By Jebney Lewis, neighborhood artist, designer, and history enthusiast

During the past spring trimester, students from two classes at El Centro De Estudiantes, an alternative re-engagement high school in Philadelphia, participated in an innovative history and art-making pilot program funded by HPP and sponsored by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. I conceived of the program, which we called the Kensington Art of History Project, after engaging in historical research to inform the creation of Yard Songs, a musical requiem for Kensington’s steam locomotives that I performed last year. Once the performance was complete, I sought support from HPP to develop and test a high-school history curriculum that would parallel the work I’d done. The goal was to challenge students to synthesize the history of their school’s immediate neighborhood into personalized presentations that could be used to convey the legacy of the past to fellow students and community members.

by Rick Fink, Education Director, Cliveden of the National Trust

I had been anticipating this trip for months not only because I had never been to the South, but also because I am currently engaged in a reinterpretive process at Cliveden. The recently processed Chew Family Papers collection provide detailed accounts of this northern slave owning family, and we have been seeking ways to incorporate the story into our overall site history. I envisioned the trip to Virginia as a way to generate ideas as to how to interpret slavery.

In early June, Heritage Philadelphia Program took a group of 16 constituents on a three-day study trip to eight historic sites in Washington, D.C. and Virginia. The trip was facilitated by Seth Bruggeman, who coordinates the Public History program at Temple University and author of Here, George Washington was Born: Memory, Material Culture, and the Public History of a National Monument. The sites we visited were: Arlington House, the Robert E. Lee National Memorial, Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, James Madison’s Montpelier, George Washington’s Ferry Farm, Stratford Hall Plantation, Home of the Lees of Virginia, and George Washington Birthplace National Monument. 

A Professional Development Opportunity for Experimental Research
This professional development opportunity from Heritage Philadelphia Program (HPP) of The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage supports individual practitioners in the investigation of imaginative projects in public history. The HPP Scholars program is intended to advance HPP’s mission of encouraging and supporting excellence and innovation in public history interpretation.
    
HPP will award small grants to individuals to support experimental research that brings history alive in the following ways:
    
• connecting the present to the past in engaging and innovative ways,
• responding to audience /community interests or needs,
• demonstrating how history is integrally related to contemporary life and culture in all its breadth and diversity.
   
Awards of $5000 are available to individual applicants to support research and study time, materials, travel or other expenses related to the project.
$2500 is also available to the individual’s organization or employer to offset lost time or any hardship caused by the individual’s temporary absence.

Application Q&A with HPP staff
July 22, 2010
4:00–5:00PM
The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage
1608 Walnut St., 18th floor, Philadelphia

Interested applicants are invited to attend for an opportunity to learn more about the program. Please RSVP by July 19 to lkoloski@pcah.us.
     
To read more about the HPP Scholars program, and to download an application, please click here.

An update from the road on the Heritage Philadelphia Program Virginia trip from HPP Director Bill Adair...

We started history camp today—our trek through Virginia yesterday which we are calling "One Bus, Eight Sites, and Hundreds of Stories." With 20 of our constituents from the public history field in the Philly area, we are exploring the interpretation of history at very varied and potent sites throughout Virginia.

We started the trip at Arlington House in DC, Robert E. Lee's estate on a grand hill overlooking the city. Nary a mention of Lee's complicated life, including his slaveholding, by a jaded and bored park ranger there. She did, however, wax eloquent on minor architectural details and the circumference of hoop skirts.