About the Symposia

add descriptive text here — Modesta L. Tauwl, photographer. *Photograph of Sammy Ilamliyong and her warping board.* Part of the Community Collections Grant project, Warp and Weft of Yap’s Outer Islands: Backstrap Weaving in Micronesia.

The Community Collections Grants (CCG) program is a core component for the Library’s Of the People: Widening the Path initiative, supported by the Mellon Foundation. Since 2022, twenty-nine CCG projects have been supported, enabling community members to document their contemporary musical, dance, crafts, food traditions, community celebrations and sacred events in diverse communities across a wide range of geographical contexts – from Caribbean and Pacific islands, to urban, suburban, and rural areas of the U.S. South, Midwest, and East and West coasts.

To celebrate these projects and the awardees who undertook them, the American Folklife Center is hosting two symposia at the Library of Congress in April and September 2025. Representatives of CCG project teams will share their documentation work and participate in discussions about the impact their projects have had.

To the left, find information about the April 2025 symposium. For more information, please contact [email protected].

You can read more about the CCG projects on the Of the People blog here.

LeAna López conducting an interview with Oxil Febles for Los Pleneros de la 21’s Community Collections Grant project. Photo by Jorge Vazquez. Used with permission.

Jourdan Brunson and Tameshia Rudd-Ridge, founders of kinkofa, researching at the Dallas Municipal Archives for their Community Collections Grant project, "If Tenth Street Could Talk." Photo by Tyana Danae of Script16 Studios. Used with permission.

Sandra Bell playing Maria Laveau, Vodou Priestess on Flatbush Avenue. Photo by Ray Allen and taken as part of the Community Collections Grant project, "Documenting, Archiving, Presenting and Fostering Trinidadian J’ouvert Traditions."

Documenting Ourselves: Impacts, Outcomes, and Insights from the Community Collections Grant Program

About the Symposia

LeAna López conducting an interview with Oxil Febles for Los Pleneros de la 21’s Community Collections Grant project. Photo by Jorge Vazquez. Used with permission.

Jourdan Brunson and Tameshia Rudd-Ridge, founders of kinkofa, researching at the Dallas Municipal Archives for their Community Collections Grant project, "If Tenth Street Could Talk." Photo by Tyana Danae of Script16 Studios. Used with permission.

Sandra Bell playing Maria Laveau, Vodou Priestess on Flatbush Avenue. Photo by Ray Allen and taken as part of the Community Collections Grant project, "Documenting, Archiving, Presenting and Fostering Trinidadian J’ouvert Traditions."