Rural and Community Art Project Grant
Rural and Community Art Project Grant
Preserving the Artistic Legacy of the Steger Wilderness Center -- We seek to fund the production of a website that will publicly host more than 50 years of archival media documenting and empowering the folk-trade community of the Iron Range.
Tara Makinen: Executive Director of Itasca Orchestra and Strings, musician; Moira Villiard: visual artist, Cultural Programming Coordinator at American Indian Community Housing Organization; Amber Burns: choreographer, dancer, actor, middle school art teacher; Margaret Holmes: visual artist, poet, and former Children’s Theatre employee; Tammy Mattonen: visual artists, co-founder of Crescendo Youth Orchestra; Kayla Aubid: Native American craft artist, writer, employee at MacRostie Art Center; Ariana Daniel: mixed media artist, arts instructor; Kathy Neff: musician, Director, Fine Arts Academy at the University of Minnesota-Duluth; Ron Piercy: jeweler, gallery owner; Emily Swanson: arts administrator at Oldenburg Arts and Cultural Community; Christina Nohre: writer and arts advocate.
Tammy Mattonen: visual artist, co-founder of Crescendo Youth Orchestra; Ariana Daniel: mixed media artist, arts instructor; Ron Piercy: jeweler, gallery owner; Christina Nohre: writer and arts advocate; Johnnie Hyde: choreographer and dance teacher, publisher; Rena Hartman: Executive Director, Mesabi Community Orchestra.
Arrowhead Regional Arts Council, Drew Digby (218) 722-0952
ACHF Arts Access ACHF Arts Education ACHF Cultural Heritage
The Steger Wilderness Center is an environmental arts organization dedicated to preserving the natural landscapes of Minnesota and its artistic folk-trade traditions. Training apprentice artisans for employment in the developing trades-work economy of the Iron Range is currently the primary purpose of our non-profit. Problems with our website, however, prevent us from doing our best to connect other arts organizations with sources of funding and recruitment. Therefore, we seek this grant to create:1) an archive containing 50+ years of historical media; 2) a public website to which we will post-original multimedia projects containing our archival media; and 3) evaluation materials (described next). Once the archive is online and the website is populated with its first round of original digital media in March, we will begin evaluating the success of this grant’s investment. Website visitors will be asked to fill out a survey requesting feedback about the site’s operation. Comments could solicit exhibition advice or establish relationships with individuals or organizations who choose to start a conversation with us. More significantly, we will record and post-video interviews with selected stakeholders to share their sincere opinions about the worthiness of our new communication effort. Our outreach potential, and those of our partners, would certainly benefit from what we could learn.
The multimedia projects empowered by this grant prominently feature the required statement of funding acknowledgement. These projects include 1) the website, which was the primary focus of this grant project, 2) several video series making use of footage from the SWC archive, and 3) the creation of Facebook posts to promote our new YouTube uploads. A list of the video projects empowered by this grant include: ? Video trailers promoting the content from our following expedition playlists on YouTube: o 2004 Arctic Transect Playlist o 2007 Baffin Island Expedition o 2008 Ellesmere Island Expedition o 2008 Greenland Kite-Ski expedition o 2018 Summer Logs Playlist ? Video profiles of the SWC staff of the summer of 2018, for the following artisan employees: - Jenna, assistant director - Elena, woodshop manager - Louis, forester - RitaMae, chef - Caitlin, assistant chef ? Memorial slideshow of archival photographs documenting the life of a sled dog who spent his retirement on the SWC Homestead: o Song for Jasper: Where Sled Dogs Run Wild ? Feature video utilizing recent archival footage from the 50th annual Ice Ball on the SWC Homestead in 2017: o Ice Ball 2017 ? 50th Anniversary ? 4.5 hour-long podcast combining recent archival footage of Will Steger's 3-month long solo expedition in the Arctic: o 2018 Barren Lands Expedition ? Complete Dispatch Series ? We started a video series about animals who live on the Steger homestead and interact with guests there, beginning with a profile of ?Nightmare" the Spider: o https:youtu.beTw4A35SefYc ? Other videos we have started but not yet published include: o A music video for ?The Pines," who recorded songs on the SWC Homestead in 2018. o A feature video about the Dunwoody Architecture program, whose students and faculty helped design the landscape of the Homestead.
Other,local or private