It's What Connects Us.

Community Powered is our initiative to provide training to local leaders and support for community-led cultural projects across the state.

Winner of the prestigious Schwartz Prize in 2024 for outstanding work in the public humanities, the Community Powered initiative results in projects that are locally designed, sustainable, and replicable. The results speak for themselves: local traditions revitalized across generations, hometown tours celebrating architecture and history, and youth-led projects that create community pride. These efforts succeed because they build on existing community strengths - whether that's expertise, cultural traditions, or neighborly relationships.

The CP Tribal Health Initiative

Making Communities Healthier

The Community Powered approach builds resilience from within by starting at the heart and soul of a place - the people and the stories. The launch of our Community Powered Tribal Health Initiative marks a significant expansion of our award-winning Community Powered program. Starting in 2026, WH staff will work directly with tribal communities to design culturally-relevant solutions that honor traditional wisdom while addressing contemporary challenges.

The Community Powered Tribal Health Initiative addresses the mental health epidemic in tribal communities caused by historically deep-seated and pervasive health disparities and made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic. Tribal and academic partners from around the state, along with Wisconsin Humanities staff, will adapt and hone Wisconsin Humanities’ existing Community Powered training to be culturally responsive to a Native context and Indigenous conceptions of health. By working closely with impacted communities and local leadership, the initiative will maintain, document, and deepen a sense of community-wide belonging, well-being, and health.

Funding for this initiative was provided by the UW School of Medicine and Public Health from the Wisconsin Partnership Program (WPP), which offers grants to support community-led partnerships that seek to improve health and advance health equity across Wisconsin.

CP Workshops and Training

Building More Resilient Communities

The Wisconsin Humanities Fellows Program, which ran from 2024-2025, tested the Community Powered toolkit, equipping local leaders with the tools and support they need to bring neighbors together and to build a more connected Wisconsin. While the Fellows Program is paused in 2026, we will offer virtual workshops that teach Community Powered skills like oral history interviewing. Workshops will be open to anyone in the state. Attend a workshop and you'll learn new skills to harness your communities’ strengths, challenges, and histories.

Upcoming Workshops

Community Powered is hosting Zoom workshops in partnership with the Norwegian American Genealogical Center and Naeseth Library. You can read more about the workshops and register on NAGCNL's website here: https://www.nagcnl.org/events/.

Oral History & Interviewing: Tuesday, April 21 & Thursday, April 23 10:00am-12:00pm
Telling the Family Story: Tuesday, April 28 10:00am-11:30am
Introduction to Folklore: Saturday, May 9 10:00am-11:00am
Contextualizing Your Family History: Tuesday, May 12 10:00am-11:00am
Basics of Archiving: Tuesday, May 19 10:00am-11:00am

Stay tuned for the announcement of more workshops by subscribing to our e-newsletter!

Wisconsin By the People

Celebrating America's 250th with Folk Artists

Community Powered is training traditional artists who have been selected to participate in the Wisconsin Arts Board’s Folk & Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program. CP training will help artists engage public audiences in conversation about their folk arts and cultures at dynamic local events. These conversations will be captured in episodes of our Human Powered podcast featuring Wisconsin folklorists.

Wisconsin By the People is part of the national By the People: Conversations Beyond 250 program of the Federation of State Humanities Councils. By the People: Conversations Beyond 250 is a series of community-driven programs created by humanities councils across the United States, its territories, and the District of Columbia in collaboration with local partners. Together, these programs explore 250 years of the nation's cultural life and imagine its shared future. The initiative was developed by the Federation of State Humanities Councils and the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage as a complement to the 2026 Smithsonian Folklife Festival.