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Heritage Area FY2011 Mini-Grant Awards Announced

Heritage Area FY2011 Mini-Grant Awards Announced

Grant Awards, Press Release

Annapolis, MD – Four Rivers: The Heritage Area of Annapolis, London Town & South County is pleased to announce nine new mini-grant awards to local heritage-related nonprofit organizations and projects. This matching mini-grants program, made possible for the seventh year through financial support from the City of Annapolis, Anne Arundel County, and the Maryland Heritage Areas Authority, leverages other funding to assist local heritage related non-profit organizations create new programs, activities and events that build upon interpretive themes in the state, county and city-approved heritage area Management Plan, foster collaborative partnerships, and enhance local cultural historic resources and heritage tourism. The maximum grant award is $2,500, which must be fully matched.

Organizations and projects approved for mini-grant awards include:

  • Annapolis Maritime Museum, for an orientation video for the museum to welcome visitors and provide information about the permanent exhibit, “Oysters on the Half Shell,” and the museum’s many educational programs and offerings.
  • Anne Arundel County Trust for Preservation, for research and investigative work resulting in a National Register Nomination for the historic site in Lothian known as Batchelor’s Choice Plantation, including its servants’ quarters, one of less than a dozen surviving examples of this element of postbellum African American heritage in Anne Arundel County.
  • Banneker-Douglass Museum with the Banneker-Douglass Museum Foundation, in cooperation with Anne Arundel County Schools and the Blacks of the Chesapeake Foundation, for an educational oral history project with Southern High School History classes on the heritage of Carr’s and Sparrow’s Beaches.
  • The Charles Carroll House of Annapolis, Inc., for the redesign of the historic site’s website, to better communicate the organization’s mission and initiatives and inform the public about its legacy, resources, and programs.
  • The City of Annapolis and the Annapolis and Anne Arundel Conference and Visitors Bureau, for two interpretive display cases with restored archaeological artifacts excavated from the site of the Gott’s Court Parking Garden, to be exhibited at the AAACCVB’s Visitors Center on West Street.
  • The Friends of the Maryland State House, for the development and printing of a 36-page booklet entitled, “Maryland’s Art Collection: A Treasure of Paintings, Sculpture and Decorative Arts,” describing and illustrating the art collection of the Maryland State House.
  • Historic Annapolis Foundation, for a new exhibition about Annapolis master craftsmen and decorative arts entitled, “‘The Genteelest Town in North America’: Craftsmen of Annapolis’s Golden Age,” to be displayed at the new Historic Annapolis Museum beginning in March 2011.
  • Historic London Town and Gardens, in collaboration with Anne Arundel County Schools, for an educational outreach program for local fourth grade students from two Title I schools to visit the site and develop exhibit posters about the historic site’s role in the Chesapeake’s 18th century transatlantic trade.
  • Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts, for support for the program “Paint Annapolis 2011,” which brings juried, non-juried and student artists to the streets of Annapolis to paint historic buildings, cityscapes and landscapes en plein air (outdoors) over a 3-day period.

This year, Four Rivers’ mini-grant program funds of $22,500 are fully matched by the grantees for total project funds of $84,997. Four Rivers: The Heritage Area of Annapolis, London Town & South County, one of Maryland’s 11 certified heritage areas, is a partnership among the State of Maryland, Anne Arundel County, the City of Annapolis, the town of Highland Beach, and local historic sites, heritage organizations, and heritage-related businesses, to encourage economic vitality through historic preservation and heritage tourism. For more information, please contact Executive Director Carol Benson at 410-222-1805 or visit our website at www.chesapeakecrossroads.org.