Operating Support Grant
Operating Support Grant
Funds will be used to assist with administration, and establishing an interactive online platform.
Tara Makinen: Executive Director of Itasca Orchestra and Strings, musician; Tammy Mattonen: visual artist, co-founder of Crescendo Youth Orchestra; 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; Daniel Oyinloye: musician, videographer; Kris Nelson: artist, teacher; Roxann Berglund: musician; Bill Payne: Professor of Theater at the University of Minnesota-Duluth
Tara Makinen: Executive Director of Itasca Orchestra and Strings, musician; Kathy Neff: musician, Director, Fine Arts Academy at the University of Minnesota-Duluth; Ron Piercy: jeweler, gallery owner; Daniel Oyinloye: musician, videographer; Kris Nelson: artist, teacher; Bill Payne: Professor of Theater at the University of Minnesota-Duluth
ACHF Arts Access
Whereas in our earlier years NSMA had a particularly strong focus on featuring local and regional musicians (artists living in the Arrowhead Region), once there were more and more local businesses featuring live music and local and regional musicians gigging a lot here, our audience numbers and interest at local and regional-artist events began to decrease. So, increasingly, we began featuring more artists from other regions, states, and countries?music that our constituents can?t otherwise hear here. We saw in surveys and heard in conversations with our constituents that people had a hunger to learn about other cultures through music, so we upped the cultural diversity of what we were offering. Also, as we evaluated our educational projects and saw what a strong positive response they received and need there was for them, we increasingly added educational programming to each season, building it into projects whenever possible. NSMA's Director and Board evaluate the programming we offer via assessment of event attendance, financial outcome, audience and participant feedback, and our overall financial picture at the end of each fiscal year. We review our ?hits? and "misses" and adjust the following year?s programming accordingly. In 2013 we overhauled our mission and purpose to better fit our community?s needs. Since then, we have continued adjusting the programming we offer using these same per-project and ?big picture? evaluation strategies. In 2018-19, we worked extensively in committee on a new communications and operations plan in order to more efficiently and effectively meet our project and mission goals, based on ongoing and ?big picture? evaluations. This plan included a revamping of the duties of our Director and Board of Directors, vehicles for communication (marketing methods and strategies, member and community outreach methods), and an annual calendar of work activities. Our organizational goals are specifically designed to meet the needs of a broad public audience in an approachable and accessible way by: providing a wide array of musical genres from various cultural and ethnic backgrounds; being a principal channel for musical arts performance and education in Cook County; offering interactive programs and workshops tailored to meet the needs of child and adult learners; providing opportunities for personal and interactive participation in music; and seeking accomplished local, regional, national, and international musicians to perform and teach here. We know that our services and programming provide a benefit to Minnesota through the numbers of people we serve every season -- both locals and visitors from all over the state; through constituent feedback we receive from event surveys and conversations; and through the fact that in a very small community like ours we have been able to continue our mission for 35 years, due to very strong public interest and support.
In 2021, we contracted with a local web designer who designed us a new website that is much more streamlined and on which we can sell tickets directly. A big improvement! Thanks to administrative support from the grant, we were able to present a large number of live virtual educational music outreach programs for classrooms in Cook County schools for grades K-12, so we were successfully able to address this goal proposed in our application. These programs were a terrific success and so appreciated by teachers and students at a time when they were so needed.