2019 Mini-Grants The Forum’s mini-grant funding provides smaller awards (up to $2,500) to support independent humanities projects across the state, awarded on a rolling basis each year. In 2020, we are streamlining our grant funding process. Going forward, the Forum will offer annual grants for humanitiesbased projects that promote scholarship, preservation, and connection throughout Alaska. Details and application materials are available at akhf.org/grants.
Stories of the Wind Story Works | Unalakleet Since 2014, Story Works Alaska has been working with youth and communities in the Anchorage and Bering Strait school districts, leading storytelling workshops designed to build resilience and connect across differences. In September 2019, Story Works led a week-long workshop for students in Unalakleet in partnership with Giaana Peterson, English teacher at Frank A. Degnan High School. “Doing this workshop afforded the time and space to get to know my students better,” reflects Peterson. “It also brings me back to our Alaska Native roots of storytelling, and that reinvigorates me as a teacher.” To cap off the week, local writer and journalist Laureli Ivanoff, who volunteered as a story coach and sound engineer recording stories for airing on KNSA, co-hosted a community storytelling event. Youth, educators, elders, parents, family and friends gathered for the event, Stories of the Wind, where students shared the stories they had crafted throughout the week. “These storytelling skills will help our young citizens, whether in applying for college, preparing for a first job interview,
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or simply connecting to others through the art of telling a story,” affirmed Ivanoff. “Unalakleet is a small community located at the heart of the Norton Sound and I am very grateful the Story Works Alaska crew worked to make their program available to a school outside the road system. Our students and our community are simply better for it.” In April, 2020, two students from Unalakleet will travel to Anchorage to tell their stories at Extra Credit, Story Works’ annual city-wide youth storytelling event. Learn more about Story Works’ mission, listen to stories from workshop alumni, and find out how to get involved at storyworksak.org.
Saints of Failure Civic Dialogue and Workshops Juneau Arts and Humanities Council Juneau Saints of Failure is a new interdisciplinary work of documentary theatre combining true personal stories, researched histories, and live makeup transformations. The piece, created and performed by Ryan Conarro and produced by Juneau’s Generator Theater, is rooted in Conarro’s personal stories of coming of age as a gay Catholic American man, including reflection on his life in Alaska communities as he navigates these identities. A series of community dialogues in collaboration with Southeast Alaska Gay Lesbian Alliance (SEAGLA) and Capital City religious organizations will be held in conjunction with the local Saints of Failure production in February 2020 at the Church of the Holy Trinity in Juneau. The discussions will illuminate and challenge prevailing perceptions about what it means to be LGBTQ in Alaska today, by calling attention to the intersectionality of sexual, gender, and religious-cultural identities.
