California Humanities has recently announced the 2017 Humanities For All Quick Grant awards. The Feminist Research Institute at UC Davis has been awarded $5,000 for its project entitled “Legacies of the Street: Seeking Transportation Justice.”

Humanities For All Quick Grant is a competitive grant program of California 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.

Legacies of the Street is a three-part series of community conversations on transportation and race in three major California regions: the San Francisco Bay area, Los Angeles County, and the Fresno area. These events will host a dialogue between local leaders of color in transportation advocacy and a humanities scholar expert in the region's history. The goal of these events is to contribute to an ongoing local transportation justice project and build connections that will allow academic research to serve community needs.

“The history of transportation is as much a story of exclusion, isolation, and destruction as it is one of connection and growth,” shares project leader Dr. Sarah McCullough. “Communities of color suffered disproportionately from the creation of California’s transportation infrastructure. This event will magnify the voices and priorities of marginalized communities.”

McCullough co-directs the project with Dr. Adonia Lugo, longtime partner in the Bicicultures project, committed to building sustainable and just transportation cultures.

“Everyone participates in the humanities in one way or another, and everyone has something to share to help us better understand and appreciate each other,” noted Tricia Wynne, chair of the board of California Humanities. "Our new Humanities for All Quick Grants program is a way to make support for public humanities programs more accessible across the state of California, amplifying voices we may not often hear."

Since 2003, California Humanities has supported close to 500 story projects and granted more than $4 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. California Humanities is an independent non-profit state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. For more information on California Humanities, please visit www.calhum.org.

Contact: Sarah McCullough, Associate Director, fri@ucdavis.edu