Small Grants to Libraries (NEH)

America’s Music: A Film History of Our Popular Music from Blues to Bluegrass to Broadway is a six-week public program featuring documentary film screenings and scholar-led discussions of twentieth-century American popular music. The six sessions focus on these uniquely American musical genres: blues and gospel, Broadway, jazz, bluegrass and country, rock n’ roll, and mambo and hip hop. The project will provide DVDs of compelling documentary films, discussion guidelines, original essays by eminent scholars, extensive resource guides, and Web support. The project will offer participating organizations training in how to organize, promote, and run the series successfully. All libraries and nonprofit organizations selected to implement the public program will receive grants of $2,500 for project expenses. Fifty organizations (libraries and other eligible nonprofits) will be selected to receive a grant to present this series of community programs on the history of American popular music. The grantee institutions are expected to offer the programs between January 1, 2013, and December 31, 2013.

Amount: $2,500

Date due: March 14, 2012

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Sparks! Ignitition Grants for Libraries

The Sparks! Ignition Grants for Libraries and Museums are a special funding opportunity within the IMLS National Leadership Grants program. These small grants encourage libraries, museums, and archives to test and evaluate specific innovations in the ways they operate and the services they provide. Sparks Grants support the deployment, testing, and evaluation of promising and groundbreaking new tools, products, services, or organizational practices. You may propose activities or approaches that involve risk, as long as the risk is balanced by significant potential for improvement in the ways libraries and museums serve their communities.

Successful proposals will address problems, challenges, or needs of broad relevance to libraries, museums, and/or archives. A proposed project should test a specific, innovative response to the identified problem and present a plan to make the findings widely and openly accessible.

Amount: $25,000

Date due: February 12, 2012

For more information, click here.