Per Minnesota Law, the Minnesota Humanities Center administers the Arts and Cultural Heritage Children's Museum Grants. The Humanities Center uses a portion of the funds to provide grants administration, including overseeing the proposal process, agreement drafting, financial and program monitoring, and reporting.
During the 2016 Legislative Session, the Minnesota State Legislature asked the Minnesota Humanities Center to award arts and cultural heritage grants to civics organizations. Legacy funds are appropriated to the Humanities Center to support such work. A small portion of each appropriation was reserved by the Humanities Center for direct expenses related to administering the grant. Should any portion of this reserve be unused, the difference will be awarded to the respective organizations. Specific funds information not available; named recipients have not yet submitted proposals.
ASAL Charities will enhance civic engagement within the East African community in the Twin Cities, honoring and celebrating its unique culture. "Empowering Voices" will integrate cultural nuances into civic education throughout twelve sessions focusing on the significance of voting, civic involvement, and active participation in civic life.
ASAL will enhance operations in three areas: 1) non-profit management; 2) grant writing and reporting; 3) fundraising strategy development. This project has the following key objectives: 1) train and assist staff on grant writing and reporting for non-profit management; 2) hire experts to conduct strategic planning, fiscal management, and community outreach training; 3) hire consultation to identify, monitor, and communicate fundraising campaign opportunities, grant writing, tracking progress, and project management.
This project involves the collaboration between Pan Asian Arts Alliance, Elluminance Era, Chinese American Chamber of Commerce-MN, Asian Media Access, Unity Dance Group, and other Pan Asian Arts groups. It is a first-ever collaboration between Asian American performing and visual arts organizations. The project, "Asia Extravaganza," is a one-night festivity event to showcase Asian American youthful culture through dance, music and storytelling.
The Asian American Short Film Project is a six-month long series of workshops on how to create a five minute narrative or documentary short film culminating in a public event showcasing works-in-progress. This will include workshops on how to write a short film, how to find funding, how to produce a short film with the tools that you already have (i.e. smartphone), how to edit, and how to distribute/show your short film.
This project includes support for two exhibit developments: 1) Highway 94 displacement of the Rondo neighborhood; 2) a 3D Asian Goddess Folktale exhibit.
Composing and recording traditional Hmong song poetry now that I'm in the third phase of my life, focused on my responsibilities as an old man, a grandfather. I want to do an album of song poetry about the things I am leaving behind. My voice is not as young or as handsome as it once was, scarred by time and circumstances, I now sing with an older man's tones. But even this is valuable for the human experience.
This project will support a co-creative engagement program with Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe children, families, and educators, highlighting the art, culture, and heritage of North Central Minnesota from the perspectives of Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe children.
We are seeking funds to showcase the immigrant and refugees stories: lives, talents, culture and history beyond survival. Too often the stories of immigrants and refugees are framed in the context of surviving. The problem in those stories is that they miss the richness of the lives of migrants starting in a different country. The multimedia project will work on the stories from several angles, narrative, mural making, written stories, portraits, video and pictures.
Move for America will engage youth ages 14-18 in interactive groups to increase participants' relationships across differences; interest in and understanding of civic engagement; media fluency and source evaluation. Through this project, youth will build the skills, knowledge, and relationships they need to be active, connected, and informed citizens.
The Council on Black Minnesotans and the Humanities Center will coordinate a Cultural Relations Summit for Minnesotans of Africans descent. The summit will celebrate culture traditions through instructional demonstrations, guided tours, and visual arts; plan for cultural institutions’ sustainability; and strengthen cultural connections through DNA technology. A web-based cultural portal and a video documentary on the contributions of Minnesotans of African will discover and preserve cultural traditions and enhance relations in Minnesota.
Humanities Center support will enable More Than A Single Story to respond to multiple requests for support in dealing with personal and cultural trauma with the conference Black Writers Healing Black Writers(working title). In times of great stress, such as the COVID experience and the murder of George Floyd, artists go to their creativity to heal. This project brings that opportunity to Black writers who are reeling from continuing violence that impacts that communities.
Black Table Arts operates a community-driven, cooperative space by and for Black artists in South Minneapolis. Our summer Youth Cooperative Lab will expand access to this space to high school students as we excavate the tradition of arts organizing through Black literature and protest writing. Through workshops with organizers, educators, and artists, the young writers will draw inspiration from the history of arts activism while improving their own writing craft and developing as changemakers.
Mizna, the journal of Arab/Southwest Asian & North African (SWANA) literature and visual art, is doing a special Black Takeover issue, to be published in Winter 2022. As an ongoing commitment we have made to examine our representation of our Black community, we are approaching this issue in a completely different way by giving over our journal space to a Black team to take the journal through the full production process, led by guest editor Safia Elhillo, the acclaimed Sudanese American poet.
This project will expand the Truth Telling Series that collected, preserved, and shared suppressed Dakota and Anishinaabe histories through community oral narratives. The project will document untold and silenced narratives from Black Minnesotans in urban and rural communities to develop new and easily accessible curriculum for grades Pre-K-6, in partnership with numerous BIPOC scholars, elders, and community partners. The project includes a collaborative story collection. The stories will be collected, documented, and written.
Bois Forte Tribal Leaders have acknowledged the potential loss of our Native Language and unique Ojibwe dialect. With a mere 6 fluent speaker's remaining, it is critical that we utilize creative methods to preserve the language. This project will provide funds to purchase appropriate equipment that will be used to record elders as they tell the history of Bois Forte and teach of the clan system and identify families. The recordings will preserve their knowledge for future generation.
The Equity Alliance MN will bring to life absent narratives of Latino, Hmong, Native, Asian, African American, and women of the Civil Rights Era in a collaboration among youth, social studies teachers, Full Circle Theater (FCT), and St. Paul Neighborhood Network. The narratives, researched by youth, will be transformed by FCT into a six person play that will be presented, video recorded, and distributed with accompanying curriculum written by social studies teachers for teachers across the Equity Alliance MN and the state.
St. Paul Civic Symphony will help to develop a multidisciplinary arts project for its free 2025 Children's Concert inspired by a recent publication, The Rhythm of Somalia: A Collection of Songs, Stories, and Traditions by Qorsho Hassan, Minnesota Teacher of the Year (2020), and music specialist Becca Buck, both educators at Gideon Pond Elementary, Burnsville.
With our emerging initiative, Buffalo Weavers: Connecting Land and People through Dakota Thought for Climate Rescue, we plan to engage in a range of programming activities aimed at healing climate grief and working toward climate justice. We are creating a movement through art to awaken the world to climate change and its impact.
The Chicano Latino Affairs Council and the Humanities Center will build on the grant received last year, which was intended to identify the elements of success in programs for Latino high school students and ways to replicate them. Applying the findings of CLAC's and HACER's research, CLAC will integrate its biennium goal of improving levels of educational achievement for Latino youth with the Legacy goal of enriching Minnesota’s cultural legacy by piloting the program in two Minnesota schools.
Through the construction of new interactive exhibits and the creation of educational programming, the Duluth Children's Museum will highlight the community and culture of Duluth and the surrounding region. A climbable, playable model of Duluth's iconic canal lighthouses and an educational Ojibwe waaginogaan are among the planned new elements being added to the museum experience.
This series is designed to build cross-cultural connections and understanding, and connections to the values of creativity and inclusivity. The specific arts and cultural activities included in this proposal include: 1) Underrepresented Visual Artist Series; 2) Theater production of POTUS 2) Theater production of Invisible Fences; 3) Minnesota Media Arts School (MMAS) Partnership with Underrepresented Communities; 4) Underrepresented Filmmaker Focus at the Minnesota Film Festival; 5) LGBTQIIA+ / BIPOC / Elder / Disabled Feature Storytelling Series.
The YMCA Center for Youth Voice helps preserve Minnesota's strong civic cultural heritage by teaching civic knowledge (law, democracy, government), skills, and traditions to the next generation. This project brings in diverse new participants and content for two experiential civics learning programs Youth in Government (YIG) and Students Voting by increasing access for youth who identify as Black, Indigenous, or people of color (BIPOC), including those in Greater Minnesota and in rural areas. YIG allows students in grades 8-12 to prepare for and run a four-day model government.
Move for America is a new initiative designed to preserve and celebrate the diverse cultural heritage of Minnesota by fostering intercultural exchange and education. It will consist of a direct exchange program involving students from community and technical colleges in Minneapolis and Saint Paul (urban centers) and two rural counties: Otter Tail County and Lyon County. This project includes two full exchanges, each with 30-40 participants over two weekends.
Brownbody will 1) expand fundraising through grant seeking and increasing revenue streams; 2) streamline operational practices; 3) build a strong foundation for deeper, more frequent, and consistent communication and engagement with MN communities.
Asian Media Access (AMA) will embark on a capacity-building project aimed at cultivating individual donors from Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) and the public, and encompasses a multifaceted approach to enhance grant writing, reporting, nonprofit management, and fundraising capabilities. Key activities include: 1) train and assist board/staff on grant writing and reporting; 2) build internal expertise in grant writing and reporting by obtaining consultation and training from experts in Donor Solicitation.
Funding to support rehearsals, five outreach performances, and a concert entitled "We Are a Family", to be held on Saturday February 6, 2021 at the CCS auditorium.
Crossing Mountains is a highly collaborative effort by a coalition of Hmong artists to create a sweeping story of two generations of Hmong women who escape Laos to Minnesota. Their story is one of sacrifice and hardship and ultimately hope and redemption. Inspired by the real story of an amazing Hmong woman from Minneapolis, this Hmong opus will use ballet to share the Hmong story of escape from Laos to acclimating in a strange new land.
The Center for Hmong Studies is seeking a $20,000 grant form the Hmong Cultural Grant program to acquire the Jason Schoonover Collection, to provide stipend for students to digitize and catalog the collection, and to organize a Hmong Textile exhibit to show the collection.
The Center for Leadership and Neighborhood Engagement works to organize and mobilize the faith community to affect positive systems change. Our intercultural work aims at communicating culture across racial divides. Through this project we will celebrate and honor creative cultural communication with youth through counter-storytelling, educating joint learning communities, and training cultural heritage organizers to educate and rejuvenate cultural identity in the community.
This project involves collaboration with various organizations to enhance cultural connections, strengthen positive identity development, and provide enriching experiences for Black youth and families in Central Minnesota. Specific activities include 1) cultural heritage learning sessions and field trips; 2) a film festival honoring Black filmmakers and performers; 3) a Afrofuturist comic book workshop; 4) Boys & Girls Club art initiatives; 5) a Hip-Hop culture lab; 6) a Hip-Hop dance show; 7) educational support to cultural athletics and sports; 8) theatre production.
The Children's Discovery Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota aims to strengthen its highly successful School Service Program by retaining a Program development coordinator, changing core interactive exhibits and creating new curriculum for pre-school and K - 5 students in ten northern Minnesota counties.
The Children's Discovery Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota will strengthen its acclaimed school service program by: (1) continued leadership of a new Program Director retained on January 1, 2016 (2) creating a new (Minnesota built) core interactive exhibit; (3) developing new curriculum for pre-school through 3rd grade students in ten northern Minnesota counties.
Ojibwe podcast broadcast via youtube, Itunes, Spotify, Facebook, etc. The Ojibwe Podcast would include oral interviews with local elders, community experts, activists, and Anishinaabe peoples of Minnesota.
In May 2009, the Minnesota State Legislature asked the Minnesota Humanities Center and four state councils-the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council, the Council on Black Minnesotans, the Chicano Latino Affairs Council, and the Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans-to collaboratively create new programs and events that celebrates and preserves the artistic, historical, and cultural heritages of the communities represented by each council.
The Children’s Museum of Southern Minnesota (CMSM) will build upon a strong foundation of Minnesota Arts, Culture and Heritage (ACH) learning experiences made possible with prior MN Legacy funding support to:
As an established Children's Museum, it is time to re-evaluate our policies, programs, displays, & activities. There will be financial support (scholarships) for classroom/community field trips and bussing which will allow children of all abilities and ethnicities to have a museum experience. Data and suggestions collected from the teachers or adult chaperones will be shared with the Grant Committee and Advisory Board for their work.
The Children’s Museum of Southern Minnesota (CMSM) will build upon its strong foundation of Minnesota Arts, Culture and Heritage (ACH) learning experiences made possible with previous Minnesota Legacy funding support to:
