Somali Museum of Minnesota: The Mobile Culture Show: Building Bridges and Increasing Somali Cultural Vitality Across Minnesota
The Somali Museum of Minnesota will present the Mobile Culture Show: a statewide program of immersive cross-cultural exhibitions, performances, and workshops highlighting Somali cultural arts. The program responds to statewide need for more resources to teach and learn about Somali culture, and employs Somali art as a tool to build bridges between generations and communities, showcasing art forms including traditional dance, finger-weaving, storytelling, and oral poetry.
$200,000 each year is for a grant to one or more community organizations that provide Somali-based collaborative programs for arts and cultural heritage. The Somali Museum of Minnesota may apply for a grant under this paragraph. The funding must be used for programs to provide arts and humanities education and workshops, mentor programs, classes, exhibits, presentations, community engagement events, and outreach about the Somali community and heritage in Minnesota.
- Cultural celebration: A one-day event featuring performances and exhibitions of multiple art forms, either as a stand-alone event or integrated into a larger community festival.
- Craft workshops: A multiple-day series of workshops in a specific art form, taught by master-artists in the tradition.
- Somali 101 Presentation: A classroom- or training-based exhibition and presentation offering an immersive introduction to Somali culture and art history
- 60 - Performance by the Somali Museum Dance Troupe: high-energy performance of classic Somali folk dances, as well as demonstration and workshops, where audiences of all ages are able to try their hand at learning and imitating the steps.
- 35 - Nomadic finger-weaving workshops: classes taught by elder master-weavers, offering participants an introduction to the weaving style used to create kebed, the mats that form the walls and roof of Somali nomadic homes. Workshops are taught through demonstration and imitation, the way that young people would learn from their grandmothers at home in Somalia
- 27 - Oral Poetry and Storytelling: engaging story circles and poetry performance that evoke the traditions of sharing news and legends across time and families in nomadic Somalia, as well as workshops teaching the forms and practice of poetry and storytelling that particularly target Somali-American youth building their proficiency with Somali language
- 1 - Anniversary Celebration - featuring Dance Troupe, Poetry, Singing, storytelling.
$200,000 each year is for a grant to one or more community organizations that provide Somali-based collaborative programs for arts and cultural heritage. The Somali Museum of Minnesota may apply for a grant under this paragraph. The funding must be used for programs to provide arts and humanities education and workshops, mentor programs, classes, exhibits, presentations, community engagement events, and outreach about the Somali community and heritage in Minnesota.
- Outcome: Programs in Somali art and culture will become available to Minnesotans who historically do not access arts programing, including Somali-American youth and elders
- Evidence: Participants will access programming that was otherwise unavailable
- Evidence: Somali Museum will increase programs offered by 30% from 2018-2019
- Outcome: Non-Somali Minnesotans will participate in programs about Somali culture and art for the first time
- Evidence: Participants will give testimony about their new exposure to Somali art
- Outcome: Somali-American youth will access Somali traditional art forms, which were previously unavailable to them
- Evidence: Youth will give testimony about their new exposure to Somali art forms
- Outcome: Minnesota’s communities will gain resources in teaching and sharing Somali culture
- Evidence: Somali cultural programs will become part of existing festivals and events, and new workshops and presentations will become available
All the programs were welcoming to the young Somali-Americans and introduce/encouraged their cultural roots and build relationships with older generations through learning about Somali art. We held programs that were inclusive of the Non-Somali Minnesotans and enriched their understanding of the state’s Somali communities through exposure to Somali culture and art.