Operating Support
ACHF Arts Access
To ensure that people of all ages, ethnicities and abilities participate in the arts, the Trust will work with other arts organizations to provide greater access to underserved populations. Specific initiatives include bringing open captioning capabilities to more theatres, providing Access tickets, offering Kid's Nights and other age specific promotions, and offering programming by diverse artists. The Trust regularly reviews the organizations that receive tickets distributed through Access 10 to ensure that we are reaching a diverse audience and we also meet with each organization to solicit feedback on their experience and determine future opportunities. One participant, Asian Media Access, asked if we could provide experiences for their teens to learn more about careers in the arts administration field. We hosted an end of the year meeting with our Critical Review students and learned from them how we can improve the program, such as including a wider variety of artistic performances for them to review and have designed our program to incorporate these suggestions. We also received positive feedback from attendees of Broadway Confidential, our free series of behind-the-scenes talks by theatre experts. 2: To ensure that Minnesotans believe the arts are vital to who we are, the Trust will work with local theatre companies to present new and retooled works in the New Century Theatre. Minnesota artists will be showcased, and the Trust will assist with marketing and production. We received positive feedback on our first year as a Minnesota Fringe Festival venue, with their executive director Jeff Larson commenting, Thanks again for both hosting and sponsoring the Fringe. It was a great year for the festival and the New Century was an especially successful venue. There were multiple sellouts of a space that's on the big side for us and a lot of publicity from Mayor Rybak coming to the show about him twice. The room couldn't have worked better for us. After evaluating our inaugural seasons with both Theater Latte Da and Minneapolis Musical Theatre, we launched the second season for both. Broadway Re-Imagined with Theater Latte Da returns with Cabaret and will star the acclaimed Sally Wingert and Minneapolis Musical Theatre's second season will feature three shows including the Twin Cities debut of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, nominated for two Tony Awards.
To ensure that people of all ages, ethnicities and abilities participate in the arts, the Trust engaged approximately 5,115 people with our education and community engagement initiatives. Through our Access 10 Program, we distributed nearly 2,000 free tickets to human service non-profit organizations coupled with participation in artist workshops and tours. Our Critical Review Program offered 35 high school students from diverse backgrounds around the metro area the opportunity to attend touring Broadway shows, write reviews and attend behind-the-scenes workshops with Twin Cities theatre professionals. War Horse Family Day, in partnership with In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre, taught fifty children and their families how to build and operate their own horse puppets. We also fielded sixty one ASL interpretation requests for shows including Les Miserables and Wicked and will continue to offer listening devices at all of our productions and open captioning at select performances. 2: To ensure that Minnesotans believe the arts are vital to whom we are, Hennepin Theatre Trust worked with local theatre companies to present new and retooled works at the New Century Theatre. We concluded the first season in our partnership with Minneapolis Musical Theatre with a three week run of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard featuring an all-local cast and crew. Through our outreach, the New Century Theatre was also chosen as a Minnesota Fringe Festival venue for the first time and hosted eleven shows. The Trust underwrote part of the cost and acted as a sponsor for the event. In another local partnership, we evaluated Aida, the first production in our Broadway Re-Imagined series with Theater Latte Da, which was originally scheduled to take place at the New Century but was moved to the larger Pantages Theatre.
Other
local or private