Vermont 250 Grants

250th Anniversary Project Grants Recipients

(updated July 15, 2026)

Addison County 

• Lake Champlain Maritime Museum (Vergennes): $5,000 to support “Collections Corner” programs focused on Lake Champlain’s Revolutionary War history through guided, interactive programs that ensure this important history is interpreted while exhibit upgrades are underway. (Funded by Vermont Humanities.)
• Opera Company of Middlebury: $5000 for OCM’s Fall Festival 2026, Music in Troubled Times, reflecting on music’s role in processing and recounting history. Focused around Ricky Ian Gordon’s “Rappahannock County,” the festival includes lectures, discussions, chamber music performances and film. (Funded by both Vermont Arts Council and Vermont Humanities.)
• Town Hall Theater (Middlebury): $5000 to launch a statewide poetry and school outreach project in partnership with Vermont Poet Laureate Bianca Stone on constitutional liberty, culminating in a multi-disciplinary Constitution Day celebration at Town Hall Theater. (Funded by Vermont Arts Council.)

Bennington County 

• Bennington Museum: $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. (Funded by Vermont Arts Council.)

Caledonia County 

• Peacham Historical Association: $4700 for a project that commemorates America’s and Peacham’s 250th anniversary. Planned events include a historical map exhibit, a cemetery ghost walk focused on Peacham’s Revolutionary legacy, a series of four lectures, and several community-wide celebrations. (Funded by Vermont Humanities)

Chittenden County 

• Carpenter Carse Library (Hinesburg): $4,800 to support 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? (Funded by Vermont Arts Council.)
• Ethan Allen Homestead Museum (Burlington) $5000 for Ethan Allen Homestead Museum’s special living history programming from May through October 2026, partnering with over 30 different cultural organizations. (Funded by Vermont Humanities)
• Vermont Symphony Orchestra (Burlington): $10,000 to support a new symphonic work by Composer Clarice Assad commemorating Charity Bryant (1777-1851) and Sylvia Drake (1784-1858) of Weybridge, Vermont, one of the earliest documented same-sex couples in early America. (Funded by Vermont Arts Council.)
• Winooski School District: $5000 for Winooski students PK-12 to examine democracy and belonging through artist-led residencies in visual art, poetry, music, and theatre, culminating in public performance and community dialogue as we approach America’s 250th anniversary. (Funded by Vermont Humanities.)
• Young Writers Project(Burlington): $5000 for “My America”, a project for Vermont teen writers and artists to respond to the prompt, “This is what my America looks like,” describing the nation they want to live in now and in the future. (Funded by Vermont Humanities)

Grand Isle County 

• Town of Isle La Motte: $5000 to support three days of history and heritage: Declaration, Commemoration, and Celebration. Re-enactments, lectures, and music will bring the legacy of the era to the Isle La Motte community. (Funded by Vermont Humanities)

Franklin County 

• Saint Albans Museum: $5000 to support a five-month programmatic arc, building momentum toward a city-wide commemorative 250th event on July 5th: The Centennials Picnic in the Park. Lectures, workshops, cultural events, and an original exhibition will interweave with the Downtown 250th plan. (Funded by Vermont Arts Council.)

Orange County 

• Brian J. Boland Foundation (Thetford): $5,000 to support Thetford’s celebration of Vermont’s Semiquincentennial. Each of Thetford’s eight villages will highlight its past, present, and future, with a culminating celebration in Thetford Center. (Funded by Vermont Arts Council.)
• Town of Newbury: $5,000 to support projects, events, and festivities to celebrate the 250th founding of the United States of America in 2026. The theme of their celebrations is “Resilience in Newbury: Past, Present, and Future.” (Funded by Vermont Arts Council.)
• Opera Vermont at the Chandler Music Hall (Randolph): $5,000 to support operas of 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. (Funded by Vermont Arts Council.)

Orleans County 

• Highland Center for the Arts (Greensboro): $5000 for a project led by Dr. Kathy Bullock and Mat Callahan, designed to connect voices of the past with the present. Throughout the history of slavery, enslaved people organized resistance, escape, and rebellion. Sustaining them in this struggle was their music. (Funded by Vermont Humanities.)
• Old Stone House Museum and Historic Village (Brownington): $5,000 to support the celebration of their centennial through oral histories and creating an educational video around the theme “Neighbor to Neighbor,” capturing how Orleans County residents have supported one another through good times and bad. (Funded by Vermont Humanities.)

Rutland County 

• Fair Haven Historical Society: $5,000 to support a series of events that share the story of Matthew Lyon, one of the founders of Fair Haven, who was the first person prosecuted under the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798 for publishing disparaging remarks about President John Adams. (Funded by Vermont Humanities.)

Washington County 

• Cutler Memorial Library (Plainfield): $1987 for “Tad Stoermer: A Resistance History of the United States,” an in-person event with a virtual author visit by historian Tad Stoermer featuring a live Q&A about his book A Resistance History of the United States, which examines revolution and resistance as lived historical forces, then and now. (Funded by Vermont Humanities)
• Town of Cabot: $575 mini-grant to the Town of Cabot for a showing of Jay Craven’s film Lost Nation. (Funded by Vermont Humanities.)
• Town of Waterbury: $5000 to develop a free, self-guided, QR code walking tour connecting Revolutionary War burials, historic sites, and landscapes in Waterbury with engaging digital stories that bring local experiences of the Revolution to life. (Funded by Vermont Humanities.)

Windham County

• Friends of Historic Memorial Hall (Wilmington): $4400 to support a community production of 1776: A Community Musical, which explores the founding of the United States through the lens of compromise, moral failure, and hard-won consensus. (Funded by Vermont Humanities)

Windsor County 

• Norwich Historical Society: $575 mini-grant to the Town of Cabot for a showing of Jay Craven’s film Lost Nation. (Funded by Vermont Humanities.)
• Weathersfield Proctor Library (Ascutney): $5000 to support a play based upon the Association Pledge, a handwritten document dated July 31, 1775 that records the votes of the 24 heads of household in Weathersfield who met on the Town Lot. (Funded by Vermont Humanities.)
• Woodstock Union High/Middle School Library: $5000 to support curriculum development for middle school and high school students based on Clint Smith’s book How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, and to purchase class sets for high school students and the young reader version for middle school students. (Funded by Vermont Humanities)

Statewide

• 50 for 250 Interactive Gallery: $5000 to the Vermont Historical Society to help create an interactive gallery for children aged 7-14 with three stations focused on objects in the 50 for 250 exhibit. The gallery provides visitors with strategies to examine themes between object-based stories in the exhibit. (Funded by Vermont Humanities.)
• Roadside Vermont: Exploring Vermont’s History through Narrative Audio Storytelling: $5,000 to create short narrative audio stories about Vermont’s 1,000 roadside historical markers, monuments, and plaques scattered across Vermont. The project will engage with the peculiar, confounding, and surprising story of what it means to be a Vermonter. (Funded by Vermont Humanities.)
• Interpreting the Exhibition: “Parley and Protocol, War and Peace”: $5,000 to the Vermont Abenaki Artists Association to support 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. (Funded by Vermont Humanities.)

250th Anniversary Rapid Response Grants Recipients

(updated July 15, 2026)

All of these projects were funded by Vermont Humanities.

Addison County 

• Henry Sheldon Museum of Vermont History (Addison): $800 to produce a short film promoting the museum’s exhibition Drawing on the Archive: Tillie Walden’s Charity & Sylvia, as part of its exhibits on America at 250. This film will feature Tillie Walden, HSM staff, and pastor, Caryne Eskridge.
• Lake Champlain Maritime Museum (Vergennes): $1000 to support a day-long event to commemorate the 250th Anniversary of the Battle of Lake Champlain, which will feature guided and experiential learning opportunities including exhibit tours, interactive activities, and a documentary screening.
• Lincoln Historical Society & Around Addison County Historical Collaborative (Lincoln): $1000 to support a program offered to historical societies that invites people to explore local heritage through various sites in eight neighboring towns.
• Otter Creek Music Festival (Shoreham): $1000 to support a project that celebrates America 250 by tracing the music of late 17th- and early 18th-century New England music back to its English roots.
• Robinson Elementary School (Starksboro): $750 to help create a History Walk on the school’s campus that showcases local people striving for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness then and now.

Bennington County 

• Bennington Museum: $1000 to support a free lecture by historian Eric Schnitzer, part of the summer Bennington Historical Society (BHS) programming at Bennington Museum.

Caledonia County 

• Lyndon Historical Society: $600 to support a series of accessible, community-centered events designed to encourage residents and visitors alike to connect with local history through the stories, traditions, and the people who have shaped the town.
• Ryegate Historical Society: $750 for a town-wide celebration of America and Ryegate’s historical and social foundations with numerous historical exhibits, traditional craft demonstrations, musical performances, children’s games and more!
• St. Johnsbury Athenaeum: $1000 to support the America 250 Constitutional Dialogue and Book Initiative, a project focusing on civic literacy and outreach to inspire the community to engage in meaningful discussion and access to accurate information.
• Waterford Historical Society: $750 to assist the historical society in gathering the stories of Waterford’s Revolutionary War veterans, printing the stories as books with relevant photos and maps, and sharing them in a public presentation.

Chittenden County 

• Dorothy Alling Public Library (Williston): $500 for a four-part lecture series focused on the past, present, and future of the community, offered in partnership with the Williston Historical Society.
• Heritage Winooski Mill Museum (Winooski): $1000 to assist in hosting a one-day workshop for Vermont educators to learn how a new Child Labor exhibit can serve as an entry point for teaching with primary sources and support inquiry, empathy, creative writing, and civic action in the classroom.
• Shelburne Memorial Library: $550 to showcase Jay Craven’s Lost Nation project at the library.
• Shelburne Museum: $1000 for America 250 at Shelburne Museum, a public humanities initiative inviting audiences to reflect on American history, culture, and civic identity through engagement with objects and programs centered on the Museum’s Americana collections.
• Westford Historical Society: $1000 to help celebrate the nation’s 250th with talks and other live events during the summer, with a capstone event of Vermont Filmmaker Jay Craven’s historical epic “Lost Nation” in November.
• Winooski High School: $1000 to support students in Civics class in Winooski High School as they end the year with one big question: How can we make real the ideals of freedom and democracy that our nation was founded on 250 years ago?

Franklin County 

• Fairfield Community Center Association: $1000 to transport campers and interested community members to the Missisquoi Wildlife Refugee for a day of storytelling and immersion into the indigenous cultures and populations who cared for the land for millennia.

Lamoille County 

• Morristown Centennial Library: $1000 to support a monthly series designed to create opportunities for better dialogue, boost civic health on the local level, and generate ideas to encourage volunteerism and volunteer-led projects in Morrisville.

Orleans County 

• Glover Equity: $1000 to support a special Juneteenth celebration, focusing on sites with connections to the Underground Railroad and African-American Culture.
• Holland Historical Society (Derby Line): $500 for a community engagement initiative aimed at increasing participation and preserving Holland’s history.
• Old Stone House Museum & Historic Village (Brownington): $500 for a project that looks back a century ago to the lives and stories that wove us together as neighbors. The 1920 US Census reveals a tapestry of many first- and second-generation immigrants in Orleans County: Ukrainians, Russians, Bulgarians, Italians, and more…

Rutland County 

• Poultney Public Library: $750 for a series of book discussions to celebrate America 250 and discuss the ideals upon which our country was founded. Titles will include non-fiction, adult fiction, juvenile fiction, and possibly a graphic novel.

Washington County 

• Montpelier Alive: $1000 for “The Heart of Vermont” podcast that will showcase Washington County’s culture, history, and community. Episodes will highlight local arts, diverse stories, underrepresented voices, and foster a deeper understanding of the region’s humanity.

Windham County 

• Brattleboro Floral Arts and Garden Club: $1000 to celebrate the history of the Creamery Covered Bridge in Brattleboro and to honor this well-visited landmark.
• Historical Society of Windham County (Newfane): $975 to support a fair in historic Newfane Village, featuring re-enactors, tours, demonstrations, and vintage exhibits of Vermont’s rich heritage.
• Putney Public Library: $800 to support a discussion series on “the pursuit of happiness” as described in the Declaration of Independence, led by scholar Meg Mott.
• Two Daughters Productions (Brattleboro): $1000 to support an audio documentary titled “Teens and the Constitution” for Vermont Public that explores what local teens—our future voters and leaders—think about politics, patriotism, civic engagement, and the U.S. Constitution.

Windsor County

• BarnArts Center for the Arts (Barnard): $1000 to support Etienne Charles’ Gullah Roots project on July 9, including a panel about Black Americans in the Revolution & a panel on Gullah Geechee influence on the development of jazz.

Statewide

• Vermont Symphony Orchestra: $1000 for a project that visits four Vermont communities with musical performances and interactive displays on American folk traditions from Helen Hartness Flanders Ballad Collection at Middlebury College, the Henry Sheldon Museum, and Vermont Historical Society.