Publics

2022 Community Partners and Projects:

City of Davis Arts & Cultural Affairs: Community Engagement with the Davis Centennial Seal

The City of Davis Arts and Cultural Affairs Program supports community-based arts projects, cultural opportunities, and education initiatives that foster excellence, diversity, and vitality in the arts. In

commemoration of the City of Davis Centennial in 2017, local artist Susan Shelton has created a bronze seal, 6 feet in diameter, installed in front of the historic Hunt Boyer Mansion in downtown Davis, CA. The Davis Centennial Seal represents the city in a multi-faceted way through a circular, ringed design that tells ongoing human and natural histories through the themes of aspiration, community, cooperation, leadership, innovation, engagement, global citizenship, stewardship, vision, and optimism. The Mellon Public Scholar will engage the archives and stories in the Davis Centennial Seal to create either A) curriculum materials for K-12 educators, B) online interpretive materials, or C) public programming based on the applicant’s skills and interests. Materials and programming will engage the storytelling dimensions of the seal and address the many themes within the design such as natural history, political and cultural history, key figures, and/or environmental justice.

International House Davis: Artist Liaison for 2022 International Festival

International House Davis (I-House) is a social gathering space where people from all over the world come together. It is a place dedicated to embracing differences, cultivating joy, combating isolation, and creating a better future grounded in cultural equity. For 10 years, I-House has celebrated culture and community with the annual International Festival in Davis’ Central Park, including six hours of music and dance, delicious

international food, childrens’ activities, artisan wares, and informational booths. The artists and culture bearers participating in the festival represent the diasporic cultures living here in our region that contribute to our communities and ways of living. A Mellon Public Scholar joins the organizing team for the 2022 International Festival on October 2, 2022 as Artist Liaison to work directly with the artists participating in the festival and contextualize the performances of the artists and culture bearers by asking, “How can we deepen and center the contexts, histories, and meanings of artistic expressions beyond a one-day performance festival?”

2021 Community Partners and Projects:

California State Parks: Developing a California Native American Interpretive Framework at Sutter’s Fort State Park

California State Parks is developing pilot California Native American Walking Tours for Marshall Gold Discovery Park in Coloma, California and Sutter’s Fort State Historic Park. With Governor Newsom’s apology for California Native American Genocide in California, California State Parks is in the beginning stages of reviewing

interpretation at Parks with an Indigenous nexus. This project will be the first of several reviews of other Gold Rush-era parks through current interpretation and education standards. The scholar will assist the Tribal Affairs Program, Interpretation and Education Division, and the Cultural Resources Program at Gold Fields District with engaging and consulting tribes whose history, culture, and traditions interact with Marshall Gold Discovery Park and Sutter’s Fort State Historic Park. This includes scheduling and attending tribal consultations, reviewing current interpretive models at the Park, and creating walking tours with recommendations from both the tribes and the Public Scholar for developing an inclusive Indigenous history through interpretive design (digital tools, etc.). California State Parks will mentor the student through close partnership and professional development opportunities.

Capital Public Radio: Participatory Journalism

CapRadio is the NPR affiliate serving California’s Central Valley and Sierra Nevada. Seven frequencies, hundreds of thousands of listeners, and one mission: to build stronger communities. CapRadio works collaboratively with community partners to understand and voice community needs, concerns, and aspirations. Working closely with Senior Community Engagement Strategist jesikah maria ross, the Mellon Public Scholar

will assist in developing and assessing engaged journalism projects at CapRadio that focus on underserved audiences and/or underreported issues.

The principles of participatory journalism guiding this project are inclusion, co-creation, face-to-face events, public service, and civic infrastructure. The Mellon Public Scholar can expect to select and develop stories in conversation with communities; design a reporting process that generates understanding, connection, and trust; strengthen existing networks and forge new alliances that build community resilience beyond reporting. Day-to-day work over late spring and summer will involve independent research, writing, project management, and event programming, which may include tasks such as attending meetings, updating databases, assessing and evaluating projects, and organizing and facilitating community information sessions. The Mellon Public Scholar will be part of a newsroom that handles breaking news and investigative reporting alongside daily coverage; the position requires some flexibility and the scholar should anticipate afternoon work hours with the possibility of evenings or weekends depending on community needs.

Center for Sacramento History: Racialized Policing in California’s Gold Rush Era

The Center for Sacramento History (CSH) is a repository and research center for the City and County historic collections and provides exhibition materials for the Sacramento History Museum in Old Sacramento, which is

devoted to Sacramento and California Gold Rush history. The CSH is undertaking a significant effort to diversify their collections in order to better tell the stories of underrepresented communities in Sacramento’s history. In particular, the CSH is collecting objects and stories that highlight the contributions of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and Asian people during California’s Gold Rush period. From BIPOC perspectives, the CSH plans to demonstrate how this era was marked by a racialized legal system (including enslavement as punishment) that unevenly harmed Black and Indigenous people (as compared to White people) and persists into the present day.

The Mellon Public Scholar will analyze (digitized) Indian Indentures, jail registers and mug books from the Gold Rush era in the CSH’s collection to first identify the kinds of convictions and sentences that Black and Indigenous people received. Using that data, the scholar will then compare those offenses and sentences to White people in the same time period. In addition to the data collection and analysis, the Mellon Public Scholar will work closely with CSH staff to conceptualize future exhibits of materials for the Sacramento History Museum which connect the historical archive to contemporary issues in policing and criminalization in this region.

City of Davis Arts & Cultural Affairs: Community Engagement with the Davis Centennial Seal

2020 Community Partners and Projects:

California State Parks: Developing a California Native American Interpretive Framework at Marshall Gold State Historic Park

California State Parks is developing a pilot interpretive framework for Marshall Gold Discovery Park in Coloma,

California. With Governor Newsom’s apology for California Native American Genocide in California, California State Parks is in the beginning stages of reviewing interpretation at Parks with an Indigenous nexus. This project will be the first of several reviews of other Gold Rush-era parks through current interpretation and education standards.

The scholar will assist the Tribal Affairs Program, Interpretation and Education Division, and the Cultural Resources Program at Gold Fields District with engaging and consulting tribes whose history, culture, and traditions interact with Marshall Gold Discovery Park. This includes scheduling and attending tribal consultations, reviewing current interpretive models at the Park, and creating a framework document with recommendations from both the tribes and the Public Scholar for developing an inclusive Indigenous history through interpretive design (panels, tours, digital tools, etc.). California State Parks will mentor the student through close partnership and professional development opportunities.

Sacramento Gender Health Center: Trans Health Storytelling

Working with Gender Health Center staff, the Mellon Public Scholar will collect digital stories of Sacramento-area transgender folks. These narratives will be developed in consideration of the structural barriers that constrain trans folks’ agency to access mental health services voluntarily, and in response to state and nation-wide mental health awareness campaigns that do not approach mental health with consideration to these structural factors, nor in an intersectional way.

These stories will address the complex experiences of trans people accessing health resources, in their own voices. Work on this project will include outreach and communication with the GHC’s trans community, scheduling and attending interviews, and working with storytellers to edit and produce their narratives. Some prior experience with digital storytelling will be helpful in this project.

Capital Public Radio: Participatory Journalism

Capital Public Radio is the NPR affiliate serving California’s Central Valley and Sierra Nevada. Seven frequencies, hundreds of thousands of listeners, and one mission: to build stronger communities. CapRadio works collaboratively with community partners to understand and voice community needs, concerns and aspirations. Our long-form journalism projects (e.g, podcasts) involve robust community engagement to develop and report powerful stories that explain issues and seek solutions.

Working closely with Senior Community Engagement Strategist jesikah maria ross, the Mellon Public Scholar will assist in developing and assessing engaged journalism projects at CapRadio that focus on underserved audiences and/or underreported issues (capradio.org/ruralsuicide is a recent example). This may involve doing issue research, generating story ideas, organizing listening sessions, assisting in community media trainings, evaluating impacts, producing a variety of communications pieces and coordinating public events. This summer, CapRadio will likely be doing long form reporting projects related to sexual assault and the 2020 elections.

California Arts Council: Organizational Evaluation in the Arts

The California Arts Council (CAC) is a state agency dedicated to advancing California through the arts and creativity. The CAC recently completed an organizational strategic framework that, among other priorities, foregrounds racial equity. Additionally, the CAC is in the process of an extensive external evaluation of their programs, policies, and internal processes. The goal of this revitalizing work is to better align the grant-making practices of the CAC with their reimagined strategic goal of serving California’s communities in a more equitable way.

The CAC invites a Mellon Public Scholar to join in the creative and complex work of aligning their vision and practice. Drawing on an updated field scan of California’s nonprofit arts network, the Scholar will work together with CAC staff to identify new opportunities for outreach. In consultation with the external program evaluation findings, the Scholar will assist the CAC in devising and implementing new internal processes focused on racial equity. Depending on the outcome of the evaluation currently underway, the Scholar may contribute to additional projects.

Imagining America: Learning and Leading Initiative

NOTE: because this partnership is funded separately, Mellon Public Scholars alumni are also invited to apply Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life (IA) invites applications for a Mellon Public Scholar to work on a national research project to shift culture in higher education to better support public scholarship in the arts, design and humanities fields. Called the IA Leading and Learning Initiative (LLI), this national research and action project is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and involves action research, national networking, and the production of interactive tools and media for change agents who advocate for institutional change on behalf of public and activist scholarship.

The Mellon Public Scholar will work directly with IA and DHI staff to conduct research and facilitate dialogue about the experiences, hopes, and challenges of engaged graduate students at UC Davis. The fellow will also attend the annual Organizing Institutes of the LLI which will convene leading thought leaders and advocates of public scholarship from across the country, and will present research findings at the annual IA National Gathering. We welcome new applicants or previous Mellon Public Scholars to apply. Ideally the selected fellow will work with IA/DHI on this project for two consecutive summers, 2020-2021.

2019 Community Partners and Projects:

Imagining America — Community Engaged Design

The Imagining America consortium (IA) brings together scholars, artists, designers, humanists, and organizers to imagine, study, and enact a more just and liberatory ‘America’ and world. At the 20th anniversary, the IA National

Gathering reflected on the organization’s past and future of promoting public scholarship, cultural organizing, and campus change that inspires collective imagination, knowledge-making, and action on pressing public issues. The Mellon Public Scholar undertook research along with members of IA’s Commission on Publicly Engaged Design.

California Food Policy Advocates — Faces of California Hunger

California Food Policy Advocates (CFPA) has earned its reputation as the go-to source for policy expertise and advocacy on issues related to improving access to nutritious, affordable food for low-income Californians. Entering their twenty-sixth year of doing advocacy work, they sought to broaden their impact by engaging a larger community of supporters who may not grasp the wonkyness of policy. The Mellon Scholar helped CFPA grow their impact and captivate a wider audience by improving their communications through human-centered narratives.

California Department of Education – Native American Model Curriculum

The California Department of Education is developing a Native American Model Curriculum, which, like the 2020 Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, will offer a flexible framework on which districts can build meaningful, interdisciplinary courses relevant to their students’ experiences. The Mellon Public Scholar worked collaboratively with the CDE’s Curriculum and Instructional Resources Division to research current Native American and Indigenous studies best practices, including a literature review centered on the recommended coverage of U.S. and California Native American history and educational best practices.

California Arts Council – Arts & Culture Landscape Study Framework

The California Arts Council (CAC) is a state agency dedicated to advancing California through the arts and creativity. One of the primary ways that it serves the arts and culture field is through its eleven competitive grant programs. Mellon Public Scholars have evaluated the coverage and reach of the CAC’s grant programs, and assisted in developing an updated portrait of arts and culture organizations across the state.