MARCIA W. BRITTON

Perspective

The Wyoming Humanities Council turns 35 this year. For nearly four decades the

council has been a catalyst for Wyoming's collective imagination, bringing ideas to life for hundreds of community groups and thousands of people.

In considering the human experience in Wyoming and beyond - who we are, where we've come from, and where we're headed - the council has played a pivotal role in challenging Wyomingites to undertake critical thinking and innovative public humanities projects in examining ourselves and enhancing our role in the world. Approximately $17 million has been provided in efforts to provoke Wyoming citizens to explore meaning in our lives, communities, and world, including over $6 million in grants for statewide organizations.

When Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) devised the state humanities councils in the early 1970s, they included Wyoming as one of their six pilot projects. The Wyoming Humanities Council has been going strong ever since, transforming lives, connecting communities, and enriching the nation and world through the use of history, literature, ethics, folklore, and other humanities disciplines.

What are the public humanities? Created as broadly based and independently governed nonprofit organizations, state humanities councils are positioned to make a difference in nurturing civil society. Perhaps the Wyoming Humanities Council's most powerful tool is our ability to bring people together in neutral forums to explore and exchange ideas from diverse perspectives - always seeking the best for Wyoming's future. Recent programs such as A Wyoming Conversation, Faces of Family, Barn Again!, and NEH Landmarks of American History Teacher Workshop: Women's Suffrage on the Western Frontier, and forthcoming programs such as Wyoming Common Ground, Between Fences, and We the People: Border Lines, enable participants to focus on values and ideas to find a basis for solutions. Established programs such as the Humanities Forum, Reading Wyoming, Museum on Main Street, the Summer Classics Institute, and Humanities at Work also offer limitless possibilities for thought and engagement.

Milward Simpson, director of the Wyoming Department of State Parks and Cultural Resources, agrees. "The Wyoming Humanities Council can have great impact in convening communities around important topics, raising awareness and encouraging involvement. I hope the council continues to invest its resources in this important function," he says.

State humanities councils also bridge public life and academic life. The Wyoming Humanities Council sustains a close relationship with the University of Wyoming and community colleges by collaborating with faculty on grants and public programs. The University of Wyoming partnership was recently bolstered by the creation of a new Wyoming Humanities Council Endowment with the University of Wyoming Foundation. The endowment will help us send university faculty out into the state to work with our programs, and it will enable us to mentor students who are interested in the public humanities. This endowment looks to the council's future.

Finally, key to the 35-year success of the Wyoming Humanities Council is partnerships. We work with long-term partners such as the Wyoming Department of State Parks and Cultural Resources, the Wyoming State Library and county library system, both small and large museums, the Wind River Reservation, university and community college systems, the Wyoming Community Foundation, Wyoming Public Radio, and Wyoming Public Television. But we also strive to grow new partnerships that are relevant to Wyoming needs and offer the potential for wider exchanges of ideas with such entities as the Wyoming Department of Family Services, the Wyoming State Training School, the Wyoming Women's Center, the Latino Resource Council, and the Wyoming Association of Nonprofit Organizations.

The Wyoming Humanities Council is initiating plans for the next five years by holding another round of Community Conversations. Once again we hope to serve as a catalyst. We urge you to share imaginative ideas from town hall meetings so that we may collect and shape them into future humanities grants and programs that impact Wyoming with effective leadership and hopes for positive change. The next Converation will be held at 7:30 a.m. June 20 at the Lincoln County Library in Kemmerer. Look for Community Conversations in Jackson, Pinedale, Rawlins, Sheridan and Riverton/Ethete/Fort Washakie.

We hope to see you at upcoming programs - a Reading Wyoming book discussion, a stop on the Between Fences Smithsonian Institution exhibit tour, during Wyoming Common Ground community gatherings about preservation and development, or at "We the People: Border Lines," a new film series that examines our negotiation of borders concerning race, gender, religion, or economic status.

Better yet, create partnerships in your own community and propose an innovative public humanities grant project. You will experience first-hand the ongoing legacy of the Wyoming Humanities Council. Join the conversation and help us imagine Wyoming's future boldly.

Marca W. Britton is the director of the Wyoming Humanities Council.