Project Grants
Abenaki Arts & Education Center — Abenaki History in 5 Minutes – A Bite-Sized Journey Through Indigenous Resilience
Vergennes, VT
Awarded $4500 to support the creation of scripts and pilot episodes for a series of videos on Abenaki history and culture as educational resources for middle school students, educators, and the general public in New England and beyond.
Abenaki Health and Heritage—An Abenaki Year
Hinesburg, VT
Awarded $5000 toward an illustrated novelette that follows the education of a young Abenaki man as he slowly learns about his ancestral Abenaki heritage in living with his grandparents through the seasons of a single year in the late 20th century.
Barnet Public Library—One Foot Forward
Barnet, VT
Awarded $4476 to help fulfill a rural library’s mission to grow community connection and self-reliance through resilience programming and collections.
Bennington County Multicultural Community Center — Multicultural Film and Food Festival
Bennington, VT
Awarded $4500 to support three film screenings and panel discussions at a downtown venue, showcasing the cultures of Afghanistan, Venezuela, and the Congo. Members of the local refugee community from each county will provide food and lead discussions at each event.
Bethel Pridefest
Bethel, VT
Awarded $2500 to support a multi-day celebration of LGBTQ+ people, their activism and resilience, and their contributions in history.
Braintree Historical Society—Braintree Bluegrass Brunch
West Braintree, VT
Awarded $5000 for a series of free outdoor music concerts held on the grounds of the 1845 Braintree Hill Meetinghouse. The event will feature food and beverage vendors, a guided bike ride of area trails, a local artisans’ market, and kids’ activities.
Brewster Pierce Memorial School Partners in Education (PIE)—Huntington kids’ story slam with Ferene Paris and All Heart Inspirations
Huntington, VT
Awarded $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.
Burlington History & Culture Center — Vibrant Lives: Discovering Our Roots of Black Vermont
Burlington, VT
Awarded $3250 to support documenting and celebrating the experiences, histories, and contributions of Black Vermonters (in Burlington) through oral histories conducted by youth interviewers, culminating in exhibitions, digital archives, and traveling displays.
Canaan Naturally Connected—Essex County Fall, Winter & Spring Connections
Canaan, VT
Awarded $5000 for a project that focuses on providing activities for area residents, such as art/craft classes, educational classes, music, fraud scam preventive classes, and technology-related trainings.
CCTV Center for Media and Democracy—Neighborhood Media Internships
Burlington, VT
Awarded $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.
Club Action — Race Against Racism
Montpelier, VT
Awarded $4500 to support an in-school assembly and social justice workshops, aimed at elevating BIPOC voices and educating students, staff, and faculty about racism.
Dailey Memorial Library—Material Culture Studies Book Discussion Series
Derby, VT
Awarded $1184 so the library can host a book discussion series focusing upon material culture in literature through four titles selected by facilitator Rachael Cohen.
Fair Haven Historical Society—Matthew Lyon: Fair Haven’s Champion of Freedom *
Fair Haven, VT
Awarded $5000 for sharing the story of Matthew Lyon, one of the founders of Fair Haven and the first person prosecuted under the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798 for publishing disparaging remarks about President John Adams.
For the Land Publishing, Inc. — Outreach Through Digital Platform: Year One
Corinth, VT
Awarded $4500 to help broaden the organization’s reach to under-served Vermonters with digital and print access to Vermont Almanac’s content.
Friends of the Fletcher Free Library—Book Discussions and Speakers
Burlington, VT
Awarded $4000 to fund six current community book discussion groups, to enhance these book clubs with guest authors/speakers, and to launch a new book discussion series.
Gedakina — One-Shelf Book Project
Essex Jct., VT
Awarded two grants in 2025, one for $4500 and one for $5000, both to support a book give away to schools. Books are reviewed, curated and distributed to accepted schools and libraries. Books are historically accurate, culturally appropriate and help children see themselves in a positive light.
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church—The Talk
Jericho, VT
Awarded $5,000 for a forum that addresses issues of interest and concern affecting BIPOC and other marginalized communities.
Heritage Winooski Mill Museum — Investigating Child Labor Exhibit
Winooski, VT
Awarded $4500 to support fabricating a new exhibition called Investigating Child Labor. The exhibition will include accessible and engaging ways for multi-generations to learn about historical and current child labor issues.
Junction Arts and Media (JAM)— Roadside Vermont: Exploring Vermont’s History through Narrative Audio Storytelling *
White River Junction, VT
Awarded $5000 to produce fourteen short narrative audio stories about Vermont’s roadside historical markers, monuments, and plaques, with a goal to engage with the peculiar, confounding, and surprising story of what it means to be a Vermonter.
Junction Arts & Media—White River Indie Festival of Art and Ideas
White River Junction, VT
Awarded $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.
Lake Champlain Maritime Museum— Collections Corners 2025: Providing Public Access to Humanities and Lake Champlain’s Revolutionary War History *
Vergennes, VT
Awarded $5000 for programs focused on Lake Champlain’s Revolutionary War history. These guided, interactive programs will ensure this important history is interpreted while exhibit upgrades are underway.
Lamoille Community House — Lives of Lamoille County
Hyde Park, VT
Awarded $4500 to support a podcast about people in Lamoille County, Vermont, who have lived experience of homelessness or housing insecurity. Each episode features a person telling the story of the intersection of their life and homelessness.
Lyndon Institute — Engaging Deeply with Holocaust History
Lyndon Center, VT
Awarded $3750 to support a tour Anne Frank Exhibit & Jewish Heritage Museum in NYC by 9-12th grade students. Students will engage deeply with Holocaust history, making connections to prior learning while analyzing how historical injustices relate to modern issues of intolerance and discrimination.
Manchester Community Library— Pan African Choir Uganda
Manchester Center, VT
Awarded $5000 for a series of workshops and concerts highlighting international collaboration and cultural exchange. Students will work with the PACU performers followed by a concert for the school communities, plus two additional concerts for non-students.
Migrant Justice—”La Liga”
Burlington, VT
Awarded $5000 to host community screenings of “La Liga,” a new documentary exploring soccer as a site of community building among Vermont’s immigrant farmworkers. Events will raise awareness about the community’s human rights campaigns.
New England Center for Circus Arts— Vermont Circus Festival: “Circademics” Programming
Brattleboro, VT
Awarded $5000 for a track of seminars and activities exploring the crossover of physical form into art, literature, film and politics in collaborations with a local library, museum and schools.
Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust— Liberations Library
Corinth, VT
Awarded $5000 in support of the New Suns Community Center, home to the Liberation Libraries, which loans out carpentry and gardening tools, art supplies, roller-skates, books and printed resources, and provides the space to use them all, for BIPOC community members and allies.
Otter Creek Music Festival — Toomai String Quintet
Shoreham, VT
Awarded $4500 to support Otter Creek Music Festival welcoming Toomai String Quintet, a Cuban American-founded ensemble dedicated to the performance, preservation, and exploration of traditional and contemporary music, especially from Cuba and Latin America.
Retreat Farm—Resilience Lecture Series
Brattleboro, VT
Awarded $4500 to launch a resilience-themed lecture series in Retreat Farm’s North Barn venue.
Richard Kemp Center—Community Mural Project
Burlington, VT
Awarded $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
Awarded $4500 for a program that helps address the critical need for well-being and social justice programming for youth in Vermont.
Sandglass Center for Puppetry and Theater Research, DBA Sandglass Theater— Vermont Tour of Sandglass Theater’s Feral Production and Workshops
Putney, VT
Awarded $5000 to support their touring project that serves audiences across Vermont by featuring a new original ensemble theater production and convening accompanying workshops. The project will be to inspire dialogue, critical thinking, and shared understandings about women’s issues.
Telling My Story—Mental Health Disparities for LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC Community Members in the Upper Valley
Wilder, VT
Awarded $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.
The Brattleboro Literary Festival— The Brattleboro Literary Festival
Brattleboro, VT
Awarded $5000 to support the Brattleboro Literary Festival, an annual event that brings together readers and booklovers throughout southern Vermont in conversation around books and their relevance to the current political and social climate.
The Bridge at Ezili’s Respite—Healing through Nature: The Land-Based Edition of Harm Reduction Heroes
Groton, VT
Awarded $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.
The Center For Cartoon Studies — Fascism, A Graphic Guide
White River Junction, VT
In 1945, The U.S. War Department published a “Pocket Guide” entitled, “What Is Fascism?” Awarded $3500 to support the adaptation and expansion of the guide into a 32-page comic book. Topics covered include how fascists seize and maintain power, the role of media, and more.
The Civic Standard—Hardwick State 2026: A Town-Wide Free University
Hardwick, VT
Awarded $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.
The Old Stone House Museum and Historic Village—Voices of the Century: Sharing and Preserving Community Stories *
Brownington, VT
Awarded $5000 for a project to conduct oral histories and create an educational video around the theme “Neighbor to Neighbor,” capturing how Orleans County residents have supported one other through good times and bad.
Theater in the Woods Vermont — Curriculum Development for Training of Teachers, Parents, and other Educators
Middletown Springs, VT
Awarded $4500 to support the development of a training module, a pilot workshop, and support materials for educators in the power of co-creation as an educational tool.
Theatre Adventure — Disability Justice Documentary and Presentation Tour
West Brattleboro, VT
Awarded $4500 to support a tour of a documentary film and Traveling Troupe presentations to HCRS locations in south and central Vermont promoting disability justice.
Those Who Were Harmed Project— The Women of the Rutland Colony (Episode 2)
Burlington, VT
Awarded $5000 for an audio-documentary series that illuminates Vermont’s eugenics history by centering the lives of those harmed by sterilization and institutionalization, restoring voice, dignity, and complexity to their stories.
Threshold Collaborative — Reclaiming Our Stories: Writing as a Bridge to Restorative Justice
North Bennington, VT
Awarded $4500 to support collaborating with Bennington College’s Center for the Advancement of Public Action and Writers For Recovery to present a theatrical reading of works by creative writing workshop participants at the Marble Valley Regional Correctional Facility.
Treleven, Inc.—Fireside Friends
Vergennes, VT
Awarded $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.
TURNmusic — Grief, Identity, and the Centering of Outsider Voices with pianist and author, Adam Tendler
Waterbury, VT
Awarded $1500 to support Adam Tendler, pianist and author, in sharing with Vermont audiences a creative process for grieving the loss of a loved one during a community workshop in November.
Unleashing the Power of Partnership for Learning, Inc.—Leading Together: Strengthening Youth Voice in Vermont’s Democracy
Waterbury, VT
Awarded $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 “Deep Roots, Strong Branches”
Vergennes, VT
Awarded $4500 to support sharing recent research findings and oral history from Vermont’s Abenaki community through an interpretive exhibit and related digital content to reach audiences in New England and beyond.
Vermont Abenaki Artists Association—Interpreting the Exhibition “Parley and Protocol, War and Peace”
Vergennes, VT
Awarded $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 250th anniversary provided by the Vermont 250th Anniversary Commission.)
Waterbury Area Anti-Racism Coalition: Washington County Summer Social Justice Camp
Waterbury, VT
Awarded $2000 to support a Social Justice Summer Camp with the Education Justice Coalition of Vermont. Youth will develop leadership skills, networks, and knowledge of social justice topics of their choice to make transformative changes in their schools and communities in dire times.
White River Craft Center: Día de los Muertos Community Altar
Randolph, VT
Awarded $5000 to support the creation of a community altar celebrating Día de los Muertos. The group will invite participation in the form of honoring loved ones and exploring Mexican cultural traditions through shared remembrance and storytelling.
Young Writers Project — The Tomorrow Project
Burlington, VT
Awarded $4500 to support a powerful collection of writing and visual art by our teenage community exploring the myriad issues they face and ways to move forward on Climate, Democracy & Ethics, Human Rights, Values, Education, Technology, Community, DEI & Accessibility.
* denotes projects which received America 250th funding
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 250th Anniversary Commission to commemorate our nation’s 250th 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
Awarded $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
Awarded $5000 to support a celebration of Thetford’s eight distinct villages for our nation’s 250th 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
Awarded $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
Awarded $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
Awarded $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.”
