On July 14, 2017 Recovering Voices will begin accepting Community Research Program applications for the 2018 calendar year. Each year Recovering Voices, an initiative of the Smithsonian within the National Museum of Natural History’s Department of Anthropology, supports community scholars in their efforts towards language and knowledge reclamation and revitalization. We are excited to finish out 2017, which is our sixth year of supporting community efforts through the Community Research Program and we look forward to 2018.
The purpose of the Community Research Program is to support indigenous communities in their efforts to save, document, and enliven their languages, cultures, and knowledge systems. Supported research projects bring groups of community scholars from around the world to the Smithsonian to examine specific objects, specimens, and archival materials related to their heritage and to engage in a dialogue with Smithsonian collections and archives staff in order to recover and revitalize their language and knowledge. Thus far, Recovering Voices has supported fifteen separate community research visits with one more planned for Fall 2017. The impact of these research visits on the community has been significant. Likewise, the visits have been invaluable for the Smithsonian collections and archives records. With each visit, new knowledge and important information about the objects and documents comes to light and is added to the records. The result is that the historic collections at the Smithsonian are revived and updated, as are the language and knowledge systems of the visiting community scholars. We provide several supplemental documents to assist applicants in preparing proposal materials. This call for proposals happens on an annual schedule so if you are not ready to apply by the deadline, you have plenty of time to prepare a proposal for the following year. Projects selected for support in 2017 will take place in 2018.
The 2018 Community Research Program call for proposals will close on September 15, 2017. Each proposal can request up to $10,000 in funding support. Logistics support for funded projects is provided by the Recovering Voices office. Interdisciplinary, intergenerational and collaborative projects are encouraged. The guidelines and materials required for the application package are available on our website: http://recoveringvoices.si.edu/resourcesandgrants/grants.html. To learn about past supported projects visit our Community Research page. You will also find information about the most recent projects on our blog.
Comments