Latest news with #oralhistory
The Guardian
25-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Casualties in Trump's war on the arts: the small museums keeping local history alive
For the past two years, a small arts non-profit has been telling stories about the communities living alongside the Los Angeles river, one voice at a time. The organization, called Clockshop, has collected the oral histories of nearly 70 local residents, activists and elected officials. Their knowledge is compiled in a vast cultural atlas – which contains videos, an interactive map and a self-guided tour exploring the waterway and its transformation from a home for the Indigenous Tongva people to a popular, rapidly gentrifying urban space. But in April, the future of the ever-growing atlas was thrown in uncertainty, when a three-year federal grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the agency that supports libraries, archives and museums, was terminated 17 months early. The grant, originally for $150,000, still had $20,000 left to pay out. 'There is no recourse to recover the funds still in the grant project activities,' the organization said in a post on Instagram. Now, executive director Sue Bell Yank says their mission to preserve the stories of residents ousted by gentrification could lead to 'erasure of the past, of cultural self-determination, and a lack of understanding about how communities can successfully advocate for the kinds of neighborhoods we deserve'. Clockshop's post foreshadowed an alarming message that would eventually be delivered to hundreds of other arts and cultural institutions across the US. As the Trump administration directed federal agencies to cancel grants that did not support the president's new priorities, which focused on funding 'projects that reflect the nation's rich artistic heritage and creativity' and targeted anything broadly deemed 'DEI' (diversity, equity and inclusion), millions of dollars dedicated to preserving local history and culture suddenly disappeared. Shortly after IMLS grants were terminated, so too were those awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). By Friday 2 May, a spreadsheet created by writer and theater director Annie Doren was being passed around the internet, aiming to catalog every organization that had lost their NEA funding. With more than 500 organizations on the list, the question shifted from who lost their funding to who didn't. While organizations of all kinds were impacted, it is the small and midsized institutions that lack endowments, prominent donors, and broad outreach whose futures are particularly in jeopardy. The cuts have affected a broad swath of projects – from a documentary film-maker in Fresno making a film about a woman who has played Harriet Tubman in civil war reenactments for 30 years; to a dance performance about south-east Asian mothers in New York City, to an organization that brings films, book clubs and other cultural events to rural Montana. Rick Noguchi who runs a non-profit called California Humanities, said he has seen the 112 NEH grants it awarded across the state suspended indefinitely by the Trump administration. 'There are many newer immigrant communities that don't have deep donors and struggle with being able to find individual donors that step in to tell their stories.' Back in Los Angeles, the cuts have blanketed cultural institutions with feelings of anxiety and urgency. But their leaders are also fighting back, vowing to continue the work of preserving local history in spite of the administration's threats to revoke non-profit status if they continue to champion DEI programs. The Japanese American National Museum (JANM), an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution in LA's Little Tokyo neighborhood that focuses on the history, culture and legacy of Japanese immigrants, initially lost grants that amounted to roughly $1.45m – though some have since been temporarily restored after a court order. Among those cut was a NEH landmarks of American history and culture grant, which funded a workshop helping teachers build a curriculum about the history of Japanese incarceration during the second world war. JANM CEO Ann Burroughs said that the program benefits approximately 20,000 students a year. 'It was very much to ensure that the history was never forgotten,' Burroughs said about the museum's mission and outreach. 'It was also to ensure that what happened to Japanese Americans never happened to anybody else.' Los Angeles's One Institute, which houses the largest queer archive in the world, also uses their collection to help educate others on queer history and marginalization. They lost a $15,000 NEA grant to support their upcoming annual festival in October, and now they are scrambling to hold fundraisers to keep the festival on track. Tony Valenzuela, the organization's executive director, said that their event is important because it covers a gap in education. 'Even in liberal states like California, only a fraction of students learn about the contributions of queer people to society,' Valenzuela said. 'If the government abandons funding non-profits and other individuals and organizations providing a social good, this country will also be abandoning whole swaths of its citizens who greatly benefit from this work.' Another organization that was hit hard was the Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD), which operates the Skid Row History Museum & Archive, located just a few blocks north of the neighborhood in Downtown Los Angeles. They lost four grants administered by IMLS, NEH, and California Humanities, and are unlikely to receive an NEA grant that normally keeps the organization running – a total value of nearly $144,000 dollars, or 22% of the organization's annual budget. Like Clockshop, the LAPD's exhibitions, public programs and archives chart the ways Skid Row has been transformed – and nearly erased – due to development and gentrification. 'Not everyone sees Skid Row as a community, let alone a thriving arts community,' said Henry Apodaca, LAPD's media archivist. 'This is a critical counter narrative to popular narratives that we've all been inundated with when talking about Skid Row.' One of the terminated grants was an IMLS grant for small museums, which was being used to support a project called Welcome to the Covid Hotel. The project, named for the temporary medical treatment centers that popped up in vacant hotels during the pandemic to care for unhoused people, culminated in an exhibition and a series of theatrical performances based on interviews with patients, nurses and social workers. 'There's stories of people coming in blind and getting cataract surgeries,' explains LAPD's co-founder and artistic director, John Malpede. 'Someone with gangrene needed to have his legs amputated, and it saved his life. And most people got and accepted some form of next-step housing.' Malpede's performance is a creative way for policymakers to notice the Covid Hotels' impact and potentially make the sites into permanent fixtures. When the grants were canceled, LAPD was still waiting on more than $38,000 to come through: money that was supposed to pay venues, crew and performers for events that took place in April, as well as upcoming performances in May and June, and a forthcoming publication. While LAPD aims to move forward with their plans, they are uncertain on how to fund it. After going public on social media, private donors have since stepped up to help the JANM and Clockshop recoup their losses. LAPD and the One Institute, however, are still looking for support. Without this funding, not only could the non-profits disband, but also the communities that have flourished as a result of their work. As Malpede warns: 'It's only because of the neighborhood standing up and using its own history that it continues to be present.'
New York Times
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
5 Podcasts That Revisit the Past Through Oral Histories
When the term oral history first came into use, the oral aspect referred to the way information was collected — a historian or researcher would conduct interviews with people with firsthand knowledge of a particular event, then collate those accounts, usually into a written form. Such was the case with 'Division Street: America,' a landmark 1967 book by Studs Terkel, which explored the lives of some 70 Chicago residents as a microcosm of a divided country. More than 50 years on, that oral history has been updated in audio form. Here's a primer on 'Division Street: Revisited,' along with four other podcasts in a similar format. 'Division Street Revisited' For Melissa Harris, a former Chicago Tribune journalist, returning to the stories that Terkel told in 'Division Street' has been a passion project 15 years in the making. When she discovered that Terkel's archived tape recordings had been digitized, podcasting was on the rise, and the format was an obvious fit. The result is 'Division Street Revisited,' which continues the stories of seven of the book's Chicagoans through interviews with family members and friends (since the subjects themselves were no longer alive). In the spirit of Terkel's original work, Harris and Mary Schmich, her fellow executive producer, focused on people whose stories speak to larger cultural issues. One episode spotlights a gay actor who lived in fear of his family finding out about his sexuality; another, a Native American who moved to Chicago from the reservation and became a pioneer for Native culture in the city. Starter episode: 'Myra Alexander: Never Too Old to Be Free' 'Fiasco: Iran-Contra' This historical series is a spiritual successor to the long-running Slate podcast 'Slow Burn,' chronicling pivotal moments in American history through interviews with people who witnessed it. The host, Leon Neyfakh, who worked on the first two seasons of 'Slow Burn' before departing to start 'Fiasco,' has said that his guiding principle is to approach broad political history through emotionally rich personal stories. In this way, each season of Fiasco reframes a seemingly well-known chapter of history through the recollections of dozens of key players, beginning with the early years of the AIDS epidemic in its first season. The most recent installment explores the Iran-contra scandal, when senior officials in the Reagan administration violated an arms embargo for Iran with the intention of financing anti-communist rebels in Nicaragua. Through deftly woven interviews, this complex and multifaceted saga becomes not just easy to follow, but also impossible to stop listening to. Starter episode: 'Get Me Kevin Kattke' 'Making Gay History' The decade-old nonprofit Making Gay History — founded to remedy a lack of substantive LGBTQ+ history in classrooms and mainstream discourse — and the podcast of the same name are offshoots of the celebrated 1992 book, 'Making History: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal Rights, 1945-1990,' by the journalist Eric Marcus. Drawing inspiration from Terkel's work, Marcus chronicled the lives of key figures in the queer civil rights movement, conducting interviews with people like the playwright Larry Kramer, the transgender activist Marsha P. Johnson and the National Football League player David Kopay, among the first professional athletes to come out as gay. Across more than 150 episodes, the 'Making Gay History' podcast features digitized excerpts from these alongside equally compelling interviews with lesser-known figures. Marcus occasionally shifts from host to subject, as in the ninth season, in which he talks about coming of age at the dawn of the AIDS epidemic. Starter episode: 'Sylvia Rivera — Part 1' 'Witness History' This podcast from the BBC World Service delivers on a simple premise — 'history told by the people who were there' — but does so in a snappy, bite-size format that sets it apart from most lengthy oral histories. Each episode is just 10 minutes, and unspools a single archival eyewitness account of a memorable chapter in 20th and 21st century history. Many episodes focus on tragic or dramatic incidents like the final days of Hitler before he killed himself in 1945, as told by his secretary, and the 1972 Andes plane crash as told by a survivor. Others explore cultural turning points like the 1995 launch of Windows 95, or the publication of a landmark novel like 'Lord of the Flies.' No matter the subject, the firsthand accounts always make for compelling listening. Starter episode: 'Oklahoma City Bombing' 'Cold War Conversations' A treasure trove of personal narratives that flesh out what life was really like on either side of the Iron Curtain power this richly detailed series. Ian Sanders, the host and producer, has evident passion for his subject, and began the series in 2018 as a way to gather and preserve as many human stories from the Cold War as possible. Over more than 400 episodes, he's interviewed a vast array of soldiers, spies, defectors and everyday civilians who had to navigate life in the Eastern Bloc. Listening to even one episode of 'Cold War Conversations' will make this sprawling, potentially intimidating period of history feel vivid and compelling. Starter episode: 'Gillian — A US Student Visiting Cold War East Germany'
