SANTA ANA PUBLIC LIBRARY/ GCAC COLLABORATION RECEIVES $10,000 CAL HUMANITIES 2013 COMMUNITY STORIES GRANT!

Cal Humanities has recently announced the 2013 Community Stories grant awardees. The Santa Ana Public Library has been awarded $10,000 for its project entitled The Raitt St. Chronicles: A Survivors Oral History.

Community Stories is a competitive grant program of Cal Humanities. Grants are awarded to projects that give expression to the extraordinary variety of histories and experiences of California’s places and people to ensure that the stories can be shared widely. These narratives help us find our commonalities, appreciate our differences, and learn something new about how to live well together.

To accomplish these goals, the Santa Ana Public Library will partner with California State University Fullerton’s Grand Central Art Center, working through GCAC Artist in Residence Jules Rochielle, CSUF American Studies Lecturer Sharon Sekhon and artist/education Christina Sanchez, to train teens to collect oral histories from the Townsend/Raitt neighborhood. An additional academic partner on the project will be Ana Elizabeth Rosas, Assistant Professor, Chicano/Latino Studies, School of Social Sciences, Assistant Professor, History, School of Humanities and Director of Undergraduate Studies, Chicano-Latino Studies at University of California, Irvine. Project mentors will train youth participants to collect, archive, and share the underreported stories of survival from one of Santa Ana’s most at-risk communities. Over the course of 12 months the participants will record video interviews with survivors of violence and make them available on various social media websites. These will serve as the basis of a 15-minute mini-documentary on the history of the neighborhood that will be presented in various local venues as well as online.

â“With our state’s incredible diversity, fostering communication and connecting people to a range of ideas is vital for our general welfare,â” said Ralph Lewin, president and CEO of Cal Humanities. â“Our grant award enables awardees to pursue the important work of engaging new audiences in conversations around stories of significance to Californians.â”

Since 2003, Cal Humanities has supported approximately 400 story projects and granted over $2.8 million to enable communities to voice, record, and share histories – many previously untold or little known. Through video, photography, murals, zines, documentary theater, audio projects, and more, these collected stories have been shared with broad audiences, both live and virtual. Cal Humanities is an independent non-profit state partner of the National endowment for the Humanities.

For more information on Cal Humanities, please visit www.calhum.org.

THE SANTA ANA PUBLIC LIBRARY IS LOCATED AT: 26 CIVIC CENTER PLAZA (corner of Civic Center and Ross)