Funded Projects in Fiscal Year 2017

Buffalo River Heritage Festival

The one-day festival will highlight the tradition of music and story telling that is unique to the Ozark region, and will celebrate the artists and traditional artisans of the region. The festival will serve to promote heritage tourism in northwest Arkansas, and to cultivate partnerships with the Buffalo Theater Board, the local schools, and local businesses and the Newton County Chamber of Commerce.

Funding: $16,500

Partner: Buffalo Theater Board, local schools and businesses, Newton County Chamber of Commerce

Promoting Cultural Heritage Through Song

This project will promote the cultural heritage and history, stewardship of the river, and increase knowledge of Ozark mountain music tradition. The products that result from this project will support the LMDI goals 1 and 4.

Funding: $20,000

Partner: Buffalo River Watershed Alliance (BRWA)

Highlighting Delta Culture at The 38th Annual Natchitoches-NSU Folk Festival

The primary outcome sought is that the Folk Festival audience will experience and be educated about the diversity and richness of Delta culture. The Festival will provide a venue for the general public and researchers to encounter voices, traditions, material culture, and music from several of the folk communities of the Delta, including American Indian, Anglo-American, African-American, and Creole. Delta Initiative funding will help the Festival highlight the music, crafts, foods, people, and traditions of Delta culture.

Funding: $17,200

Partner: Louisiana Folklife Center, Northwestern State University

Conduct Mississippi River Archeological Assessment & Mitigation

The proposed research provides critical environmental impact prediction, assessment, database development, management planning, remediation, and alternative mitigation of endangered cultural resources associated with the human environment of the Mississippi River Delta.

Funding: $17,500

Partner: National Center for Preservation Technology and Training

Delta Express to Equality

The Delta Express to Equality Heritage Tours is a chartered bus field trip series exploring the power of and threats to American citizenship protections by visiting LMDI sites connected to the Trail of Tears, Underground Railroad, Japanese American Internment Camps, and African American Civil Rights Movement. Each Delta Express trip will begin at Central High National Historic Site and visit Arkansas Post National Memorial, and the Rohwer Internment Camp National Historic Landmark, highlighting additional sites/markers in route.

Funding: $9,482.17

Partner: ARPO, Rohwer Internment Camp National Historic Landmark

Jazz Appreciation – Architects of Jazz

Jazz Appreciation Month’s Architects of Jazz and Jazz in the Classroom events and activities are aligned with the Lower Mississippi Delta Initiative that 1) Result directly in increased heritage tourism within the Lower Mississippi Delta Region through audience and community engagement, marketing, advertising and public relations; and 2) Add to the knowledge base concerning a cultural, natural, or recreational resource or provides useful contextual information for a resource by connecting Arkansas Delta schools and the communities with information for use and useful information.

Funding: $9,000

Partner: The Alex Foundation

SE Arkansas Literary Arts Program

The literary arts program would be beneficial to the community because it would be culturally enriching and educationally engaging. The community, as well as students from schools in the Southeast Arkansas Region, would be exposed to authors, publishers, and writers who they perhaps would not otherwise see in person.

Funding: $6,600

Partner: Monticello Branch Library

Cutwell 4 Kids Workshop

The project will contact community leaders, artists, and visionaries; people who want to empower their communities in the Delta area by using art to motivate their culture and increase involvement in their communities, and invite them to an overnight workshop.

Funding: $10,000

Partner: Cutwell 4 Kids

Celebrating New Orleans at 300

This project will mark the tricentennial of New Orleans in 2018 with 10 new jazz compositions that interpret 10 storylines associated with 300 years of New Orleans history. The project will commission 10 new jazz compositions to be part of WWNO’s series TriPod: New Orleans at 300. Each song will move beyond the familiar themes of New Orleans history to focus on forgotten, neglected, or surprising pieces of the city’s past, and to enrich understanding of its present and future.

Funding: $25,000

Partner: Office of Cultural Affairs for the Consulate General of France and New Orleans public radio station WWNO-FM

Middle Passage Historical Marker Project

The Middle Passage historical marker project will commemorate the 2 to 6 million Africans who perished and the 10 million who survived The Middle Passage of the transatlantic slave trade.

Funding: $12,699.40

Partner: Middle Passage Ceremonies and Port Markers Project, Inc.

Brice's Crossroads Battlefield/Four Corners – Create Two Interpretive Brochures and Build and Install Message Board with Brochure Holder

The purpose of this component of the project is to produce brochures for Brice’s Cross Roads National Battlefield/Chief Tishomingo Scenic Byway and Four Corners Interpretive site. In addition, a brochure holder will be built and installed at the Four Corners site.

Funding: $4,037

Partner: Brice’s Crossroads National Battlefield Commission

Develop Educational Outreach Program Materials - History of the Isaiah T. Montgomery House and Mound Bayou

This project will develop educational outreach program materials to educate the public about the history of the Isaiah T. Montgomery House and Mound Bayou. Materials will also address the community-wide effort to restore this National Historic Landmark and for the house to serve as a catalyst for Mound Bayou’s cultural heritage tourism program. The goal of the program is to position Mound Bayou to become an active participant and beneficiary of the thriving heritage tourism economy of the Mississippi Delta.