UMD Libraries to support Project STAND, Shift Collective Inc. partnership in grant from Mellon Foundation

Project STAND, a national grassroots archival consortium foster ethical documentation of contemporary and past social justice movements in underdocumented student populations, has received a $1.5 million grant from the Mellon Foundation. The grant will support the Freedom Dreaming, Archives, and Liberatory Spaces: How Project STAND Supports Student Activism and Legacy project in a three-year partnership with Shift Collective, a non-profit consulting and design group that helps organizations better engage, collaborate with, and reflect their local communities. This collaboration will provide an exciting opportunity to explore a new paradigm for engaging in social justice work, centering the ethical documentation of Black and other marginalized student organizers with partners inside and outside academic structures.

As a long-term strategic partner with Project STAND, UMD Libraries will provide ongoing support during and beyond the three-year cycle of the grant. This support includes serving as a host site for programming like residencies, workshops, and seminars; providing access to library resources like classroom space, the Memory Lab, and podcasting resources; and designating a percentage of staff support along with a coordinator.

“This national consortium led by Lae’l Hughes-Watkins, the UMD Libraries’ Associate Director of Engagement, Inclusion, and Reparative Archiving, has served as a catalyst for critical discussion about the ethical documentation of student records,” said Daniel Mack, Interim Dean of the UMD Libraries. “We look forward to providing support to ensure the sustainability of the consortium and continue to foster inclusivity, intellectual freedom, social justice, equity, and the ethical documentation of historically disenfranchised student populations as an important pillar of librarianship.”

Other critical partners include the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Library, Black.Girl.Archivist. LLC, and the University of Maryland’s Center for Multicultural Involvement and Community Advocacy (MICA). UCLA Library will serve as a host site for programming, provide logistical support for online programming, and collaborate in developing programming agendas. Shift Collective has previously engaged in liberatory work that has been critical to Project STAND’s own development, while MICA will provide essential connections to student communities over the next three years. Hughes-Watkins will be leading this project in her role as founder of Black.Girl.Archivist. LLC.

“UCLA Library is committed to supporting the vitally important work of Project STAND and to serving a role that helps ensure the consortium's sustainability well into the future,” said Athena N. Jackson, UCLA Library Norman and Armena Powell University Librarian. “Project STAND's new archival praxis centering the ethical documentation of student organizing is urgent, especially as it relates to the social justice movements led by students in historically disenfranchised communities. I have personally relied on many of the educational resources established by Project STAND and so have many within our library. The need for Project STAND's work, and the resulting diversity of materials it produces, will only grow.”

The grant will support two week-long residencies that will solicit 16 fellows from student organizers, memory workers, artists, and community organizers to think collectively about safeguarding histories of student-led liberation while imagining and developing primary resources to support the ongoing advocacy and education that make these critical histories accessible.

The three-year project will also launch a two-day community convening that will explore the intersection of freedom dreaming, memory work, and reparative archiving through a blend of salons, interactive workshops, and artistic expressions. The convening will foster dialogue, inspire action, and celebrate the power of archiving collective narratives focused on the history and future of student movements in disenfranchised communities.

“Shift Collective is honored to be part of this next phase of growth for Project STAND. We are humbled that Lae’l and the partners have entrusted us to support this important work over the next three years. Project STAND’s work is vitally important, particularly in this cultural and political moment where academic freedoms are being threatened, student activism is being criminalized, and policies are being enacted against cultural memory work that seeks to illuminate and elevate the histories of people who are marginalized and oppressed,” said Dr. Bergis Jules, a founding member of Shift Collective. “Project STAND is critically important to ensuring these voices continue to be heard. Their work also helps ensure our shared historical record is more representative of the rich diversity of people and cultures that exists in the United States,”

“During the next three years, I look forward to continuing this work despite the current sociopolitical dimensions we are facing. I look forward to listening to our ancestors through the archives and the student organizers who labored before us while continuing to listen to our students now. What do they need, and how should our archival praxis be impacted by this period we are living through? How do we still capture the moments of movement work in our vulnerable communities safely, with love, intention, care, honor, and joy?” says Lae’l Hughes-Watkins.

With the generous support of the Mellon Foundation, Project STAND will increase its digital footprint. The consortium will expand public access to its community-generated digital collection and escalate efforts for amassing digital archives of student organizing to provide a deeper awareness of the power of collective dreaming for a liberated future and how it exists in the historical record.

“I am ecstatic that we received this grant from the Mellon Foundation to support the goals of  Project STAND. This grant will provide educational learning opportunities and experiences for students and enrich the campus and larger community. Using archival research provides an opportunity in the spirit of ‘Sankofa’ to look back to move forward. It is my hope that through our efforts, seeds will be planted that will continue to sprout and blossom to inspire others in the future,” Brandon Dula, Assistant Director of University of Maryland’s Center for Multicultural Involvement and Community Advocacy.