Project post type
Hennepin County contracted with CURA to convene an Anti-Displacement Work Group that centered community voices and brought together diverse stakeholders to study and recommend anti-displacement strategies to help ensure the value of light rail will benefit current corridor residents, and minimize physical, cultural, and economic displacement.
After meeting for more than a year, the work group published their recommendations in May 2023 for public review.
Below is a roundup of project descriptions and partner organizations for the Fall 2022 semester Kris Nelson Community-Based Research Program projects. The projects will run from early September to mid-January. If you want to be informed about upcoming deadlines for the Kris Nelson Program, make sure to subscribe to CURA’s newsletter.
Organization: MN8
Currently there is a lack of formalized knowledge about Khmer Americans in Minnesota despite the fact that Hampton, Minnesota is home to the largest Cambodian Buddhist temple in the world outside of Cambodia.
From fall 2021 to spring 2022, we worked with members of Wilder Research’s Pro Bono Research Program to conduct the first-of-its-kind Community Needs Assessment of the Cambodian American community in Minnesota. We co-created a mixed-methods project that included a statewide analysis of available data on Cambodian Americans in Minnesota and up to 20 interviews with Cambodian Americans about…
Organization: Renewing the Countryside
Farmland access is identified as the biggest challenge for emerging farmers—particularly Black and Brown farmers—in developing viable businesses and growing capacity for community resilience. While finding affordable land to lease or purchase is part of the challenge, an additional challenge is understanding the policies, codes and ordinances that regulate what can be done at county, city and township levels. Through our work and that of our partners working on farmland access, we regularly see emerging farmers either…
Organization: Midwest Skateboarding Alliance
All public parks offer benefits of greenspace, recreation, socializing, and safety. Skateparks accomplish this in particular for youth. Modern, state-of-the art skateparks are a tremendous draw for youth and skateboarders of all ages, providing mental, physical and social benefits and a point of pride for the neighborhood. Yet they are too often placed within suburban, predominantly white, high-income areas already privileged with similar amenities. The goal of this project is to address this bias and inherent inequities…
Organization: Twin Cities Community Agricultural Land Trust
Despite the accrual of conservation benefits from long-term urban agriculture and farmers’ commitment to conservation, and the many resources dedicated to conservation in Minnesota, many Minnesota urban growers are pushed into environmentally wasteful practices as a result of insecure land tenure and lack of resources. The bulk of farm production in the Twin Cities region occurs on land rented year to year, while urban agriculture policy is complex and often deems urban food cultivation an interim land use,…
CURA’s Public Policy Design Lab worked with Restaurant Opportunities Center of Minnesota (ROC-MN) and Minneapolis-based artist Gina Pena to create a visualization of The Rice Activity: Contextualizing the Working Class. This activity was developed through an earlier research project conducted by a UMN Graduate Research Assistant (supported by CURA’s Kris Nelson Community-Based Research Program ) working with ROC-MN.
This visualization is based on a hands-on version of the…
Passion Project is a film project to initiate dialogue and collective action around the creative labor industry in Northeast Minneapolis. Created by and for BIPOC cultural workers who have a connection to Northeast Minneapolis, the film will document local cultural workers’ lived experiences and individual creative practices, and provide new spaces for mutual aid, resource sharing, and education around collective organizing in arts industries.
Prisons Ain’t Peace is an abolitionist, youth-centered public narrative shaping project. It’s based on the premise that Minneapolis youth deserve communities that are capable of ethically serving young people—that is, without a reliance on imprisonment and carceral violence. Pushing back on the current tough on crime moment in Minneapolis, Prisons Ain’t Peace is a zine that makes a case for youth prison abolition using philosophical, historical, and discourse-based methods.
The ancestral practice of the Ohunkankan (“Making relatives by telling the stories”) is an inclusive and time-honored way for Dakota people to renew our relationship with Ina Makoce (Mother Earth) and all our relations by gathering together for the seasonal community theatrical sharing of mythic and contemporary stories. Participants will build and showcase their growth and learning of Dakota language and dramatic performance skills in devised community Ohunkankan, a staged storytelling production featuring an all-ages cast of Dakota language learners and speakers, at the Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary in St. Paul, a sacred site of great significance known to Dakota people as Wakan Tipi…