Wisconsin Humanities provides crucial financial support for locally-driven humanities projects across Wisconsin. In 2024 alone, WH awarded over $215,000 to support innovative community programs in fifteen counties. These are matching grants, meaning each investment is amplified by community support and energy. The twenty-eight WH grants leveraged nearly 900,000 in matching funds.
As the dots on the map above illustrate, Wisconsin Humanities grants reach communities big and small all over the state. Whether preserving local history, starting conversations about important issues, or creating new traditions, Wisconsin Humanities works to bring neighbors together to build a stronger, more connected Wisconsin.
Grant applications received in December of 2024 were awarded in February of 2025. We are excited to be able to support four Wisconsin nonprofits doing important community-building work. Three of these organizations have never received WH grants before. The projects are described in brief below.
Please note: Grant applications are not currently being accepted due to the delay in approval of the 2025 federal budget. Please subscribe to our E-Newsletter to be informed with application rounds reopen.
We are excited to announce Major Grant awards in support of the following four outstanding public humanities projects!
TRUE Knowledge-MKE Hip Hop Archives Project
$10,000 to TRUE Skool, Inc.
TRUE Skool received a Major Grant to support the preservation of Milwaukee’s Hip Hop history through the intergenerational collection of oral histories, artifacts, and multimedia narratives. During sessions, Milwaukee Hip Hop practitioners will empower the next generation of creatives and leaders in Hip Hop culture as they learn interviewing skills, build an archive, and create curated digital materials. The project will catalyze a wider sense of civic ownership of Milwaukee’s hip-hop heritage and culminate in a Summer Park Jam pop-up exhibit, panel discussion, and photo gallery.
Uplifting for Strength: Collaboration Between Hmong Refugee and Newcomers for Shared Empowerment
$10,000 to CAP Services, Inc.
CAP Services, Inc. will use a Major Grant to facilitate cultural exchange, skill sharing, and community-driven solutions using the eight stages of the Story Circle method to connect Hmong community members and more recent immigrant and refugee community members. Having faced very similar integration challenges, Hmong participants will leverage their shared experiences and unique strengths to support empowerment for newcomers in Portage County. Story Circle topics include migration journey stories, community support and understanding, new climate and customs, hope for the future, and job and educational opportunities. Curated stories will be printed into a booklet and shared with the broader community to help newcomers thrive in their new home.
Youth Action Summer Internship Program
$10,000 to Lussier Community Education
The Lussier Community Education Center will use a Major Grant to create in-depth engagement opportunities about local civic and democratic processes for a cohort of teens. Through Madison Common Council meetings, District Alder and representative meetings at the Wisconsin State Capitol, and engagement with leaders and elders of organizations like the Black Business Coalition, participants will learn how communities can address challenges through civic engagement. Youth will also utilize Lussier’s radio station to create a podcast that identifies local concerns (housing, food insecurity, transportation, urban design) and to present relevant solutions to their larger community.
Attention Activism in Milwaukee
$9,909 to University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee: Center for 21st Century Studies
The Center for 21st Century Studies (C21) received a Major Grant to delve into the idea of radical attention and how a practice of “slow” attention can strengthen long-term support networks and shared spaces of care across diverse sites and communities in a city. Partnering with The Milwaukee Turners, the Strother School of Radical Attention, and other community-driven nonprofit organizations, participants will take a directed walk through the city and use attention exercises to attend to the ways they move through and belong in public spaces with others. Using the most powerful lessons of this workshop, C21 will reimagine their Story Cart program to include attention-informed, conversation-based practices.
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