Community Arts

In our proposal, we outlined three artistic goals: to provide exposure for artists, to share the joy of art with members of our community, to build ongoing support of the arts in our community in the Twin Cities. During the course of this grant period, all of these goals were met to varying degrees. In our search to create more ways to support artists, we developed and implemented a paid artist fellowship program; an opportunity for artists to develop a participatory program that engages the library patrons at the lending event. At Public Functionary artist fellow, Teresa Audet discussed the process of working with the Japanese papermaking fiber kozo, as well as the history and traditional methods of the material. And at the American Craft Council, artist fellow, Carolina Borja displayed, Better a bird in the hand than two in the bush—a Mexican craft- papier mache piñata installation that incorporated sound and audience participation. Both artists were available to meet and discuss their work with the library patrons at the event. Patrons have enjoyed this opportunity to learn more about an artist’s work and artists appreciate this paid opportunity. Additionally, Minneapolis Art Lending Library provides exposure for artists by continuing to feature on our social media sites, and various forms of publicity (blogs and newspaper). We were able to share the joy of art with our community quite successfully. Our attendance has remained steady with new and returning library patrons. The community has shown their support by attending events, borrowing artwork, and spreading the word to their friends, family, and networks. During the two lending events from the grant period, we had approximately 125 people attend, over 100 artworks checked out, and 40 new borrowers. We have built up a strong support network in the community; both Public Functionary and the American Craft Council donated their space for our lending events. The project did reach new communities of both borrowers and artists. Each lending event we see many new borrowers, though we have not been as successful in diversifying our audience as we had hoped. Previously, we held our lending events at one location; at the American Swedish Institute. This year we decided to hold our events at different locations by partnering with organizations that already have well-established and diverse audiences. However, we realized we saw more diversity and higher attendance rates when holding lending events at spaces that aren’t affiliated with art, like community and recreation centers. Also, Public Functionary is not fully ADA compliant and a few of our regular and new patrons said they had issues locating the space and finding parking. We anticipated that this would be the case with the American Craft Council, so we bought a sign which many patrons thought was helpful. Moving forward we will target spaces that are more community oriented, fully ADA compliant, have ample parking, and are well marked. Our outcome goals are tied to the three facets of our mission. We raised our collection size to 110 artworks by 50 artists. During the two lending events, 125 attended our lending events, we lent out 100 artworks, and registered 40 new patrons. In July, 15 artists submitted 60 artworks confirming that artists are increasingly interested in our program and want to participate.