In 2020, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded the Wolfsonian Public Humanities Lab at FIU a $1 million grant for “Community Data Curation: Preserving, Creating, and Narrating Everyday Stories.” Rooted in a vision to decolonize the archives and knowledge production, this grant supports and promotes the necessary grassroots work being done in our broader communities, highlighting the lives and experiences of historically underrepresented people and implementing sustainable preservation practices to ensure their stories are told and accessible well beyond the lifetime of the grant.
The project led to WPHL partnering with eight community partners around South Florida and funding the new technology and storage for digital archiving, creating of new archives through oral histories, as well as public programming, and unique student internship opportunities.
- African American Research Library and Cultural Center
- Jewish Museum of Florida—FIU
- Museum of Graffiti
- Sant La Haitian Neighborhood Center
- Stonewall National Museum & Archives
- The Historic Hampton House Museum and Cultural Center
- Vizcaya Museum & Gardens
- World AIDS Museum and Educational Center
Visit the Community Data Collection site to view the oral histories that were collected as a part of this grant and our partner collections.