Jed Murr receives grant for Black Arts Northwest project

IAS faculty member Jed Murr has received a UW Bothell Scholarship, Research and Creative Practice Seed Grant for his project, Black Arts Northwest, Phase One. The grant will enable the creation of a publicly accessible, interactive online digital history platform dedicated to preserving and sharing the story of a Black Power mural created in Seattle in the early 1970s in relation to the rich history, culture, and politics of Black Seattle.

The digital platform constitutes the first phase of Black Arts Northwest, a large-scale, multi-year project that seeks to enhance broad engagement with Black art and politics in the Pacific Northwest. The core aims of the project as a whole are to: 1) involve UWB undergraduates, graduate students, librarians, faculty, and, eventually, local K-12 students in collaborative, comparative, and participatory research about local political and aesthetic movements; 2) produce and support innovative, public-facing, and collaborative scholarship, including Digital Humanities projects, that contributes to recent exhibitions, publications, and public projects focused on West Coast Black cultural and political movements; 3) build sustainable partnerships and platforms locally and nationally to promote engagement with and ethical, accessible documentation of the ongoing narratives and practices of Black expressive culture in the Pacific Northwest.