The North Carolina Humanities Council brings North Carolinians together to make sense of this world we share. The citizens of North Carolina live in a world defined by more than geographic boundaries. The state's culture and heritage are alive in the diversity of its traditions, its people and places, its history and art, its stories and music. As expressions of culture and heritage, the humanities are all around us, in our conversations, in the different ways we see the world, in the many ways we shape our lives. More than expressing our lives, the humanities offer us ways to ask our most fundamental questions about the meaning of what we say and do, about who we are.

In many ways, the Humanities Council’s work is about translation, about finding ways to make the humanities accessible to people who take in the world in multiple ways and in varying capacities. The North Carolina Humanities Council invests in programs that show the processes and changes involved in acknowledging and reworking the narratives that describe human experience and expanding their boundaries. Thus the Council ascribes to the following core values: