$1M grant creates partnership between Beaufort County’s Penn Center, University of GA
A $1 million grant has created a partnership between Beaufort County’s historic Penn Center and another center more than 200 miles away.
The University of Georgia’s Willson Center for Humanities and Arts announced last week that it received the grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to work with the Penn Center, “one of the nation’s most important institutions of African American culture.”
The partnership will “support education and sharing among communities in the Sea Islands region of the Southeastern United States and students from UGA and its partner institutions,” the news release said.
The Penn Center is a nonprofit organization on St. Helena Island in the Gullah Geechee Cultural Corridor committed to African American education, community development and social justice. It has been a gathering place for meetings and celebrations.
It’s located on the campus of the Penn School, which was founded in 1862 to provide education to formerly enslaved West Africans. After the school closed in 1948, the site was a sanctuary for civil rights organizers in the 1960s, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other Southern Christian Leadership Conference members.
A project titled “Culture and Community at the Penn Center National Historic Landmark District” will include a range of programs such as community-based artists residencies, in-place studies for students at UGA and partner institutions, and a series of public conversations.
Barbara McCaskill, professor of English and associate academic director of the Willson Center, and Nicholas Allen, who holds an endowed chair in humanities and directs the Willson Center, are leading the project.
“Penn Center’s history encompasses every stage of the African American freedom struggle, from slavery, the Reconstruction and segregation to the present civil rights moment,” said McCaskill, who also serves as director of the Civil Rights Digital Library, as a member of the Penn Center board of trustees and an advisory board member of Penn’s multidisciplinary journal, Watch Night. “This new partnership will allow UGA’s humanities and arts students to interact creatively throughout the year with this coastal region’s historic and storied Black communities.”
She said research projects will spark conversations between students and communities about climate change, cultural preservation, and social justice and equity issues in education, law, employment and housing.
Marion Burns, Penn Center’s board chair and interim executive director, said he sees great potential in the partnership.
“The project promotes two-way interactions between communities in the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor and academic institutions,” he said in the release. “This is an opportunity for a new kind of approach for the arts and humanities that emphasizes community along with history, culture and heritage.”
Grant-funded activities, which will run through June 2025, will begin in early 2021 with calls for proposals for artists in residence, research residencies and place-based study classes.
