KEET-TV Uses a National Park Service Grant to Tell a Unique Local Story
January 6, 2012
KEET-TV, of Eureka, California, was a 2011 recipient of the Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant program through the National Park Service (NPS). Leveraging a California Civil Liberties Public Education Program grant of $22,000, KEET received $94,465 from the NPS to create “J.A JIVE: Jazz Music in the Japanese American Internment Camps,” an hour long documentary utilizing interviews of those interred and unique woodblock animation to highlight the influence and importance of swing music in internment camps.
Both grants funding this project require a considerable match component, both of which can be in-kind. KEET will donate editing time as well as some salary portions to meet this requirement.
Working with the National Park Service is not a new relationship for KEET. As a recipient of a Mini-Grant through Ken Burns’ “National Park Series,” KEET produced a program on the Redwood National Forest. It was through this production that KEET was put in connection with local and national park service representatives and developed a productive relationship.
KEET’s grant success is based off of persistence and hard work. They heavily researched relevant funding opportunities and reached out to agencies with which they held good relationships to ensure the best outcome. General Manager, Ron Schoenherr, encourages stations to do the same. It is important to seek out all of the resources at your disposal including local libraries, foundation centers, as well as the resources provided here by the Grant Center. Additionally, and Schoenherr cannot emphasize this enough, “read the guidelines carefully.” Specifically, he states, “don’t bite off more than you can chew, these grants, especially the federal one, requires a lot of paperwork which takes a lot of time.” This is a cumbersome process, especially for a small station like KEET, which makes it important for stations to understand what they are getting into from the start.
The final project is expected to finish production in April 2013, and will be distributed to PBS stations shortly thereafter as a KEET production. The documentary will also be available for purchase at NPS visitor centers.
