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The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage

Heritage Philadelphia Program

Heritage Philadelphia Program (HPP) is a think tank and funding organization in support of excellence and imagination in public history practice in the Philadelphia region. We believe that the future of public history depends on our willingness to take risks—to challenge audience expectations, push beyond hushed reverence and nostalgia, wander outside our comfort zones, and allow for healthy organizational dissonance. At HPP, we strive to support such risk taking within history organizations (and others) and are aiming to create a regional ecology—a laboratory—in which dynamic and thoughtful risk-taking can flourish. We strongly believe that the safe and predictable approaches to public history interpretation no longer work for most audiences. Traditional house tours, exhibitions, and other passive experiences don't engage the audiences we need to stay alive and fresh and relevant as a field. When we speak of imaginative and even playful approaches, we do not mean that we discourage projects with serious subject matter. We understand that public history interpretation includes the full range of the human experience, from the amusing to the everyday to the traumatic.  

The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage Announces 2012 Heritage Philadelphia Program Grant Recipients

The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage has awarded $766,325 through the Heritage Philadelphia Program (HPP) to six local organizations, including two first-time grantees. The 2012 funded projects investigate topical issues such as women's history, disability rights, science and environmentalism, and Muslim heritage. They push beyond conventional boundaries of historic interpretation and preservation, and place a strong emphasis on imaginative outreach to a broad range of audiences.

Heritage Philadelphia Program 2012 Press Release PDF >
Heritage Philadelphia Program 2012 Grantee Roster PDF >

Announcing the 2011 HPP Awards for Interpretive Inquiry and Investigation (Triple I Awards)

Heritage Philadelphia Program (HPP) of The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2011 HPP Awards for Interpretive Inquiry and Investigation. This professional development opportunity supports individual practitioners in the investigation of imaginative projects in public history.

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Photo at top: Jenny Sabin's Greenhouse and Cabinet of Future Fossils / exhibition experience at the American Philosophical Society. Photo by Brent Wahl.

Heritage