America's Historical and Cultural Organizations Planning Grants

America’s Historical and Cultural Organizations grants support traveling or long-term museum exhibitions, library-based projects, interpretation of historic places or areas, interpretive Web sites, or other project formats that creatively engage audiences in exploring humanities ideas and questions. Planning grants can be used to plan, refine, and develop the content and interpretive approach of a project. Applicants should have already begun consulting with scholars to help shape the humanities content of the project, and with other programming advisers appropriate to the project’s format. Applications for panel exhibitions are accepted only from organizations other than museums, such as libraries or library systems. Panel exhibitions must travel beyond a single site and must also incorporate at least one other program format. Applications that make innovative use of emerging technologies are encouraged. Projects should do more than simply provide a digital archive of material. They should offer new ways of contextualizing and interpreting information that engages public audiences interactively in exploring humanities ideas and questions. Applications may, for example, include plans to create Web sites, PDA tours and resources, podcasts, virtual environments, wiki formats or others that utilize user-generated content, virtual imaging, GIS mapping, online scholar-led discussions, video on demand, streaming video, games, or other digital components. Digital components should rest on sound humanities scholarship and enhance the project’s humanities content for the general public in ways that take unique advantage of the chosen technology. Support is also available to expand previously funded NEH projects through the addition of new, complementary formats: for example, developing a series of reading and discussion programs around an exhibition or film, or using digital formats to add new interpretive dimensions to a project. The new formats should complement and expand the project’s original humanities content in unique ways and should reach audiences that were not served by the original project. The program also supports Chairman’s Special Award projects. These are more complex projects of national visibility that would be of compelling interest to the general public, show exceptional promise of dealing with important humanities ideas in new ways, and are likely to reach large audiences. These goals can be accomplished through combining a variety of program formats, forming creative collaborations among diverse institutions, and expanding the scope and reach of the project.