City Lore

New York, New York, 10003

Last updated on August 15, 2024
Grant awarded by
Library of Congress
Region
East
Organization Type
Cultural Institution
Congressional District(s)
3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16
Fiscal Year Of First Grant
FY 2022 [10/01/21 - 09/30/22]
Contributing Organization(s)
Organization description

Founded in 1985, City Lore’s mission is to foster New York City – and America’s – living cultural heritage through education and public programs in service of cultural equity and social justice. City Lore encompasses a Lower East Side gallery space, performances, lectures, the People’s Hall of Fame, a POEMobile that projects poems onto walls and buildings, and programs throughout the five boroughs.

We document, present, and advocate for New York City’s grassroots cultures to ensure their living legacy in stories and histories, places and traditions. We work in four cultural domains: urban folklore and history; preservation; arts education; and grassroots poetry traditions. In each, we seek to further cultural equity and model a better world with projects as dynamic and diverse as New York City itself.

Project description

“From Harikatha to Hip Hop: Integrating Library of Congress Primary Sources on Traditional Music and Dance into the Humanities Curriculum” is a year-long professional learning program that supports middle and high school educators to integrate culturally-rooted music, dance, and oral traditions from around the world into their teaching of the humanities. The program brings together a cohort of classroom teachers from several New York City public schools and City Lore teaching artists working in culturally-rooted music, dance, and oral traditions. Artists and teachers are paired to collaboratively design and teach lesson plans integrating primary sources from the rich digital collections of the Library of Congress. The teaching artists also share their artistry in the classroom through live performance, art-making, interviews, and other modalities as a way of making meaningful and embodied connections to the primary sources. The idea is that humanities teachers and teaching artists use more arts-based primary sources in their teaching of history, civics, and democracy *and* that they see the potential for using live performance to extend the power of teaching with primary sources. The program will culminate with a dedicated website of lesson plans, instructional videos, and other resources for classroom educators on a diverse range of folk and traditional music, dance, and oral traditions. integrating City Lore’s existing education work with collections of the Library of Congress.
TPS project focus
  • Curriculum
  • Teaching Materials
Content focus
  • Art
  • Civics
  • Cultural Studies
  • English Language Arts
  • History
  • Information Literacy
  • Library/Media Studies
  • Literacy
  • Music
  • Religion
  • Research
  • Civil Rights
  • Civil War
Audience
  • Artists
  • Classroom teachers
  • Librarians/Media specialists
  • Musicians
  • Students
Level(s)
  • 6 - 8
  • 9 - 12
Population focus
  • African Americans
  • Asian Americans
  • English language learners
  • Hispanic/Latinx
Organization Contact
Sahar Muradi, Director of Education Programs
[email protected]
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