RI Innovation Fellowship Grant Awarded to Raymond Watson

The Rhode Island Foundation’s 2016 Innovation Fellowship Grant was awarded to Raymond “Two Hawks” Watson, a Providence native with some big ideas about the future of tourism. Over the next three years, Watson plans to use the $300,000 award to raise RI’s cultural profile and promote the state’s diversity on a national scale through his organization, Providence Cultural Equity Initiative. He was honored at a ceremony led by President and CEO Neil Steinberg on Wednesday at the RI Foundation’s headquarters in Providence. The grant is made possible by financial support from John and Leticia Carter, who came to the Rhode Island foundation looking to fund innovative ideas that will make life better for people in Rhode Island.

Watson’s take on RI’s multiculturality is an original one. He sees it is an underutilized natural resource, the same as our beaches or green spaces, which we should be doing much more to highlight. “We’re unique in that we have a huge diversity in such a small area. Here, you can eat incredible Italian food on Federal Hill and grab Dominican food on Broad Street,” Watson said in his speech. He also wants to use RI’s cultural diversity as a means of easing racial tensions and promoting social cohesion.

This announcement of a new tourism initiative comes at an interesting time, at the heels of the state’s “Cooler and Warmer” fiasco a few weeks ago (Steinberg even joked that “cultural tourism is a good word when it’s used correctly”). Perhaps this will provide some of the damage control the state needs.

Watson says he has been aware of this issue for at least the past seven or eight years, as a member of the Eastern Medicine Singers (nominated for a Motif Music Award!). But his idea really began to take shape when he did some traveling a few years ago. “When I went to Mexico for my honeymoon, I saw how they promote both their indigenous and colonial history, to the benefit of both cultures,” said Watson. His goal: to “turn the greater Providence area into the cultural capital of the Northeast.”

Watson was chosen by a six-member selection panel out of a field of over 200 applicants. Finalists included an initiative to train women from low-income communities in computer programming, a program that would bring together youth and police in an effort to develop role-plays that can help de-escalate conflicts, and an educational program to increase the number of licensed health care professionals who can prescribe medications for behavioral health disorders.