America's Media Makers: Development Grants

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Grants for America’s Media Makers support media projects that explore significant events, figures, or developments in the humanities in creative and new ways. America’s Media Makers projects promote active exploration and engagement for broad public audiences in history, literature, archaeology, art history, comparative religion, philosophy, and other fields of the humanities. NEH supports the development of humanities content and interactivity that excites, informs, and stirs thoughtful reflection. To that end, NEH urges applicants to consider more than one format for presenting humanities ideas to the public. Grants for America’s Media Makers should encourage audiences to engage with the humanities, promote dialogue and discussion, and foster learning among people of all ages.NEH offers two categories of grants for media projects, Development Grants and Production Grants. Development grants enable media producers to collaborate with scholars to develop humanities content and format and to prepare programs for production. These grants cover a wide range of activities that include, but are not limited to, meetings and individual consultations with scholars, location and archival research, preliminary interviews, preparation of program scripts, designs for interactivity and digital distribution, and the creation of partnerships for outreach activities and public engagement with the humanities. Development grants should culminate in the refinement of the humanities ideas, a script, or a design document for (or a prototype of) digital media components or projects. Development grants may also result in a detailed plan for outreach and public engagement in collaboration with partner organizations. Before applying, applicants must have a solid command of the major humanities scholarship on the subject, have clarified the ideas that the project will consider, and have consulted with a team of scholarly advisers to work out the intellectual issues that the program will explore. Applicants must also have made preliminary decisions about the format and storyline and located essential materials for the program(s). Finally, they must have recruited the appropriate media professionals, especially the producer, writer, or interactive designer. Production grants support the preparation of a program for distribution. Applicants must submit a script for a radio or television program, or a prototype or storyboard for a digital media project, that demonstrates a solid command of the humanities ideas and scholarship about the subject. See application guidelines for Production Grants. Applications may be submitted for any phase of a project. Applicants are not required to obtain a development grant before applying for a production grant. Applicants may not, however, submit multiple applications for the same project at the same deadline. An applicant must choose whether to apply for development or production of a particular project. If an application for a project is already under review, another application for the same project cannot be accepted.

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