PBN Says RICH Helps Tell Community Stories

A recent feature article in The Providence Business News highlights RICH's support of the amazing and integral organizations and individuals who help tell the story of Rhode Island. We'd love to help tell your story, too, so send us updates and we'll help get spread the word!

The following article was featured in the Providence Business News (PBN) February 23 edition.  For those who subscribe to PBN, click here to access the article online. 

RICH Encourages Telling of Community Stories
By Denise Perreault
PBN Staff Writer
PBN PHOTO/STEPHANIE EWENS

It’s a small group with a big mission – enriching Rhode Island through the humanities.

Housed on Westminster Street with a full-time staff of four and an annual budget of approximately $650,000, the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities (RICH) has been in existence 36 years. But the independent, nonprofit organization has made significant changes recently to make more grant funding available, augment its endowment and better illustrate the pivotal role of the humanities in our culture through a series of practical workshops slated for the spring.

From a history of apple orchards, to memorializing the World War II experiences of hospice patients, providing the initial funding for a film on Zambarano Hospital’s history and helping a community explore its ethnic roots, the council has quietly funded thousands of projects over the years aimed at helping Rhode Islanders better understand their world, their community and themselves.

“The only way to understand our current situation and make good decisions for our future is by looking at the decisions we have made in the past, what the outcome of those decisions were, what values were sacrificed,” said Mary-Kim Arnold, a Brown University graduate who has been executive director of the council since July 2007. “The issues we have in this state, immigration, social justice, even the environment, the only way to understand them is to constantly reflect on what people have done before.”

For 2009, the council awarded major grants to 16 organizations, totaling $106,000, during a Statehouse ceremony earlier this month. Twenty-seven groups had applied for funding. Among those receiving 2009 grants were: the South Kingstown School Department, Slater Mill in Pawtucket,Rhode Island Historical Society, Johnson & Wales University, Salve Regina University’s Pell Center, Mixed Magic Theatre and the Seabee Museum and Memorial Park in North Kingstown. Minigrants range between $1,000 to $2,000 and major grants, $5,000 to $10,000.

“It’s amazing what people are able to do with such a small grant,” Arnold observed, while discussing RICH’s initial research grant of $2,000 about two years ago to documentary filmmaker David Bettencourt and writer G. Wayne Miller. The pair produced a one-hour documentary, On the Lake: Life and Love in a Distant Place, a history of Zambarano and the tuberculosis epidemic a century ago, which will be shown on WSBE-TV Channel 36, Rhode Island PBS, on March 25 and later dates. The film premiered Feb. 13 at the Stadium Theatre in Woonsocket.

In 2007, workers at Home & Hospice Care of Rhode Island in Pawtucket realized that some of their terminally ill patients harbored amazing stories about their experiences during World War II, whether on the battlefield or the home front. With a $10,000 grant from RICH, state folklorist Michael Bell was hired to train 12 hospice volunteers to compile oral histories from 10 veterans at the end of their lives.

Combined with archival film footage of the war and interviews with the volunteers, the oral histories are now part of a documentary film that is available on the Hospice Care Web site (www.hhcri.net). Copies were given to the veterans’ family members and, according to SueEllen Kroll, co-director of programs for RICH, a re-edited version is being prepared for broadcast on Channel 36 on a date to be announced.

What especially pleases Arnold and her staff is the fact that the work of the volunteers trained to compile oral histories continues. “We are still interviewing veterans and saving stories,” said Bobbi Wexler, volunteer program manager at the hospice. Hospice patients with unusual life stories also are being interviewed and their memories preserved for family members, she added.

In Little Compton, a Council for the Humanities grant helped the town explore its Portuguese roots with an exhibit and festival, complete with folk songs and dances like those of the early settlers, and, in South Kingstown, committee funds will support the development of curricula materials so students can study the legacy of slavery, racism and social injustice in their own community. The Seabees in North Kingstown will use RICH funds to erect signs for its museum on Post Road.

Kroll is planning a series of workshops for the spring, new to the council, which will be open to grantees and the public, with the theme “on a shoestring.” One aspect to be stressed, Kroll said, is how to use the plethora of free software technology now available, such as pod-casting and blogging. Other ideas in the works include a workshop on compiling oral histories, on public relations with Council for the Humanities Communications and Development Director Kristin C. Sawyer, and on how to get a local film financed and distributed.

Shortly after Arnold came on board, “we could see the economic landscape shifting,” she said. “We could see that the need only was going to increase and so we had an obligation to increase funding rather than decrease it.” A position of program director was eliminated. The money saved went to funding for local grants.

The major funding source for the council is the NEH, which requires the organization and its grantees to provide matching services for every dollar received in the form of in-kind support, volunteer hours or cash contributions, so no one receives council funding for free. The organization also receives grants from private foundations, such as the Rhode Island Foundation, from private individuals and corporations, and every year holds a “Celebration of the Humanities” party to raise money. This year’s event is scheduled for Oct. 19.

The group is now working on a plan to increase its endowment fund. Even though the economy is weak, “it has to be done,” Arnold said. “It may take a little bit longer than we would like, but we think our [grantee] organizations make a case for it every day.” The current endowment consists of “a few small accounts, which are not doing well,” she said. “It’s time for us to be a little bit bolder.”