Indigenous Arts Education in Bloomington, Minnesota
Artistry is seeking support to expand our partnerships with indigenous artists and to provide more programming on indigenous arts and culture. Our main goals are: 1) To provide exceptional arts education opportunities to Bloomington students and community members. 2) To bring the region's best indigenous artists to Artistry to offer masterclasses and other public art education programs. The pursuit of both of these goals will broadly help grow the cultural literacy of our area.
2022-2023 Cultural Heritage and Community Identity Grants - Spring 2022
We have several trackable areas that we will be looking to monitor.
First, and most fundamentally, we will see an increase in free or affordable programs hosted by Artistry and led by indigenous artists. In past years we have, on average, had one or two programs annually. With help from MHC we hope to offer five to ten programs in the coming year.
Second, we are looking to see an increase in student participation in programs led by indigenous artists. Several of our past programs have been unable to meet our minimum registration requirements needed to run a program, a scenario that is hugely disappointing to both us and the facilitating artists. In offering these programs at low to no cost for participants we hope to see a dramatic increase in the number of students engaging in these programs.
Third, we would like to see an increase in paid teaching hours for indigenous artists. We are committed at artistry to supporting artists, both creatively and fiscally through contracts and other opportunities. Being able to hire artists at a good rate for a decent number of ours shows that Artistry is invested in these partnerships and values the work of our master artists.
Fourth, we would like to increase the number of indigenous artists who will be on our regular faculty roster here at Artistry. We run as many as 400 programs between outreach events and in house classes annually. To staff these we pull from a rolodex of talented local teaching artists who come from a mix of backgrounds and experiences. We would like to establish positive, ongoing work relationships with indigenous artists so we can continue to work with them for years to come.
Fifth, we would like to increase the area's cultural literacy. We recognize that we are a predominantly white led organization located on colonized land. Much of our Bloomington community is non-indigenous also living on colonized land. By bringing in indigenous teaching artists we hope to successfully deepen our community connection with Indigenous culture, recognize the history of the area, and growing an appreciation for contemporary indigenous creative practice.