2020 Grants
Storie Musicali: An Exchange (Poggio a Caiano): Cellist and songwriter Wes Swing and musician and audio documentarian Kelley Libby will travel to Poggio a Caiano, Italy to learn its musical traditions, lead a music and audio workshop, perform their own music, and return to Charlottesville to present a concert of music they learned while in Italy. This will include a presentation with Charlottesville City Schools. In addition, Ms. Libby will conduct field recordings for an audio documentary she will produce.
Charlottesville-Winneba Fire Safety Partnership (Winneba): The Charlottesville-Winneba Fire Safety Partnership aims to improve the safety, health and quality of life of our two Sister Cities by sharing ideas and resources on fire prevention/preparedness and emergency response/recovery between the Charlottesville Fire Department (CFD) and the Effutu (Winneba) branch of Ghana’s National Fire Service. Following the successful model established by Africa Fire Mission (www.africafiremission.org) and building upon the 2019 community risk assessment conducted by CFD firefighters Greg Wright and Markel Henderson, the Charlottesville-Winneba Fire Safety Partnership will use grant funding to support CFD to provide technical assistance in developing a mobile water supply system to support firefighting efforts in Winneba. In addition, the initiative will include the provision of additional donated personal protective equipment for Winneba’s firefighters.
Peace, Love, Poetry Workshop (Winneba): The Peace, Love, Poetry Workshop will be an interactive poetry collaboration between Charlottesville and sister city, Winneba. The workshop will provide the opportunity for youth in both locations to participate in a shared poetry experience and have their poems video recorded and shared with both communities. Participants in each city will be given a variety of poetry prompts to create specific types of poems and an acrostic poem will be created as a group, reflective of the city. A combined video will be produced of poets from both workshops and introduced at a video premier in Charlottesville and also made available online.