Renters Rights are Human Rights is a collaboration between the Minneapolis Renters Coalition, Powderhorn Park Neighborhood Association, and Artist Cori Lin. This series of murals and portraits will deepen community understanding around what it means to live as a cost-burdened renter by highlighting the narratives and experiences of those spending more than 30% of their income on rent. The project will include four portraits of cost-burdened renters across Greater Powderhorn and four infographics that reflect this reality, which will be temporarily be installed in businesses and community sites across Greater Powderhorn, before becoming part of a large-…

New Futures focuses on rebuilding community and culture in South Minneapolis. Traditional Ojibwe Style lacrosse has been played in the Great Lakes regions long before Europeans set foot on this continent. The game itself is more than just a sport: it is a ceremony that has artistic value as well, and the game is thought to contain a connection to one’s spiritual nature. New Futures will teach 12 Native youth a variety of woodworking skills to help create traditional Ojibwe lacrosse sticks. Youth will be paid a stipend for working towards mastering the skills required to produce steam bent, tournament-ready Lacrosse sticks. Youth will be able to teach others how to make…

Working in collaboration with CANDO, the Central Area Neighborhood Development Organization, Makers of History utilizes grassroots community engagement and documentary storytelling to produce a community driven film about health, housing and history of South Minneapolis. Both the process of making the film and screenings of the film will act as a tool for community driven development in the Central Neighborhood, sparking dialogue with community members, policymakers, developers and non-profit organizations to improve community health and housing initiatives.

About the artists: 

Ryan Stopera is a photographer, filmmaker,…

Throughout the year, a collaboration of artists, youth, organizers, educators, elders, Oromo traditionalists, and musicians will be reclaiming the power of art forms that are intertwined with traditional Oromo forms of governance. Our sacred stories tell the linkages between poetry, coffee ceremony, basket weaving and the work of creating worlds where many worlds fit. Based in Little Oromia in Minneapolis’s Cedar Riverside community, the artists will host gatherings that center intergenerational dialogue with elders, to inform the works of young poets, local musicians as well as a policy toolkit. By…

This project focuses on creating high quality sculptures and paintings that reflect the input and diversity of residents, artists, community members, and business owners in and around Little Africa in St. Paul’s Hamline-Midway neighborhood. By using multi-disciplinary techniques, fabrics, patterns and colors, artists will lead an interactive community-based process leading up to and during the fifth annual Little Africa Festival in August 2018. The artists’ goal is to find different ways to look at the world and reflect on African cultures’ rural and urban life through artistic expression. The project will be held in Hamline Park, which is located…

with Pathways Learning Center, Tim Hellendrung (HUGE Improv Theater), Heather Meyer (Brave New Workshop Comedy Theater) and Black Dog Coffee Shop and Annex

The Clapback Cabaret is a series of monthly comedy cabarets and skill-building workshops on St. Paul’s East Side, designed to empower Asian Pacific Islander American (APIA)/Diasporic women and trans women-identified voices to combat microaggressions. The series is hosted by FAWK, who use comedy to talk about controversial issues and who identify a bind that Asian women live in: being quiet comes with the stereotype of being submissive, while being strong comes with the label “dragon lady”. Clapback…

The Monkeybear Collective is creating six short puppet shows to be performed in public spaces across all the wards of Minneapolis and St. Paul in fall of 2017, as a voter drive heading into the municipal elections. Each show fits inside a suitcase, making our shows extremely mobile. The ease of carrying a suitcase will give them the flexibility to perform wherever, whenever. As people gather around the performances, they’ll be handing out magnets people can put on their fridge with a web address for finding out their ward/precinct and also fliers with info/map about wards/elections, as well as voter registration forms that people can fill out on the spot. The Monkeybear Collective…

Spearwave is a monthly intimate exhibition and gathering space for conversations about art that explores Somali Muslim American identity within the supportive environment of the Mosque and other relevant community settings. As a gesture, Spearwave fosters interconnectedness, allowing participating artists fresh opportunities to experiment and blossom. Many community members have never been in a museum or do not see contemporary art as being able to express and help them navigate their experience in the world, but we believe through approaching Somali people with art shown and discussed inside their community spaces of Mosque, Somali businesses and shared public neighborhood…

“New Native Identities: Native Youth of Minneapolis” is a playwriting/performance that focuses on today’s lives of Native American youth living in Minneapolis. The genesis of this project began when I realized that with the increasing embracing of social media—an encroaching social globalization and rise of tribal pride and social justice/diversity in urban centers such as Minneapolis—that Native youth are experiencing very unique changes in spiritual and cultural identities. A play will be written based on “talking circle” workshops with Native youth, hearing their voices and stories of their spiritual and cultural identities. Our workshop and play will be held in the Phillips…

It’s almost impossible to imagine a community with any power at all if we can’t first come together and create a narrative we want to share. “The Gatherings: Our neighborhood, our stories” is a series of events with art activities, performances and food to be held in community gardens throughout the Rondo neighborhood. Rondo is one geography, many communities, many narratives, but the same result – a fragmented community made up of mostly people of color, mostly low income and mostly carrying some type of historic trauma. This doesn’t necessarily make the community weak, but the division does. In what feels like a fragmented community, we…