Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Call for Proposals: Smithsonian Institution's Recovering Voices' Community Research Grant Program

On July 15, 2015 Recovering Voices will begin accepting Community Research Grant applications for 2016. Each year Recovering Voices, an initiative of the Smithsonian Institution, supports community scholars in their efforts towards language and knowledge reclamation and revitalization. 2016 will be no different.

The purpose of the Community Research Grant program is to support indigenous communities in their efforts to save, document, and enliven their languages, cultures, and knowledge systems. These grants bring groups of community scholars from around the world to the Smithsonian to examine specific objects, specimens, and documents related to their heritage and to engage in a dialogue with Smithsonian collections and archives staff in order to recover and revitalize their language and knowledge.

Thus far, Recovering Voices has supported eight separate community research visits with two more planned for Fall 2015. The impact of these research visits on the community has been significant. Likewise, the visits have also been invaluable for the Smithsonian collections and archives records. With each visit, new knowledge and important information about the objects and documents is garnered and added to the records. The result is that the historic collections at the Smithsonian are revived and updated, as are the language and knowledge systems of the visiting community scholars.
This year, several supplemental documents have been provided to assist applicants in preparing proposal materials. Included in those documents are example budgets and budget justifications, both of which are required components of the application. Also important to note is the change in the application cycle. In the past, Recovering Voices held 2 calls per year. Moving forward, Recovering Voices will open the call for proposals once annually. Projects selected for funding will be for the whole of 2016. The next call for proposals after this will take place in July 2016, and subsequently July 2017.


The 2016 Community Research Grant call for proposals will close on September 15, 2015. Each proposal can request up to $10,000. Interdisciplinary projects are encouraged. The guidelines and materials required for the application package are all included on our website, http://recoveringvoices.si.edu/resourcesandgrants/grants.html. To learn about past grant-funded projects visit our Community Grants page. You will also find information about recent projects on our blog.

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