This grant was offered in collaboration with the College of Arts and Sciences’ Office of Engagement.

This project features a series of exhibitions, conferences, archival projects and community-engaged programs that engage GAHDT's 2024-25 theme, Care | Culture | Justice, in vibrant and meaningful ways. Partners include the Greater Columbus Arts Council, Maroon Arts Group, Urban Arts Space, Arts Impact Middle School, Hale Black Cultural Arts Center and numerous university departments and schools. 

The project's core objective is to establish sustainable support for ongoing programs and initiatives that prioritize co-creation with and within the community. This entails forging and nourishing partnerships with organizations, artists/creatives and arts administrators who share values aligned with anti-extractive, regenerative and critically-reflexive paradigms. Central to this collaborative effort is the commitment to prioritize care, culture and justice. Moreover, the existing arts ecosystem and collaborative relationships among grant partners underscore the practicality and sustainability of this collective endeavor. 

Principal Investigators: Joni Acuff (AAEP) • Terron Banner (Urban Arts Space and AAEP) • Sheri Neale and Marshall Shorts (Maroon Arts Group) • Alice Ragland (Empowering Young Voices)

Anti-Racism and Social Justice Education in the Performing Arts

Principal Investigators: Nyama McCarthy-Brown (Dance) • Crystal Michelle Perkins (Dance) • Mindi Rhoades (Teaching and Learning)

Equity Framework at the Wexner Center for the Arts

Principal Investigators: Dionne Custer-Edwards (Wexner Center for the Arts) • Kelly Stevelt (Wexner Center for the Arts) 

Fostering Racial Justice: Teacher Professional Development and Student Learning

Principal Investigators: Yana Hashamova (Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures) • Caroline T. Clark (Teaching and Learning)

Linden Murals of Empowerment: Public Art for Racial Justice

Principal Investigators: Njeri Kagotho (Social Work) • Guisela Latorre (Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies) • Rebecca Persons (Social Work)

Being Black / Becoming Black

Principal Investigators: Adéléke Adéeko (African and African American Studies / English) • Kwaku Korang (Comparative Studies) 

¡Aquí se Habla Español! Public Outreach at COSI in Spanish
The goal of this project was to develop a set of language science activities that both feature the Spanish language as their subject matter and also can be conducted in Spanish. These activities were integrated into the public outreach efforts of the Language Sciences Research Lab embedded within the COSI museum; moreover, this project created the necessary infrastructure (including student training materials and museum advertising materials) to ensure that the activities continue to be used past the end of the project.

Principal Investigators: Kathryn Campbell-Kibler (Linguistics) • Leslie C. Moore (Linguistics) • Laura Wagner (Psychology) 

Be the Street
This project enacted an intentional exit strategy for the Be the Street project. In doing so, it transfered the intention of the spirit of the project to an organized, institutionally-supported group of community leaders who indicated their interest in carrying the work forward in a way that aligns with their existing and ongoing community-based work.

Principal Investigators: Katherine Borland (Comparative Studies) • Moriah Flagler (Theatre, Film and Media Arts)

Drug Prevention at High Schools in the Epicenter of the Opiate Epidemic 
This project aimed to continue and sustain a drug-prevention program in two Columbus public schools located in the epicenter of the opiate epidemic in Franklin County: South High School and Marion Franklin High School, both on the Southside. Funding supported a graduate student who served as facilitator as well as the purchase of materials for the in-class activities, so that the program could continue when the service-learning course was offered again in 2020 and 2021.

Principal Investigators: Linda Mizejewski (Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies) • Alina Sharafutidinova (City of Columbus Department of Public Safety / Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services)

Exhibition and Education Lab at the Pizzuti Collection of the Columbus Museum of Art
This project enabled the lower level of the Pizzuti building to become the home to an ongoing, public-facing educational collaboration between the Columbus Museum of Art and Ohio State. Graduate and undergraduate students taking courses in the Departments of History of Art and AAEP would be able to develop a range of skills doing hands-on museum work like budgeting, installation, lighting, catalogue writing and production and registrarial management.  

Principal Investigator(s): Kris Paulsen (History of Art and the Program in Film Studies) 
Additional Collaborators: Tyler Cann (The Columbus Museum of Art) Lisa Florman (History of Art), Cindy Foley (The Columbus Museum of Art), Karen Hutzel (Arts Administration, Education and Policy), Dana Carlisle Kletchka (Arts Education, Administration, and Policy) and Daniel Marcus (Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio State History of Art)

Public Narrative Collaborative

Principal Investigators: Lisa Florman (History of Art) • Sarah Iles Johnston (Classics) • Jim Phelan (English) • George Rush (Art)

The following centers and initiatives directly engage a community and/or facilitate the work of Ohio State constituents who wish to do so: List of public or cross-disciplinary connectors.

The following entities have community-oriented documentary and artifactual holdings on campus: List of archives.

The following publishing entities have a community-based focus: Publishing list.

See list of community-focused collaborations

Many community-engaged projects have teaching and student-centered work at their core. This may look like service-learning or field school. It may also take the form of working with youth or training teachers. And sometimes, it looks like an interdisciplinary plan of study or incubator space that makes room for student-led creative experiment.

See list of teaching and student-centered work

The following entities either support community-engaged work that integrates artistic practice in some way or are experts in working with community partners and could (or do) provide critical research or skill sets in doing this work ethically, thoroughly, and humanely.

See list of community-engaged projects and partners with Ohio State