COMMUNITY HISTORY

• Clinton Hill Community Action, Newark
• Community Partnership for Egg Harbor Township Schools, Inc., Egg Harbor Township
• East Trenton Collaborative, Trenton
• Enslaved African Memorial Committee, Teaneck
• Old Mill Hill Society, Trenton
• Piscataway Public Library, Piscataway
• Raices Cultural Center, New Brunswick
• Salvation and Social Justice, Woodbury
• 1719 William Trent House Museum, Trenton

 
Participants will receive instruction on public history best practices, develop projects in a cohort environment that encourages collaboration, and receive funding from NJCH to launch projects in their communities. This educational program is for organizations that have a great interest in exploring their community’s history but do not have professional historians on staff to guide their process.

Community History participants will work closely with their communities to learn about, engage with, and share untold and underrepresented stories from those communities. The ideal Community History participant will see value in incorporating history into their organization’s work. Some examples of questions you might be considering:

• How can our organization engage with community histories and share these histories with our community members?
• How can we preserve, interpret, and amplify our local histories?
• How can we move beyond the traditional narratives about our local histories to co-create narratives that reflect our community’s experiences and values?
• How can learning about our community’s history help us to understand our present circumstances and look to the future?

Between sessions, each program participant will work closely with community members back home to develop and build a history project. Projects might take many different forms; thinking about what form the project takes will be an important part of the process for all participants. At the end of the program, all participants will share their projects in a showcase to take place in October 2021.

Organizations accepted into the Community History program are required to identify 2 representatives that are able to participate in all learning session and program activities. Those participants will also act as primary community contacts. Each organization will receive an honorarium of $1,000 to defray the cost of participation as well as a grant of $3,000 to support the development and implementation of their project.

What is community history?
June 2, 2021

Shared Authority
June 9, 2021

Humanities Program Models
June 16, 2021

Project Planning and Evaluation, Part 1
June 23, 2021

Evaluation, Part 2
July 21, 2021

Outreach & Marketing
August 4, 2021

Grant Writing & Fundraising
September 8, 2021

Future Planning
September 22, 2021

Showcase
October 2021

Kristin is a public historian and scholar of early American social history at Rutgers University. She coordinates the Public History Program at Rutgers, including the Certificate in Public History and Public History Internship, and is also an Associate Graduate Faculty Member in the Cultural Heritage and Preservation Studies Program. O’Brassill-Kulfan holds a PhD in History from the University of Leicester and an MA in Modern History from Queens University Belfast. She consults regularly on public history projects, curating exhibits, managing archival collections, and creating inclusive public programming.

Gigi is NJCH’s Director of Programs, where she oversees all of the council’s public humanities program offerings. Prior to coming to NJCH in 2016, Gigi spent more than a decade in museum education, leading education and public engagement initiatives for the Science History Institute and American Philosophical Society most recently. She is also a theatre producer and performer. Gigi has a BA in history and theatre from Drew University and an MA in Performance Studies from King’s College London and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

Any applicant must be willing to work collaboratively with community members to develop and implement a public history project. The most competitive applicants will demonstrate strong personal or organizational ties to the community whose history they hope to explore and a commitment to raising untold stories or underrepresented points of view, leading to a fuller and more nuanced understanding of the past.

Not eligible:

• For-profit organizations or businesses.
• Colleges or universities.
• K-12 educational institutions.
• Professional history institutions.
• Individuals.

Community History is a process-driven program that combines instruction in public history with development of a community-engaged history project. Those who wish to learn more about how public history works and have either not begun or are early in the process of developing a project would be a good fit for this program.

If you have any questions about your eligibility for this program or program components, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Gigi Naglak, Director of Programs
Rachel Barber, Program Intern

 
A primary objective of the Community History program will be to help you figure out the most effective way to share the history you’ve discovered with the public through the creation of a project. Click below, to learn about examples of public history projects that have taken place in New Jersey, some large and some small:

• Highland Park African American History Project
• Vietnamese Boat People
• Queer Newark Oral History Project
• Latino Oral History: Justice

Community History is a process-driven program that combines instruction in public history with development of a community-engaged history project. Those who wish to learn more about how public history works and have either not begun or are early in the process of developing a project would be a good fit for this program.