Last month, Main Street Guthrie Center and the Mary J. Barnett Memorial Library received a $5,000 grant from the Smithsonian Institution. The grant was awarded to help Adair-Casey/Guthrie Center High School students create one of sixteen projects nationwide for the Smithsonian’s Stories from Main Street: Youth Engagement and Skill-building Program. The video projects will compliment the “Hometown Teams: How Sports Shape America” exhibit.

The funding from the Smithsonian pilot program provides $3,000 for grant recipients to purchase production equipment. This can include: cameras, audio recorders, editing software, and tablets. Program Coordinator Shannon Sullivan and her team chose Guthrie Center as one of the recipients due to the community’s long-time participation in six-on-six girls basketball.

Sullivan notes the goal of the program. “It’s important for students to get involved in their own local history and to understand what came before them. They don’t have a lot of opportunities to make a local connection. They might be required to learn national history and state history. But they don’t necessarily get something that really connects them to their own home community and that’s the whole point of this program.”

The remaining $2,000 will go towards discretionary costs to complete the projects. The exhibit will be at the library from June 23-August 5.