Mellon Foundation Awards $520K to Rikers Public Memory Project
Mellon Foundation Awards $520K to Rikers Public Memory Project to support a participatory initiative accountable to people and communities most impacted by Rikers.
The Mellon Foundation has awarded the Rikers Public Memory Project (RPMP) a $520,000 grant over three years to support The Rikers Public Memory Project: A Community Truth and Healing Process. The primary aims of this project are to document the experiences of those who have been directly impacted by Rikers Island, offer directly impacted people a space for healing and solidarity, and educate other New Yorkers about Rikers and its impact. The project is an outgrowth of an ongoing partnership between Freedom Agenda, Create Forward, and the Humanities Action Lab, who, together, sought to think through the ways that the process of collectively remembering can be used as a strategic organizing tool in the movement to close Rikers Island.
The RPMP brings a uniquely integrated approach to memory and organizing that engages directly impacted people in shaping and sharing their own stories through a range of participatory mechanisms that are ongoing, iterative, and connected to the Campaign to Close Rikers.
“It is so important that the conversations about the history of Rikers Island are grounded in the lived experience of the people who have been harmed there - and that their stories move all of us to create a different future.” - Sarita Daftary, the Project’s Strategic Advocacy Liaison and co-Director of Freedom Agenda.
The Mellon Foundation Presidential Initiatives Grant will help establish the organizational and archival infrastructure for the RPMP to preserve the human history of Rikers Island and ensure it informs the conscience and actions of future generations. Funds will support an iterative and sustainable means through which the oral histories can be activated and accessed by a greater number of people and communities. Further, these grant funds allow RPMP to continue to activate the archive by sharing stories on our website and through public events, which invite directly impacted people to contribute additional stories and experiences outside the format of oral history. Preliminary multi-media exhibit design concepts include an interactive and participatory timeline that documents the history of Rikers’ human rights abuses; and participatory public art that encourages visitors to engage in the process of healing from all that has been lost because of this history. These could include posters featuring portraits of oral history narrators with digital links to their stories for use in rallies; and a memorial wall that invites people to engage in the process of healing. To manage these activities and sustain the project for the future, grant funds will support RPMP’s first staffing team, including a Communications Coordinator to manage broader public engagement strategies and an Administrative Assistant to provide administrative support. Regina Campbell will now serve as the Director of Oral History Program and Engagement, and Piper Anderson as the Director of Design and Engagement.
In the absence of a comprehensive history of “Torture Island,” this project is an opportunity to ensure that, as we move towards closure, the stories of those who have suffered as a result of Rikers are preserved. RPMP will ensure the long-term preservation of Rikers' oral histories by gifting the collections to the New York Public Library's permanent Research Collections. Ours is the largest collection of narratives of the experiences of those who have been directly impacted by Rikers Island. To date, the project has hosted over 35 oral history collection events across the city, partnering with public library branches in Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Staten Island, as well as over 30 local criminal justice organizations. Through these events, RPMP conducted 107 interviews of people who have been detained/incarcerated at Rikers, as well as family members and loved ones.
“Everything we know and could know about Rikers will come from the people who have experienced its horrors first hand, even those who are no longer with us.” - Shana A. Russell, Historian.
In addition to integrating the collection into the New York Public Library, RPMP will build an independent community archive. The archives will allow us to further formalize the public record regarding Rikers, thereby concretizing the city’s public recognition of its past during a moment when its future closure is imminent. These oral histories are historically significant, and we hope they will be heard and studied by students, activists, scholars, and everyday citizens that utilize the Library’s resources. However, because of the long history of exploitation and appropriation of stories, RPMP felt it important to maintain rights and access to our own archive, accountable to those to whom the memory of Rikers belongs.
By making stories of Rikers publicly accessible, and facilitating ongoing story-sharing in a variety of media, RPMP works to change the narrative about those incarcerated at Rikers, by allowing them to speak their truth while leaning deeper into messages about the fundamental human rights of all people, irrespective of the charges. We collect, preserve, and activate the stories of people who experienced Rikers to remember, repair, and redress generational harms of the criminal punishment system.
About the Mellon Foundation
The Mellon Foundation is the nation’s largest supporter of the arts and humanities. Since 1969, the Foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding. The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity, and that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom that can be found there. Through our grants, we seek to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive. Learn more at mellon.org.