The Lively Experiment
This exhibit accompanies “Telling Our Story” by Nancy Austin, PhD featured in the Council's 40th Anniversary Report, published in January 2014. View all The Lively Experiment items in the library.
Strengthening civic literacy and promoting dialogue on the key questions facing communities were central aims of the state humanities councils when they were established in the early 1970s. Our earliest grants established the Council as deeply committed to the well-being of the state, encouraging civics education and informed citizen debate over appropriate checks and balances of public policy.
Many grants reflect Rhode Island’s special contribution to the principle of individual liberty in the Constitution and as a foundation for U.S. democracy. A signature achievement of the Council’s grant making has been support of new research on state founder Roger Williams and civic engagement around our state’s history as a “lively experiment”. Council grants have helped communicate the international significance of freedom of conscience and the separation of church and state articulated in the Rhode Island Royal Charter of 1663, a central inspiration for the United States Constitution–especially the First and Fourth Amendments. For whatever reasons, this national dimension of our state’s history has remained surprisingly little known or minimized. Council grant making has sought to increase public understanding of the “lively experiment” history and legacy. In 2013, to commemorate the 350th anniversary of Rhode Island's Colonial Charter, RICH grants supported statewide lectures, exhibitions, and multi-media celebrations, as well as the website connected to a permanent new exhibition in the State House.
“Lively Experiment” grants began in 1978 when Newport cultural institutions collaborated on exploring “The Progress of Religious Freedom in 17th and 18th Century Newport”. In 1984, grant making to the Rhode Island Historical Society supported a team of public historians working to compile and publish over 800 pages of the collected “Correspondence of Roger Williams”, while another grant supported public production of an original operetta set to Williams' “The Bloody Tenet of Persecution for Cause of Conscience”. Civic literacy programming engaged the public with topics on “The Legacy of Roger Williams” and “God and Government: On the Appropriate Role Between Religious Beliefs and Public Policy”.
A recent scholarly debate was held in the Newport Quaker Meeting House on what it means and does not mean to claim we were founded as a Christian nation. In that historic building, a prominent historian reaffirmed Williams’ extraordinary commitment to building a civil society inclusive of religious dissidents as disruptive as the Quakers; indeed, he pointed out, Williams’ path-breaking principled tolerance uniquely extended even to proto-atheists.
Civic literacy is at the heart of RI Council grant making from the K-12 “Democracy Demands Wisdom” curriculum enrichment to new citizen orientation in “First Steps to Freedom”. RICH grants support the “Capitol Forum on America’s Future”, a multi-state civic education initiative where high school students convene at the capitol with legislators to debate a public policy issue from a global perspective. Civic literacy grant making has reached across sectors and ages, with, for example, academics and life-long learners together attending an international conference to discuss “Learning from the Lively Experiment”.