The Trustees of the Academy of Richmond County awarded more than $210,000 on Friday to recipients of the 2008 Porter Fleming Foundation Community Awards and the Porter Fleming Foundation Westobou Festival Awards.

During a presentation at the Solarium at the Old Medical College of Georgia, the trustees gave community awards to individuals and organizations for arts and humanities projects they are completing.

"The goal is to improve the cultural enrichment of our community, with that being Augusta and the geographic area around it," said Thomas Robertson, the president of the trustees. "The grants allows those in arts and humanities to take their programs from being good to being great."

The Augusta Museum of History, a recipient of the community award, received $15,000 for a museum theater program.

"It's a brand new program for us. It's where you take a primary source, such as a diary or letters, and put that into a play or script. Then you have an actor or actress on the floor in the exhibit hall performing it," Executive Director Nancy Glaser said. "It brings history to life."

Grants were also provided to some of the participants in the inaugural Westobou Festival for activities and events they will hold during the event Sept. 18-27.

"With this festival, Augusta may become the new cultural center of the South," trustee Cobbs Nixon said.

The Augusta Canal National Heritage Area received a $3,000 Westobou Festival award for its project, "Going with the Flow: Rhythm and Song on the Augusta Canal." Similar to its moonlight music series, the project will be a five-day series where musicians performing on Petersburg boats as they sail the canal.

"What makes this different from our moonlight music series is that each of the musicians will be commissioned to perform at least one original song about the Augusta Canal along with other songs from their repertoire," said Rebecca Rogers, the director of marketing and external affairs for the canal group. The songs will be recorded in a studio and put on a CD, she added.

The trustees also awarded $366,584 for the Westobou Festival and historical research.

The Porter Fleming Foundation was created in 1963 by Berry Fleming, an Augusta author and artist, to honor his father by providing annual grants and fellowships to individuals and organizations to promote education, literary, artistic, scientific, historical, musical and cultural enrichment in the community.