From Mass Humanities
Originally published: November 4, 2025
12 nonprofits will continue to redefine the stories of Massachusetts by creatively expanding access to their untold histories.
New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center has been awarded a Expand Massachusetts Stories — Story Forward Grant from Mass Humanities to share the Casting A Wider Net (CAWN) exhibit with the greater New Bedford community in a new initiative called Sharing the Catch. The funding will allow us to travel the CAWN exhibit to three sites across New Bedford in 2026 and develop tie-in programing and curriculum materials. Proposed sites include Global Learning Charter Public School, Greater New Bedford Community Health Center, and the Community Economic Development Center. The grant will also fund the creation of a digital version of the exhibit that will live on FHC’s website. The Center is grateful for Mass Humanities’ support! We look forward to sharing further updates in the coming months.
About CAWN: Casting A Wider Net Community Oral History Project was developed to build local capacity to collect and share stories of Cape Verdean, Vietnamese, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Guatemalan, and Salvadoran members of New Bedford’s commercial fishing industry. The project provided ethnographic training for nine community members who led the documentation effort. They conducted, transcribed, and translated 14 interviews. These interviews provided the basis for the CAWN exhibit which was on display at FHC from November 2024 – June 2025. The interviews, interview transcripts, and associated photographs are now publicly accessible on the Center’s online collections database and the NOAA Voices archive.
Project funding for CAWN was provided by: the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a Mass Humanities Expanding Massachusetts Stories Grant, and a New Bedford Creative Wicked Cool Places Grant.
The CAWN traveling exhibit was supported in part by: A Wicked Cool Places grant funded by the City of New Bedford through its Arts, Culture & Tourism Fund, and by the New Bedford Economic Development Council, which receives support in part from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.
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