Sustaining Support for Community-Led Documentation at the American Folklife Center (and Beyond)

Since 2022, the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress has offered awards through the Community Collections Grant (CCG) program to support contemporary cultural documentation projects informed by community-based perspectives. This program is one component in a much larger initiative at the Library that is funded by a multi-year Mellon Foundation grant. As Mellon-funded activity comes to an end, leadership and staff at the American Folklife Center are considering how to sustain such a program into the future. This essay explores impacts of the CCG program for awardees, their communities, and the Center, while imagining what sustaining such a program means in light of the Center's upcoming fiftieth anniversary. Additionally, the essay poses questions about what it means to sustain such a program beyond the federal institutional home in which it originated.