Out(sider) Preservation Initiative

Descendant-led
Project Grants

Commemorating Black Freedom-Seeking, Placemaking, & Migration in America and Canada

supporting descendant community members who seek ways to preserve Black placemaking, freedom-seeking, migration, and placekeeping heritage through creative storytelling.

  • ELIGIBILITY. Out(sider) Preservation Initiative (OPI) Grants are open to descendant-led projects that lead to diasporic return and increased public interest in historically Black settlements.

  • PROJECTS. Successful proposals may include creative storytelling, commemorative events, and educating the public about historic Black Settlements in ways that leverage the arts or technology (digital exhibitions, curation, mapping). Grant funds support descendants of community members with ancestral roots, residency, or kinship to founders of historic Black settlements and their anchor institutions (churches, schools, lodges, community centers, small businesses, and landowners).

  • LOCATIONS. Our initiative prioritizes supporting grantees inspired by their memories, stories, and place histories to create artistic work about freedom-seeking, designing and building communities, and migration occurring in and between Texas, Washington, DC, Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, Louisiana, California, and Nova Scotia. Eligible projects should happen in these states within settlements or where there is a concentration of settlements, even if the applicant lives elsewhere.

The OPI will award two types of grants.

  • These are small-scale, promising projects already underway that help build local capacity to lead preservation or planning initiatives that facilitate descendants’ possible return to settlements.

  • These projects center on the arts, cultural work, and creative endeavors to attract and facilitate the return and recommitment to settlement revival and preservation (Example: Texans in California and vice versa). These projects must demonstrate the potential for measurable outcomes regarding return and re-engagement, with potential for replication. Project categories include but are not limited to exhibitions, installations, final phases of film production and showings, visual art, music, dance, and theater productions.

    Project funding may be used to fund travel, archival research, lodging, environmental design, wayfinding signage design and fabrication, indoor/outdoor installations, textile art, museum exhibitions, public art, dance, performance art, musical composition, live painting, new media, and participatory mapping and artmaking. 

The OPI is directly affiliated with the Texas Freedom Colonies Project, an educational and social justice initiative dedicated to supporting the preservation of Black settlement landscapes, heritage, and grassroots preservation practices through research. Click the logo above to learn more.

WATCH OUr grant Information Session

Please watch the video above to learn about grant eligibility and completing the application. Contact us if you want our team to host a virtual or in-person session in California, Virginia, Texas, North Carolina, Washington, DC, or Maryland.

We welcome applications from individual descendants, non-profits, or groups umbrella-ed by a 501c3 organization led by and created by descendant community members. Descendants do not have to be full-time residents of their settlements of origin but should be engaged in preserving the settlement.

Applicants’ proposed projects must be enacted in, occur in, and be most accessible in Washington, DC, Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, Louisiana, California, Texas,
and Nova Scotia.

Applications will be accepted through the OPI website until 11:59 p.m. EST on January 17, 2025.  If applicants cannot submit their applications virtually, please contact us.


GRant TImeline

* Submit a grant proposal no later than January 17, 2025

* The OPI staff and the advisory board will review and evaluate proposals and select final projects.

* The OPI staff will notify awardees on March 30, 2025.

ELIGIBILITY

The Lead Applicant must be

* A descendant of Black settlement founders or member of an anchor institution in these settlements

* Confirm that the work will primarily engage and involve descendant community members

* Confirm that descendants will be involved in more than 50% of the project's decision-making, implementation, and control.

* Commit to bridging histories of enslavement and freedom-seeking to current efforts to preserve and reclaim settlement land.

* Leading a project already underway. Only a limited number of applicants seeking to launch a new project from scratch will be eligible.

* Able to demonstrate current involvement in work related to social practice, preservation, planning, public history, and public memory in their community.

Project application leads should be:

* Aspiring/rising artists or preservationists. Artists or preservationists without professional training are prioritized.

* Nonprofits or have a nonprofit affiliation (preferable but not required).

 

Applicants’ projects are expected to

* Facilitate return, intergenerational knowledge exchange, and quests for home, rest, and freedom.

* Lead activities in freedom colonies or related community network hubs, primarily in Virginia, Texas, California, and Nova Scotia. Projects with some activities in Washington, DC, Maryland, North Carolina, and Louisiana are considered if they prioritize the locations above.

* Support people and places experiencing marginalization in traditional public history and preservation.

* Explore sites, practices, and places associated with underrecognized periods of history and specifically intentionally created Black landscapes and settlements.  

* Share innovative techniques for re-activating engagement.

* Foreground the role of memory in sustaining community connections across various geographies and borders through diasporic outreach, communication, and celebration.

Grantees must

* Determine areas where your team could utilize capacity building (i.e., skill development, research, advocating for policy change, project management, community engagement, etc.).  

* Plan for and implement your project.

* Participate in periodic evaluation conversations and/or surveys.

* Engage regularly with OPI staff and consultants.

* Participate fully in OPI workshops and grantee gatherings.

* Grand challenge grantees must attend at least 2 cohort gatherings designed by OPI staff

Deliverables

* Negotiated by grant category and project.

* Non-artistic projects must be documented (film, audio), carry the Mellon and OPI logo, and comply with our style guide in promotional material.

* Educational materials/curricula must be shareable with the public.

* Must complete case study form and provide supportive media with every grant.

* Must coordinate promotions of all events with the OPI/CCL team.

Application Process