GSC invited to present at the Mellon Foundation's 2023 Humanities in Place Grantee Convening

[IMG credit - HIP Team]

Our communications manager and GSC's resident wordsmith, Alexandria Cruz, accepted an invitation to attend and present at the Mellon Foundation's 2023 Humanities in Place Convergence at their headquarters in NYC on December 7th and 8th. Twenty Humanities in Place (HIP) grantees from around the United States and Puerto Rico came together to meet the HIP team and discuss the impact the grant has had on each of our organizations and communities.

"It was a beautiful experience to see each organization's impact on their communities and meet the HIP team in person. I was very nervous, but the team put me at ease and made the day a transformative experience." 

A few highlights included the restoration and reimagining of the Historic Jewel Theater in Oklahoma and the Victoria Theater Arts Center of Minnesota, two projects separated by distance but rooted in the same desire to preserve these historic cultural gems in their respective communities. Tara Rodríguez Besosa Co-Founder and Creative Director of Departamento de la Comida de Puerto Rico, Inc., helped to develop decentralized farming cooperatives across Puerto Rico to restore food sovereignty on the island, a mission that is near and dear to the GSC community. Dr. Kū Kahakalau, founder of Kū-A-Kanaka Kitchen in Hawaii, also builds Native food sovereignty in her community by combining traditional cooking methods and ingredients with language-based learning. In other Native projects, Cara Dukepoo, the Director of Community Programs at Nààts’íilid Initiative in Arizona, creates hands-on housing opportunities for the Dineh community using traditional and contemporary building methods. Fabiola Santiago, Founder and Executive Director of Mi Oaxaca is fighting to keep traditional plants like Agave under the stewardship of Native peoples and build certifications around its use in Mezcal. 

A huge thank you to the folks in the Humanities in Place team for putting this together and for allowing GSC to grow and make careers like these possible for grassroots BIPOC movements. 

About Humanities in Place

Humanities in Place supports a fuller, more complex telling of American histories and lived experiences by deepening the range of how and where our stories are told and by bringing a wider variety of voices into the public dialogue. Working with media, heritage and public spaces, history museums and other institutions, and conveners of shared experiences—including the digital or ephemeral—we strive to expand the public expression of the histories that have made us and the values we hold. Our program works across and within diverse communities, encouraging bold, innovative rethinking of past practice, as well as visionary new approaches for how to collectively understand, uplift, and celebrate more complete stories about who we are.