The national eNDowment for the humanities awards $321,872 to the school of media studies at the new school for "Aids quilt touch"Empowering Communities to Share and Preserve Cultural Heritage Through Digital Storytelling |
NEW YORK, July 28, 2014: The School of Media Studies at The New School is pleased to announce that it was one of seven recipients recently awarded a Digital Humanities Implementation Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for the project, “AIDS Quilt Touch: Empowering Communities to Share and Preserve Cultural Heritage through Digital Storytelling.” This grant will support the development of an online browser for the AIDS Memorial Quilt that enables people to submit stories about Quilt panels. The project builds on the current AIDS Quilt Touch mobile website: www.AIDSQuiltTouch.org, where visitors can search for a name or leave a memorial in the digital guest book. All the AIDS Quilt Touch digital experiences were created in collaboration with the NAMES Project Foundation in Atlanta GA, the organization that serves as the stewards for the AIDS Quilt. The grant of $321,872 from the NEH Office of Digital Humanities will support collaboration among a distributed team of expert humanities researchers from The New School, The University of Iowa, and Michigan State University, to work on the commemoration of this important work of cultural heritage. As Anne Balsamo, principle investigator for the project and the Dean of the School of Media Studies at The New School remarked, “The funding from the NEH will enable us to create an engaging public platform for the creation and archiving of stories about the AIDS Quilt. Our aim is to create an appropriate digital memorial that helps preserve significant cultural memories about AIDS, art, and activism, and personal memories about those who died of HIV/AIDS who are commemorated on the Quilt.” This project is part of the newly launched research-design track in Public Interactives sponsored by the School of Media Studies at The New School. The National Endowment for the Humanities supports research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities by funding top-rated competitive, peer-reviewed proposals examined by panels of independent, external reviewers. At an annual cost of about 50 cents per capita, NEH brings high-quality historical and cultural experiences to large and diverse audiences in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and five territories.
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Media Contact: Kaisa Broussalian Communications Specialist
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