Guidelines for Specific Project Types

Because the following kinds of projects have unique components, MHC asks for particular kinds of program details, as indicated below. Please be as brief as possible.

Exhibitions

Program details should include a description of the following:

  1. Design Plan: Provide a general sketch of the exhibit layout.
  2. Object List: By category with examples.
  3. Script: Outline of exhibit script – Give us a general idea of how you’ll tell the story and what the visitor’s experience will be.
  4. Process of creation: Describe how the exhibit will be constructed and by whom.
  5. History: Description of previous exhibits in Maine on same topic.
  6. Sites & schedule information: Provide confirmed and projected list.
  7. Future plans for exhibit: Expected long-term use of exhibition and related materials. For example, will a travelling version of the exhibit be made available to schools?

Family Literacy

Applicants should include a description of:

  1. Age Group: Programming and outreach for children ages 0-5 and their families/caregivers
  2. Training: Topics to be covered
  3. Book Component: Method for book distribution and associated costs. List sample titles.
  4. Collaboration: Partnership efforts with local library and literacy service providers
  5. Sustainability: Plans to ensure program’s sustainability

Oral History and other Audio projects

Oral Histories are a popular form of history project. The most successful are developed carefully around a theme and represent far more than simple conversations with an informant. When evaluating oral history proposals, our committee looks for the following:

  1. Interviewers: Who will be conducting oral history interviews and what training they have, or will be given, in recording technologies as well as in taking oral histories.
  2. Interviewees: Who will be interviewed and on what basis they will be selected or recruited.
  3. Content: Sample questions and themes to be explored; a script is even better.
  4. Results: Public programs and/or products that will result from oral history research. One essential part of any history project is thinking of ways in which a larger audience can see your stories.
  5. Recording instruments: Indicate whether video or audio recorders will be used and describe.
  6. Additional documentation: Indicate any activities that will be undertaken to additionally document the oral histories (such as photographs).
  7. Short and Long-term Plans: Show how you will develop transcripts and make provisions for archival storage to assure continued public access to the project. Shorter terms activities might include writing a series of local history articles for a local newspaper; transforming oral histories into an exhibit in a local museum; printing oral history stories on place mats in local restaurants; using edited oral history tapes for walking or automobile tours of a community; painting historical murals in schools or on downtown buildings; or showing edited oral histories on local TV.

If you have an oral history project in conjunction with an exhibit, please provide information requested for bot`h categories.

Photodocumentary Exhibition

In addition to the above, applicants should include a description of the following:

  1. Examples: Samples of photographs as well as other works by photographer(s)
  2. Community Involvement: Plan for involving the community being photographed.

Visual Media Projects

Due to the substantial cost of film productions, the Council only funds pre-production (scripting / treatment) or post-production (finishing, distributing, and programming related to) elements of film and media projects. These are Major grants and are normally limited to $3,000. In the narrative, applicants should include a description of the following:

  1. Rationale: Why film or video is an appropriate medium for the subject matter
  2. Treatment: Approach(es) to subject and themes, and length of film with specific details on script or, if no script is anticipated, on how the film will be conceptualized. Provide enough detail for the committee to assess the humanities content of the project. If you are applying for a scripting grant, this section may be somewhat skeletal (because the funds, if awarded, will support development of the concept), but you should clearly indicate which areas you plan to develop and how you plan to develop them and how a humanities scholar is informing the work
  3. Post production: (if applicable). Activities, including distribution, development of interpretive materials and public interpretive performances relating to the final stages of launching a film.
  4. Qualifications: Description of director’s other films (If this is included in project director resume, simply state "see resume.")
  5. Distribution: Expected use and need for film, distribution outlets, and promotion plan.
  6. Public Program: Plans for attracting audience and engaging them in discussion.
  7. Business Plan: Budget for all phases of film production, indicating projected sources of funding.

Web Sites

  1. Rationale – How will it be used?
  2. Audience?
  3. Visitor experience – how will it serve the visitor?
  4. Qualifications of those involved in design and creation of the site.