Organization description

Stone Soup Productions is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that sponsors trailblazing documentary films, podcasts, innovative outreach initiatives and digital media that help bring an astonishingly diverse body of American art, culture and achievement into focus, opening pathways for rich exploration of human themes.

Among Stone Soup’s humanities productions include The People’s Recorder podcast, which traces the history of the Federal Writers’ Project in the 1930s. The podcast is a continuation of award-winning documentary Soul of People, funded by the NEH and six state humanities councils. Produced in collaboration with the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, the documentary was broadcast on the Smithsonian Channel and became the centerpiece of a series of NEH-funded outreach events in 30 libraries and 80 museums and community organizations across the country, coordinated in conjunction with the American Library Association.

With a commitment to supporting educators, Stone Soup has created free lesson plans, teacher resources, and discussion guides for the majority of its programming, including the 2016 documentary, First Lady of the Revolution, whose educational kit was made available in both English and Spanish for schools in the United States and Costa Rica.  First Lady of the Revolution was also the centerpiece of an Alabama Humanities-supported teachers development workshop about using documentaries in the classroom. Other projects based in the humanities include: interactive websites, educational web and mobile-based games Maryland’s Route One (Maryland Humanities), Search for Harmony (NEH) and humanities.games (NEH); and the award-winning documentary Partners of the Heart, which tells the remarkable story of African American medical pioneer Vivien Thomas. In 2015, the NEH selected Partners of the Heart to be part of the prestigious NEH50, a list of the most culturally significant projects supported by the organization in its 50-year history.  Using Partners of the Heart as a starting point, Stone Soup has conducted multiple discussion and mentorship events at the Vivien Thomas Medical Arts Academy in Baltimore, and plans are in development to widen that initiative.