Minnesota Festival Support
The Square Lake Film and Music Festival will be a day-long, outdoor celebration of Minnesota-produced music and film, held on a scenic 25-acre hobby farm near Stillwater.
Judson Bemis Jr., Actor, arts administrator, founder and principal of Clere Consulting. Secretary, Minnesota State Arts Board., Ardell Brede, Mayor of Rochester, elected 2002., Peggy Burnet, Businesswoman, art collector, and community volunteer. Chair of the Nominating Committee, Smithsonian National Board. Trustee, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Vice Chair, Minnesota State Arts Board., Michael Charron, Dean of the School of the Arts, Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota. Vice Chair, Minnesota State Arts Board., Sean Dowse, Executive director, Sheldon Theatre. Board member for Minnesota Music Coalition, Minnesota Citizens for the Arts, and Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies., John Gunyou, City manager, Minnetonka., Benjamin Klipfel, Executive Director, Alexandria Area Arts Association, Inc. Director and arts educator.,Ellen McInnis, Director of Twin Cities government relations, Wells Fargo. Member of Bottineau Boulevard Partnership. Chair, Minnesota State Arts Board., Pamela Perri, Executive vice president, Builders Association of Minnesota., Margaret Rapp, Former educator, Saint Paul Academy and Summit School. Officer at-large, Minnesota State Arts Board., Anton Treuer, Professor of Ojibwe, Bemidji State University.
Patricia Canelake: Artist; Anastasia Faunce: Program director, University of Minnesota College of Continuing Education. Editor, Open to Interpretation series.; Lori Janey: Design engineer, Seagate Technology. Board chair, Minnesota Chinese Dance Theater. Fundraising and volunteer management, Wishes for the Sky.; Wendy LaRoque-Lundin: Native American fiber artist and educator.; David Machacek: Executive director, ArtOrg. Visual artist.; Fiona MacNeill: Academic Technologist for the Arts, Carleton College. New media/performance artist and curator.; Barbara Mollberg: Dean of Liberal Arts, Rochester Community and Technical College.; Mary Ann Okner: Performing artist and educator.; Sharon Stark: Executive secretary, Little Theatre of Owatonna. Administrative Assistant, Owatonna Arts Center.
ACHF Cultural Heritage
The variety and number of Minnesota artists that are presented through festivals increases. The variety and number of folk and traditional arts and artists that are presented through festivals increases. Minnesota festivals have greater financial stability and serve broader audiences. The number of Minnesotans who experience the arts through festivals increases. We evaluated our success through ticket sales (we sold out) and through attendee surveys and performer surveys. These surveys overwhelmingly indicated that the event was a success.
The 10th annual Square Lake Film and Music Festival was a rain or shine celebration of local arts held north of Stillwater on August 11th, 2012. As in the previous ten years of the festival, the staple elements of the event consisted of the debut of a commissioned film score, a juried program of Twin Cities’ animation and short films screened indoors during the day and outside at night, live local music, camping, and community. The Square Lake Film and Music Festival featured Minnesota-made music and film. Film genres included: experimental, documentary, comedy, animation, and dramatic. Music genres included jazz, classical trio, folk, blues, indie rock, and electronic/experimental. Musically, we sought to provide a startling blend of performers, combining new groups with local favorites. With respect to film, all the films were made within the last two years. We debuted new work from several artists, and avoided work that has been shown a lot locally. The number of artists we presented in 2012 slightly increased from previous years. We screened about three more films than in 2011. This is a normal degree of variance. In some years we have shown films that are longer in length, which affects the overall number of films we can screen. In 2012, we chose to screen mostly shorter films, allowing us to increase the overall number of filmmakers served. 2: The aspect of folk music at this year's festival was considerable. For years, we have tried to get Spider John Koerner on the bill, and he made a huge impact on our success in 2012. We included a full-page bio of Koerner in our program and asked Spider John to provide further explanation about song origins and motivations during his set. The Pines are a local group that is also on the Red House label with Spider John, and have expressed numerous times that Koerner was a huge influence on their music. In addition to asking The Pines to cover a few of his songs, we also asked them to explicitly describe Spider John's influence on their art. Three performing groups who state that their genre is folk performed at the festival, and all are from Minnesota. These artists were Spider John Koerner, The Pines and International Novelty Gamelan (Indonesian Folk Music). We sought to combine legendary performers with emerging artists. We try to include one to two folk artists each year, so this year’s performers were in line with previous years. The number of Minnesota artists didn't fluctuate much because we only work with Minnesota artists. The strength of our folk offering in 2012 was that Spider John is an internationally recognized influence on folk/blues music. The Pines are walking in his footsteps. International Novelty Gamelan performs a completely different kind of folk music. We really had a diverse representation of folk music, thanks to this grant.
Other, local or private