Grants:Humanities-and-the-Arts Integrated into PHC's Primary Grant Program


Jack Kerouac listening to himself on the radio (1959, gelatin silver print). From There Is No Eye: Photographs by John Cohen, an exhibition at the Silver Eye Center for Photography. Presented in conjunction with a film screening, interactive musical experience and book signing.

In 2008, PHC is integrating Humanities-and-the-Arts Grants into its primary grant program. Starting in January, projects combining the arts and humanities will be supported by PHC's Humanities Grants.

Humanities-and-the-Arts' Achievements
A joint venture with the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Humanities-and-the-Arts Grants helped make the humanities a vital part of arts programming in Pennsylvania. They first were launched in 2000. With these grants, arts organizations, public libraries, schools and other nonprofits collaborated with outstanding artists, arts scholars and journalists to sponsor arts and humanities programs. Public art projects, plays based on oral history, lecture-demonstrations, artists' workshops and other quality programs reached historically underserved communities—small towns, rural communities, inner city neighborhoods and ethnically diverse groups—and engaged nontraditional audiences for the arts. They took place in 50 of Pennsylvania's 67 counties.

Humanities-and-the-Arts was an innovative initiative unique to Pennsylvania. Evaluators for the National Endowment for the Humanities, including the New York State Council on the Arts' Program Director for Folk Arts Robert Baron, pronounced PHC and PCA's initiative "the most successful and extensive collaboration of a state humanities council with a state arts council in the nation." "We are pleased that the initiative was a landmark venture and, more importantly, that it made PHC a stronger part of the arts community in Pennsylvania," remarked PCA Executive Director Philip Horn.

PHC's Continuing Commitment to the Arts
As a result of Humanities-and-the-Arts, PHC now has a greater commitment to the arts and offers several resources for arts programming.

  • Arts organizations and other nonprofits with projects combining the arts and humanities are invited to apply for a Humanities Grant. For programs designed by nonprofits committed to lifelong learning.

  • Arts presentations are an important part of the 2008-09 Commonwealth Speakers program.

  • PHC continues its collaboration with PCA with Arts Commentary, which gives awards to individuals working in the arts and humanities. For nonfiction work that educates the public about the contemporary arts. The awards will be offered again in 2008.

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