Honolulu Printmakers
$10,000
This project is a playful twist on the word Printerly. Ten printmakers will be paired up to collaborate with ten local lei makers to share knowledge about the history of lei making in Hawaii and will use Risograph machines to print a large edition of educational posters telling the story of lei making in Hawaii. This significant project will bring people from diverse communities together to learn and exchange about a common topic, the culture of lei making in Hawai‘i. The heart of the project will be the storytelling and exchange of cultural ideas taking place, both among collaborators from different backgrounds, and between the collaborators and the public their work will reach.
Sense of Place / Place of Sense
Maui Arts & Cultural Center
$10,000
This exhibition will explore the multi-faceted meaning of community at a critical moment of change for Maui. Through partnerships with prominent community knowledge-bearers, Hawai‘i-focused artists, and local schools, the gallery space will transform into numerous built environments that delve into 5 significant themes and issues. The exhibition will tap into the potential for art to bring about awareness, conversation, and connection, moving beyond the commercialized “Maui” image to a deeper level of engagement with the land and the people who have made us into who we are today. This portion of the exhibition will include a historical look at the communities of Maui through photographic and written documentation.
PRESERVATION & ACCESS GRANTS
Outdoor Circle at Hawaii State Archives
Outdoor Circle
$10,000
The Outdoor Circle (TOC) is one of Hawai‘i’s oldest and significant organizations in the history of our state. This project will preserve and make their historical papers accessible. The humanities and wealth of historical areas touched upon by this organization are many–Women’s Rights, Community Organizing, the City Beautiful Movement, Parks and Playgrounds Movement, Public Health in the Progressive Era, Environmental History, Military History in Hawaii, Political Action, Boycotts, Law Creation & Legal Advocacy for bills, Lawsuits on behalf of the public, Creation of the Environmental Court, Anti-Billboard Campaigns, Temperance Movement–and many others.
2024 Spring Grants
PUBLIC HUMANITIES GRANTS:
Ka Ulana ʻAna I Ka Piko
Hui Noʻeau
$9,050
This grant will support building a cohort with Native Hawaiian culture-based educators and master weavers, Lloyd Harold “Kumulāʻau” Sing Jr., May Haunani Balino-Sing and Maui high school students. As Maui is home to very few master weavers, this program is vital to ensuring that regional artistic details, intricate techniques and cultural significance of this craft are not lost. This project will aid in making concerted efforts to train and inspire the next generation. Throughout the project period there will be guided activities such as: an educational art exhibition of students’ completed artwork; a panel discussion led by the humanities leadership, cohort members, and invited Maui-based cultural practitioners; and publication of an in-depth educational pamphlet that will engage the community in discussions about healing humanity’s
mauli ola through the proliferation and perpetuation of ancestral knowledge and indigenous lifestyles.
Hānau Ka Moʻolelo Exhibition & Programs
Donkey Mill Art Center
$10,000
This grant will support the Hānau Ka Moʻolelo exhibition and programs which will focus on the transformative power of moʻolelo—the stories, traditions, histories and remembrances that serve as evidence of collective and individual experiences and unfolding memories. Artworks by underrepresented artists compel participants to consider alternative perspectives and ways of understanding the past and the power of telling one’s own story. This project aims to address and respond to the humanities questions through engagement activated by art, art making, and discussion-based exchange.
Bamboo Ridge Oral History Project 2025
Bamboo Ridge Press
$9,000
This grant will support not only the documentation of the history of the press and journal’s founding but will also support and document the understanding of the cultural and historical contexts of the 1970s and 1980s. Previous stages of this project were focused on those at the center of the history; editors, writers, scholars and those directly involved with the press or with direct history of the historical context. This grant will support the next phase aiming to widen the scope of the project and look at the shifts and departures in the critical period following the 70s through the 90s during which the Press was not only sustained but became a central part of Hawaiʻi literary culture. Critical debates were being had regarding the development of and role of “local literature” and definitions of this literature as it was becoming more established and mainstream.
Hawaiʻi Triennial 2025 Docent Program
Honolulu Biennial Foundation dba Hawaii Contemporary
$10,000
This grant will support the Hawaiʻi Triennial 2025: Aloha Nō Docent Tour Program. This will allow for interactive learning with trained docents that have knowledge about the artworks and the cultural, historical, and artist context that they address. The tours also allow for participants to ask questions and expand the conversation or subjects that the docent presents. Docent tours will take place at HT’s Hub, Bishop Museum and Honolulu Museum of Art.
PRESERVATION & ACCESS GRANTS
Hawaiʻi Ma Kahaone Beaches of Hawaiʻi
Hawaiian Historical Society
$10,000
This grant will support the work of the preservation of photographs, photo negatives, slides, and publication notes that were bequeathed to HHS by John Cark, a well-known community researcher, scholar and author who has spent his life documenting Hawaiʻi’s surf spots and shorelines. In 2016, John Clark donated approximately 800 images taken from 1974 to 1989 associated with his first four publications about Hawai‘i’s beaches. Database access via HHS website’s database, and in-person research of the collection.
Annual Reports & Newsletters 1907-2006
Palama Settlement
$10,000
This grant will support the digitization of Palama Settlement’s annual reports and newsletters. Annual reports recap Palama Settlement’s activities, programs, and services and provide audited financial statements for its stakeholders. Reports offer insight about the area’s community needs with program objectives supported by demographic statistics and quantitative analysis. Also, preservation activities for Palama Settlement’s published reports for two social services programs: Pākōlea and In-Community Treatment. These publications documented the social, political, cultural, and economic history of the Kalihi-Pālama communities. Access is via PS’ website’s database and in-person research of the collection.