Celebrating 50 Years!
In 2025, Utah Humanities is celebrating 50 years of public humanities programming that cultivates connections, deepens understanding, and explores the human experience. As part of our 50th Anniversary, we’re collecting 50 oral history interviews featuring board alumni, former staff members, grantees, community leaders, and program partners. We are also launching an ongoing story-gathering project, “I am the Humanities,” that asks the question, “How have the humanities influenced your life?” We’ll also gather our humanities community for a “family reunion” to celebrate the impactful work we have accomplished together over the last 50 years and look ahead to the next 50 years and beyond.
Thank You for Joining our Celebration!
Our 50th Anniversary Celebration honored half a century of bringing communities together while looking ahead with hope to a future that keeps the humanities thriving in our state.
The gathering featured inspiring voices, reflections on our history, and a celebration of the many partners and supporters who have made this journey possible. We displayed a 25-foot-long timeline of Utah Humanities history and milestones, played five decades of priceless photos, launched our "I am the Humanities" personal humanities story collection project, gave away t-shirts, commemorative 50th anniversary pins, and vintage UH memorabilia, and enjoyed a light brunch together.
Given our current funding reality, this event was only possible because of generous in-kind donations, support, volunteerism, and a beautiful venue donated to us by Process Curiosity. We are truly grateful!
Together, we marked this milestone not just as a moment to look back, but as a call to carry the humanities forward for generations to come. With emotion, gratitude, nostalgia, and renewed resilience, we honored the timeless value of the humanities, reconnected as friends, and stood together as beacons for a positive path forward.
We All "Do" The Humanities
Our 50th Anniversary is a celebration of the humanities! Established in 1975 as an independent non-profit, we offer public humanities programs across the state that involve thousands of people and organizations. The humanities focus on how people experience and document their world, and they help us to understand the meaning of all human expression such as literature, history, art, and thought. As the study of human experience, the humanities can connect us to ourselves and each other in deeply meaningful ways. In fact, if you are human, you already "do" the humanities. Everything you read, think, create, and do adds to the human experience and can be looked at for interpretation and understanding.
Through our partnerships in offering public humanities programs, we help to create a Utah where mutual respect is prevalent, difference is celebrated, diverse perspectives are welcomed, and civic dialogue is rooted in curiosity. We believe that communities can be strengthened and improved through the humanities.
"I am the Humanities" Project
"I am the Humanities" is an ongoing story collection project that asks the question, "How have the humanities influenced your life?" with the understanding that we all "do" the humanities every day. Each time we read or discuss a piece of literature, have a deep conversation, share and examine our culture and history, discuss and find meaning in art, reflect on the human condition, or share and analyze our human ties...we are "doing" the humanities.
This story-gathering project invites our partners, board members and alumni, current and previous staff members, community leaders, and a range of Utahns to share a humanities experience that has influenced their lives. Our aim is to raise awareness that the humanities are something we all participate in and benefit from every day.
This project is growing with each story submission! View the personal humanities stories below.
Project Details
To participate, email Deena Pyle, Communications Director at Utah Humanities at pyle@utahhumanities, with:
- In 500-2500 words, share an experience you've had with the humanities that inspired and influenced you in a meaningful way.
- Include a high-resolution photo of you. This can be a current photo, a photo of you at the time you are describing your experience, or another photo of you that is relevant to your story.
Submitting your experience and photo is considered permission to use the content publicly on our Utah Humanities' social media platforms, website, email newsletter, and other potential outlets.
How We Will Use Your Story
1. We will publish these stories and photos on their website.
2. We will post on social media, email, etc., throughout their 2025 anniversary year and beyond.
3. We will feature "I am the Humanities" stories in our monthly e-newsletter.