Harlem Grown Announces $1.3M Mellon Foundation Grant to Support Programs in Marcus Garvey Park
Funds will center and amplify Harlem’s history, culture, creativity, and community of care
(New York, NY — 01/12/23) Harlem Grown announced today a two-year $1.3M grant from the Mellon Foundation that will support programs, initiatives, and installations on food culture, performing arts, visual arts, and cultural literacy in Marcus Garvey Park. The Marcus Garvey Park Culture, Creativity, and Care Initiative will focus on fostering creativity and care in an essential public space at the heart of New York’s Harlem and Black community.
The Marcus Garvey Park Culture, Creativity, and Care Initiative is a two-year multifaceted activation of the public realm that will center and amplify Harlem’s rich history and culture to diverse community members and visitors. The Mellon Foundation grant will support temporary artist installations, wellness pavilions, public performances, and programming focused on Harlem and its Black, Latinx, and Indigenous histories and cultures. This work will link to Harlem Grown’s existing network of urban farms. Ongoing public space interventions by BIPOC designers — approved and co-created by community-based organizations — will range from pop-up libraries, conversation-driving spaces, food and plant culture events, and activities focused on wellness and care.
Marcus Garvey Park has historically provided space for culture, activism, and engagement during periods of social, political, and environmental transformation resonant in Harlem and beyond.
“As we have expanded our farms and educational programming, and grown in our connections to the culture and history of Harlem, we’ve observed underinvestment in public spaces and how gentrification threatens these spaces,” said Tony Hillery, founder and CEO of Harlem Grown. “That’s why this grant is so transformational, and also why attaching this programming to somewhere as historically and culturally significant as Marcus Garvey Park matters deeply. Our work is a community effort and never stops at food; we are thrilled to find new ways to uplift the voices of past and present Harlem and are incredibly grateful for the generosity of the Mellon Foundation.”
“Our parks and public spaces are an essential infrastructure for our communities and important platforms for sharing our collective history, heritage, and culture,” said Justin Garrett Moore, program officer for the Humanities in Place program at the Mellon Foundation. “Marcus Garvey Park has a rich legacy that will continue to grow through new resources for community care and meaningful public engagement led by Harlem Grown and local partners through justice-focused arts, food, and cultural heritage activities.”
The Mellon Foundation’s Humanities in Place program supports a fuller, more complex telling of American histories and lived experiences by deepening the range of how and where our stories are told and by bringing a wider variety of voices into the public dialogue. The program provides resources for projects, initiatives, and infrastructure to better identify, document, create, and care for our places and supports innovative ideas and actions that design a more just present and future landscape — in community with one another and in society.
For the visual and performing arts programming, Harlem Grown will collaborate with community partners who can foster a meaningful cultural experience for our community within spaces available for added programming within the park. An RFP for this portion of the initiative will be available in late January. For interested parties in advance of the open RFP or those interested in participating in the design process of the wellness pavilions, please click the link below and fill out the form.
https://forms.office.com/r/UFtGbAUv3w
About Harlem Grown
Harlem Grown is an independent, non-profit organization whose mission is to inspire youth to lead healthy and ambitious lives through mentorship and hands-on education in urban farming, sustainability, and nutrition. Founded in 2011, we operate local urban farms, increase access to and knowledge of healthy food for Harlem residents, and provide garden-based development programs to Harlem youth. For more information, visit: www.harlemgrown.org.
About The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is the nation’s largest supporter of the arts and humanities. Since 1969, the Foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding. The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity, and that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom that can be found there. Through our grants, we seek to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive. Learn more at www.mellon.org.