Fall 2025 Project Grant Awards

Barnet Public Library—One Foot Forward
Barnet, VT
$4476 to help fulfill a rural library’s mission to grow community connection and self-reliance through resilience programming and collections.

Brewster Pierce Memorial School Partners in Education (PIE)—Huntington kids’ story slam with Ferene Paris and All Heart Inspirations
Huntington, VT
$5000 for a five-day artist residency with storyteller Ferene Paris to guide Pre K–4 students in finding their voices, culminating in a student-led community story slam open to families and neighbors.

The Bridge at Ezili’s Respite—Healing through Nature: The Land-Based Edition of Harm Reduction Heroes
Groton, VT
$5000 to support a curriculum tailored for use in nature-based contexts that empowers participants to reduce harms associated with substance use or other behavioral health challenges.

CCTV Center for Media and Democracy—Neighborhood Media Internships
Burlington, VT
$4500 to help CCTV’s Neighborhood Media Interns, aged 17–22, learn together in a supportive cohort while developing storytelling, technical, and civic skills through producing videos on democracy and community life.

The Civic Standard—Hardwick State 2026: A Town-Wide Free University
Hardwick, VT
$5000 to support a town-wide, weekend-long, pop-up, free university where anyone can teach and everyone can learn through humanities-rich, community-led classes, workshops, and performances.

Dailey Memorial Library—Material Culture Studies Book Discussion Series
Derby, VT
$1184 so the library can host a book discussion series focusing upon material culture in literature through four titles selected by facilitator Rachael Cohen.

Good Shepherd Lutheran Church—The Talk
Jericho, VT
$5,000 for a forum that addresses issues of interest and concern affecting BIPOC and other marginalized communities.

Junction Arts & Media—White River Indie Festival of Art and Ideas
White River Junction, VT
$4500 to expand an annual film festival that embraces the full range of vibrant, locally-grown “indie” arts to broaden engagement in the arts and exchange of ideas to all members of the community.

Retreat Farm—Resilience Lecture Series
Brattleboro, VT
$4500 to launch a resilience-themed lecture series in Retreat Farm’s North Barn venue.

Richard Kemp Center—Community Mural Project
Burlington, VT
$5000 to support a large mural featuring a young Black girl offering a red clover—Vermont’s state flower—as a gesture of welcome, with community participation.

SafeArt—Youth Empowerment Program
Chelsea, VT
$4500 for a program that helps address the critical need for well-being and social justice programming for youth in Vermont.

Telling My Story—Mental Health Disparities for LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC Community Members in the Upper Valley
Wilder, VT
$5000 for four multi-day workshops focusing on mental health disparities in the Upper Valley for community members who identify as either LGBTQIA+ or BIPOC.

Treleven, Inc.—Fireside Friends
Vergennes, VT
$3000 to encourage young people to create graphic depictions of the issues most on their minds: current culture, threats to democracy, environmental challenges, changing self-images, paired with historical and participatory learning.

Unleashing the Power of Partnership for Learning, Inc.—Leading Together: Strengthening Youth Voice in Vermont’s Democracy
Waterbury, VT
$5000 to engage youth and adults in dialogue, research, and storytelling to elevate youth voice, build civic leadership, and reimagine decision-making, strengthening civic health and intergenerational democracy in Vermont.

Vermont Abenaki Artists Association—Interpreting the Exhibition “Parley and Protocol, War and Peace”
Vergennes, VT
$5000 for an exhibit that explores Abenaki life during the colonial and Revolutionary era, highlighting diplomacy, divided loyalties, and daily survival. Abenaki scholars will shape interpretive content to share with museum audiences. (This project is supported with funds to celebrate our nation’s 250^th anniversary provided by the Vermont 250^th Anniversary Commission.)

The Vermont Arts Council awarded an additional $24,800 to five organizations using funds provided by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Vermont 250^th Anniversary Commission to commemorate our nation’s 250^th anniversary. Although these projects came through our Project Grant application process, they will be administered by the Arts Council. 

Bennington Museum—Vermont’s Role in the Fight for American Independence
Bennington, VT
$5,000 to support a re-location, re-interpretation, and exhibit expansion relating to the Revolutionary War in Bennington and the surrounding region in honor of the 250th anniversary of American Independence.

Brian J. Boland Memorial Foundation—Celebrating Thetford: Eight Villages, One Community
Post Mills, VT
$5000 to support a celebration of Thetford’s eight distinct villages for our nation’s 250^th anniversary. Each village will highlight its past, present, and future, with a culminating celebration in Thetford Center.

Carpenter-Carse Library—Collaborative Art Installation, “Who We Are”
Hinesburg, VT
$4800 for a collaborative art project designed to allow participants and observers to engage with ideas around what it means to be an American at this time in history. What do we value? What do we celebrate? What do we fight for? Who are we?

Opera Vermont—Operatic Justice Deferred
Brandon, VT
$5000 to initiate a decade-long cycle of operas by prominent African-American composer William Grant Still with a performance of “A Bayou Legend” (the first opera by an African-American composer to be produced in Vermont) at Chandler Music Hall in Randolph.

Town of Newbury—Newbury Celebrates the Founding of the United States
Newbury, VT
$5000 to support projects, events and festivities to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America, with a theme of “Resilience in Newbury: Past, Present and Future.”