Now Accepting Applications for the Zilphia Horton Cultural Organizing Institute

Zilphia Horton Institute Participants

Highlander continues to use art and culture to empower marginalized communities across the South and Appalachia with the Zilphia Horton Cultural Organizing Project. The endeavor is named for Zilphia Horton, a musician, organizer, and wife of Highlander’s founder Myles Horton. It was Zilphia who showed Myles the power of culture to unite, inspire, and organize people for social movement, a legacy Highlander proudly carries on in her honor. With the Zilphia Horton Cultural Organizing Residencies in full swing, Highlander is now accepting applications for the next phase of the project: the 2013 Zilphia Horton Cultural Organizing Institute. Using the formula […]

Announcement: Zilphia Johnson Horton Cultural Organizing Residencies

Head-Roc Sonny Wink

Highlander is thrilled to announce the Cultural Organizers and Community Partners of the Zilphia Johnson Horton Cultural Organizing Project 2012-2013 Residencies. The project is named for Myles Horton’s wife Zilphia, who infused Highlander’s work with culture during the Labor Movement, steeling the resolve of striking workers through song. It brings together community organizations engaged in active, issue-based campaigns for justice with artists and cultural organizers so that they can learn from each other and work together to promote progressive policies within marginalized communities. While the cultural organizers will help their partner organizations expand the role of art and culture in […]

We Shall Overcome Fund Deadline Approaching

The next funding cycle deadline for applications to the We Shall Overcome Fund is January 15, 2013.  Created to nurture grassroots efforts within African American communities to use art and activism for justice, the We Shall Overcome Fund supports organizing in the South that is at the nexus of culture and social change.  Started in 1966 and housed at Highlander, the Fund provides small grants ($2,000 maximum) for projects that reflect a blend of culture and struggle, embodied in the primary anthem of the Civil Rights Movement, “We Shall Overcome.” Cultural activists, educators, organizers and organizations who use art, culture […]

Honoring the Past, Looking to the Future: The Greensboro Justice Fund Fellowship at the Highlander Center

Highlander is thrilled to announce the second class of the Greensboro Justice Fund Fellows at the Highlander Center. The Greensboro Justice Fund was created with an award from a civil case, paid by the city of Greensboro, that found members of the Ku Klux Klan complicit in the murders of community organizers César Cauce, Mike Nathan, Bill Sampson, Sandi Smith and Jim Waller on November 3, 1970. At its 30th anniversary, the Fund announced that it was donating a portion of its assets to Highlander to train organizers to carry on the legacy and the work of those who died […]

Wild & Wacky, Witty and Wonderful Workshop Work Week—Take 5!

Farm Assistant Tony Denton

Highlander’s 5th annual Wild & Wacky, Witty & Wonderful Workshop Work Week will take place from Tuesday, May 28 – Saturday, June 1, 2013. Workshop Work Week allows people from around the country to come to Highlander and experience the methodologies that have driven social change for the past 80 years. In the mornings, participants will be able to attend workshops on popular education, organizing, movement building, and the history of social justice. The learning will continue in the afternoons with teamwork and dialogue as participants and staff work together in the orchard, garden, trail, or library. Last year, Workshoppers […]

Wild & Wacky, Witty and Wonderful Workshop Work Week—Take 5!

Farm Assistant Tony Denton

Highlander’s 5th annual Wild & Wacky, Witty & Wonderful Workshop Work Week will take place from Tuesday, May 28 – Saturday, June 1, 2013. Workshop Work Week allows people from around the country to come to Highlander and experience the methodologies that have driven social change for the past 80 years. In the mornings, participants will be able to attend workshops on popular education, organizing, movement building, and the history of social justice. The learning will continue in the afternoons with teamwork and dialogue as participants and staff work together in the orchard, garden, trail, or library. Last year, Workshoppers […]

Now Accepting Applications – Greensboro Justice Fund Fellowships

The Highlander Research and Education Center is pleased to announce we are accepting applications for  the second class of the Greensboro Justice Fund Fellowship at Highlander.  Highlander was chosen, along with the Beloved Community Center in Greensboro, NC, to carry on the social and economic justice legacy of the Greensboro Justice Fund (GJF) and is honored to do so. For 30 years, GJF worked to increase the capacity of the progressive movement by supporting over 300 cutting-edge, community based organizations working for political empowerment, workers rights, environmental justice and an end to all forms of discrimination and exploitation. The Fund […]

Requests for Proposals

Highlander is now accepting Requests for Proposals for the following: Community Partners Cultural Organizers Documentation Team Please click on the links above for more information.

Could you feel energy coming off the Highlander Hill?

Zilphia Institute Participants

An amazing group of 14 young adult artists and cultural workers representing communities across the South gathered for the first Zilphia Horton Cultural Organizing Institute at the Highlander Center May 6-12. The institute brought together a creative group of activist-artists to explore the integration of art, culture and organizing. Throughout the week, participants shared ideas and strategies about popular education and organizing, nonviolence, healing and transformation for the long haul. Each participant walked away with a comprehensive cultural organizing work plan, rooted in conversations with members of their home communities and deepened over the course of the week through working […]