Art Project Grant
Art Project Grant
2019 Duluth All Souls Night (DASN), the annual, intergenerational, multicultural, fall arts festival at the Historic Depot: lamenting death, celebrating life, and nurturing creativity from all.
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.
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; 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; Christina Nohre: writer and arts advocate.
ACHF Arts Access ACHF Arts Education ACHF Cultural Heritage
Creative community building: To provide a safe container in which to sublimate a gamut of emotion into meaning-rich art, action and joy. To process artistically deep grief for those who have gone before and our present shared dilemmas. To model holistic, active imagination for the present/future beings of our planet. To showcase multicultural diversity of art expression, honoring changing demographics. To highlight/reward Minnesota artists who spark year-round hope of cosmic change in fun, original, profound ways. To share and inspire affordable handmade and live spectacle traditions in the West Duluth neighborhood, mirroring contrasting seasons of life and encouraging soulful creativity from all. Physically counting increasing number/diversity in participants and attendees. Adding this 12th event to our collection of amazing photos. Online and face-to-face recounting of spontaneous comments. We will try Survey Monkey evaluations in 2019. follow-up with participants/observers to discuss event highs/lows, and ideas for possible improvements in following years. Active Facebook/website pages where engaged public can easy contact us with photos, stories, and offerings of their talents/suggestions. Capturing stories of travelers from distant parts of Minnesota, the upper Midwest and beyond. Tracking related Twin Ports events that we inspire and noting respect for cultural references/accuracy.
We successfully completed our twelfth Duluth All Souls Night on Saturday, Nov. 9th, 2019! Friday night, Nov. 8th, we expanded our poetry reading to its own event in the Underground Theatre. Photos show that 2019 attendance maintained but did not increase at this eleventh event - mostly due again to coldsnow. However, our seasoned audience was very engaged and demonstratively appreciative of our efforts to artistically and publicly recognize personal and political grief. We offered a unique artistic and safe space for anyone to express and appreciate loss in supportive community. The quality and scope of the event has increased with annual arts funding towards stipends to our professional presenting artists. We also had an excellent volunteer coordinator and stage manager who ran the evening flawlessly. We brought back face painting using students from the colleges diversity groups to sensitively moderate the question of cultural appropriation. We increased awareness and activism in the Twin Ports around many tough topics including climate change (the world is literally on fire), and violence (namely towards our environment, immigrants, and GLBTQIA persons). These were explored with displays and the Funeral March for Rotten Ideas. There was increased variety of global celebratory observances of the fall time of year including reclamation of forgotten European practices. Lincoln Park elementary displayed Day of the Dead arts learning activities. Death Cafe joined us with a display about open discussion of death and dying issues. We also featured a wind phone booth for folks to have private calls with their departed loved ones. Spectacles included a new female aerialist, the return of 17' tall marionette, Max Skeleton, and fire spinning cadavers. Two brand new bands performed, Bella Yaga from the Twin Cities, and the local marching brass band, Thomas Boys Back Home.
Other,local or private