Congratulations! We are pleased to inform you that Cal Humanities has awarded Center of the World Festival, Inc. a Community Stories grant for "The Coming of Asphalt: Told Through Rural Storytelling Performance Art." We are excited to support you in your efforts to broaden awareness and deepen understanding of issues of relevance to Californians.
This ongoing story-gathering effort to document community life in California coincides, at times, with thematic initiatives conducted by Cal Humanities.
Grants Awarded in Winter 2013: http://www.calhum.org/experiences/all-projects/P2
The Coming of Asphalt: Told Through Rural Storytelling Performance Art
Center of the World Festival, Inc, Frazier Park
Project Director: Shelia Clark
Investigating how road-building has affected the landscape and culture of the region, this community-based project will employ the methods and insights of the emerging field of “environmental humanities.” Over the next year and a half, local residents will research and create dramatic narratives that will be performed during the August 2015 cycle of this annual theater festival. The project aims to use storytelling as a means to encourage productive dialogue and thoughtful consideration of local environmental and social issues.
Open Invitation to all Local Organizations and Groups
Depicting History Through Fictional Characters
The Center of the World Festival, in collaboration with Ridge Route Communities Historical Society and Museum, has received a generous grant from CalHumanities targeted toward creating a documentary video of our area’s cultural history. We are contacting all Frazier Mountain organizations asking for help in producing this project. We hope your organization will participate.
There are three main elements to this project.
- Obtain the facts about the cultural history of your organization (along with other participating groups) and then translate/distill the historical/cultural facts into a story told through a fictional character portrayed by actor/readers in a public storytelling presentation.
- The grant title of the project is: “The Coming of Asphalt: Told Through Rural Storytelling Performance Art.” Our project will chronicle this impact on our mountain culture from the early trails to the dirt roads, to the larger, longer thoroughfares connecting California’s north and south.
- Integrate literature, philosophy, religion, economics, and performance art to show the “Coming of Asphalt’s” influence on our overall mountain environment. Our humanities advisor, UCLA Professor of comparative literature and classics, Katherine King, will shepherd our efforts as we create a performance art that turns memories, documents, articles and artifacts into a vivid cultural history of our mountain communities.
Goals of our end product:
--depict a past carved into a ribbon of concrete
--establish our place in history
--generate a greater sensitivity to our area that fosters a deeper appreciation of our environment
--create a new respect for, and active support of, the infrastructure that shapes our community today.
We hope that your organization will be a part of bringing this vision to life.
We are asking for a representative from your organization to assist us in the historical research of your organization. All stages of this project, from our first meeting with you to the final public performance, will be videotaped, then compiled into a cultural documentary to become part of the CalHumanities’s “California Stories” which is supported by the Federal National Endowment for the Humanities, and viewable by the public at www.calhum.org
To begin this exciting journey with us, please contact Shelia Clark, 661-242-1583, or by mail: P.O. Box 1929, Frazier Park, CA 93225-1929.
Thank you for your consideration,
Shelia Clark, Project Manager, Center of the World Festival, Inc.
Bonnie Ketterl Kane, Historian, Ridge Route Communities Historical Society and Museum
This project was made possible with support from Cal Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. For more information, visit www.calhum.org. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this letter do not necessarily represent those of Cal Humanities or the National Endowment for the Humanities. Presentations of projects funded by the grant award should be free and open to the public.