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CAPITOL HILL CREATORS RECEIVE A MAJOR FUNDING BOOST Keller and Franzen Grants Awarded
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very year, the Capitol Hill Community Foundation provides grants and other support to dozens of neighborhood organizations that strengthen the fabric of our community through social services, contributions to arts and culture, youth programming, and more. But beyond these grants of up to $5,000, the foundation provides $25,000 Keller and Franzén Grants to two outstanding organizations to help fund major new initiatives. This year, the foundation is proud to award these grants to Story of Our Schools and Chiarina Chamber Players for their efforts to enrich education and the arts in our neighborhood and its schools. “We have a long history of supporting these two groundbreaking organizations,” said Mark Weinheimer, chair of the Capitol Hill Community Foundation’s grants committee. “These grants give us the opportunity to help create unique experiences that will captivate our residents.”
by Barbara Wells
Story of Our Schools founder Jen Harris
nity stories to life. Through its partnerships with DC schools, SOOS invites students themselves to research and develop the storylines that showcase Jen Harris founded Story of Our Schools in 2015 their school’s past, with the guidance of teachers, to celebrate the role of schools in our city’s history parents, community members, and museum profesby creating permanent exhibits that bring commusionals. Then SOOS transforms the students’ work into museumquality exhibits that inform, inspire, and instill a sense of pride among the school’s community. SOOS has produced exhibits at five schools, including Capitol Hill Montessori at Logan, Payne Elementary School, and EliotHine Middle School. The Keller Grant will help fund one of the next three projects underway through a partPart of the Story of Our Schools exhibit at Payne Elementary on Capitol Hill. nership with Eastern
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High School, known as “the Pride of Capitol Hill.” “Schools not only educate their students but also serve as community hubs,” said Harris. “A permanent exhibit, honoring the history of Eastern while lifting up community voices, is a longterm investment in the Capitol Hill community. We are excited to help bring together the past and present through primary research, our neighbors’ stories, and historical photographs that will help to tell a powerful story for generations to come.” Like all SOOS projects, this effort is built on community collaboration, with students at the heart of the project. Harris will manage the project’s partnerships, fundraising, school engagement, community outreach, and exhibit design and installation. Ellen Dodsworth, Eastern High School’s reference librarian, will lead an SOOS program that engages Eastern students, with the research support of Kimberly Springle, the executive director of the Charles Sumner School Museum and Archives. The students will learn about the history of Eastern based on the information collected by Dodsworth, Springle, and Harris. The three collaborators are poring over artifacts that have been collected by Eastern High School and Sumner’s archives for decades. Next they will develop an exhibit “script,” mapping out the school’s story, timeline, and artifacts to be included. In the fall, the participating students will bring their own insights and stories to the project. Each of them will design a project based on a section of Eastern’s history, showcased through formats such as artwork, poetry, video, movie shorts, and oral history interviews, which ultimately will be included in the exhibit. Following the exhibit’s professional design, Harris expects it to be installed and unveiled by January 2023 – just in time for the building’s 100th anniversary. The full cost of the project is estimated at about $80,000, with the Keller Grant supporting outreach to Eastern’s tight-knit community of residents and alumni as well as new members of the community. “Projects and exhibits of this caliber are expensive,
