Rural and Community Art Project Grant
Rural and Community Art Project Grant
In response to a major construction project and COVID-19, DETOURS invites people to share stories of detours in their lives that brought unexpected gifts. Snippets from stories will be printed onto street signs and installed on city sign posts.
Tara Makinen: former-Executive Director of Itasca Orchestra and Strings, musician; Tammy Mattonen: Executive Director of Itasca Orchestra and Strings, 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; Kris Nelson: artist, teacher; Roxann Berglund: musician; Bill Payne: Professor of Theater at the University of Minnesota-Duluth
Mary McReynolds: Executive Director, Lyric Center for the Arts; Roxann Berglund: musician; Tammy Mattonen: Executive Director of Itasca Orchestra and Strings, visual artist, co-founder of Crescendo Youth Orchestra; Bill Payne: Professor of Theater at the University of Minnesota-Duluth
Arrowhead Regional Arts Council, Drew Digby (218) 722-0952
ACHF Arts Access
Goal 1: Invite Cook County resident participation and provide space for residents to reflect on times of detour and waiting in their own lives. Snippets of narratives gathered will then be translated into 15 - 20 city street signs posted in at least 3 detour routes. Collect at least 30 narratives. Goal 2: Cook County triples in size in the summer months, directly overlapping with this construction project. Show visitors signage that is surprising and drives curiosity and delight, in order to cause a mental reset for them within a physical space that will inevitably be more stressful to navigate. Goal 3: The signage and engaging encounters people have with them will remind visitors in particular, that although Cook County is a vacation destination, it is also a community that many people call home and live in all year round. I.e. produce empathetic action. The project success will be assessed in the following ways: 1. The subcommittee and lead artist will educate downtown businesses about the project and its goals, and then following up in the fall of 2021 to survey business owners. Narrative and written data will be collected. The director of the Chamber of Commerce is on the subcommittee and information will be disseminated through him to the business coalition. 2. Those who participate in generating narratives in response to various questions about DETOUR and WAITING, will also be invited to provide written and/or verbal feedback. 3. There will be documentation through various community partners collecting qualitative data, including the visitors bureau and other arts partners. And a final debrief and evaluation will happen with the city public works department and the county engineer.
One of the main directives of the Cook County Creative Economy Collaborative (CEC) is to help address community issues through creative and artistic means. Our three project goals centered around addressing the major highway reconstruction project in downtown Grand Marais. We were able to, in an interesting and fun way, acknowledge the encumbrance and frustration that can come with physical detours. And we were able to provide those passing by the detour signs with a way to step back and engage with narratives that described other life detours, thus connecting the viewer with their own life experiences and creating a new mental space. Wayfinding was provided to the visitors bureau and many found their way to locate all of the signs posted around town.
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