Traditional Hale building using lashing techniques.
Youth learning to carve in the Mai Uka Ku’u Wa’a program.
Mai Uka Kuʻu Waʻa is our summer youth program integrating art and ʻāina-based learning for young leaders age 5 to 13. Meaning My Beloved Canoe Comes from the Uplands, educators utilize carving, painting, farming, cooking, lashing, sailing, oli and cultural protocol to shape young minds toward kuleana – a sense of responsibility and privilege – so that Hawaiʻi will thrive with their care.
KKV is proud to announce that we have been approved to receive an American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to help the arts and cultural sector recover from the pandemic.
KKV is recommended to receive $50,000 and may use this funding to save jobs and to fund operations and facilities, health and safety supplies, and marketing and promotional efforts to encourage attendance and participation.
“Our nation’s arts sector has been among the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. The National Endowment for the Arts’ American Rescue Plan funding will help arts organizations, such as Kokua Kalihi Valley, rebuild and reopen,” said Dr. Maria Rosario Jackson, chair of the NEA. “The arts are crucial in helping America’s communities heal, unite, and inspire, as well as essential to our nation’s economic recovery.”
For more information on the NEA’s American Rescue Plan grants, including the full list of arts organizations funded, visit www.arts.gov/COVID-19/the-american-rescue-plan.
Healing through Art and Cultural Traditions at Ho’oulu ‘Āina
In our community, the poet is the artist is the activist is the healer. Our hands and songs bring to life the dreaming of our ancestors. This is how we pave the way for our children, restoring kuleana to this beloved land.
Imaikalani Kalāhele, poet, painter, activist, and grandfather of fifteen, stands for our people, for the land, for generations.
This is one of his reparatory drawings for his staircase mural at KKV’s Judd Medical Clinic.
We remember the shape of our grandmothersʻ stories over the wooden boards that hold the barkcloth, spreading the fibers, asking for new shapes, new edges, remembered connections between the carvers and the kapa makers – one depending upon the other to create the shapes of the ancestors.
Canoe carving from wood harvested from the forest.
“The land will never leave you; you will always leave. Remember how to come home.
Weʻre just starting...go deep and wide.”
– Atwood Makanani
Hawaiian Activist
Youth learning to make la’au lapa’au from medicinal plants gathered in the forest.
KKV is honored to receive a SHARP grant from the Hawaiʻi Council for the Humanities to support humanities programming in 2022.
HIHumanities Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan (SHARP) grants are providing relief funding for Hawai‘i-based humanities nonprofits, and nonprofits doing humanities programming to help our communities recover and rebuild from the COVID-19 pandemic.
As part of SHARP, HIHumanites is distributing $629,140 to 35 organizations from Hawaiʻi, Maui, Molokaʻi, Lānaʻi, Oʻahu, and Kauaʻi.
The Hawaiʻi Council for the Humanities is critical to supporting the organizations in our state that enrich the depth and breadth of the humanities, as well as the care and stewardship of our communities. For more information on the SHARP funding, click here.
