The primary goal of the Humanities Center’s Education Initiative is to increase student engagement and success; the foundation is strengthening the teacher-student relationship. Drawing upon the multiplicity of experiences and cultures represented in schools, educators gain insight into how to engage every student authentically and respectfully.
The Minnesota Humanities Center is dedicated to bringing informative, enlightening, and engaging events to the community, providing all Minnesotans opportunities to build relationships, listen to stories, and learn from one-another.
The Humanities Center used a portion of the Legacy funding for program planning and management. This support includes work such as exploratory and planning meetings for new initiatives and program management of all our Legacy work.
Drawing on the power of the humanities, Veterans’ Voices changes the narrative of Veterans and honors their contributions. It empowers Veterans to speak in their own voices through plays, discussions, literature, and the Veterans’ Voices Award. Veterans’ Voices will recognize the next great generation and illustrate that the Veteran’s voice is essential to the work of building our great democracy.
We Are Water MN is a traveling exhibition and community engagement initiative that emerged from the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum on Main Street project. Continued by MHC and several state partners, six greater Minnesota communities (Spicer, St. Peter, Red Wing, Sandstone, Lanesboro, and Detroit Lakes) hosted the exhibit in 2016-2017, and eight communities hosted the exhibit in 2018-2019 (Saint Paul, Bemidji, Crookston, Cloquet, Austin, Northfield, Grand Rapids, and Onamia).
Why Treaties Matter: Self-Government in the Dakota and Ojibwe Nations is a traveling exhibition made in partnership with the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. The exhibit explores relationships between Dakota and Ojibwe Indian Nations and the U.S. government in this place we now call Minnesota. More than ten communities hosted the exhibit in the 2018-2019 year: Morton, Red Lake, Fergus Falls, Minneapolis, Mankato, Cass Lake, St. Cloud, White Bear Lake, St.
Total: $43,017.75 We are Water MN is a program and partnership with the Humanities Center, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, Minnesota Historical Society, Minnesota Department of Health, Minnesota section of the American Water Works Association, and six greater Minnesota communities.
Arts and Cultural Heritage funding will allow us to pursue three major initiatives between July 1, 2016 and June 30, 2017: (1) Offer special exhibits and programs promoting creative & critical thinking in our main museum in St. Paul. (2) A Pop-up satellite Museum at the Mall of America featuring four changing exhibits to attract thousands of new visitors. (3) Changing exhibits and access at Minnesota Children’s Museum-Rochester to ensure inclusive family experiences for the Rochester community.
The Arts and Access Programs include three major initiatives: 1. Arts and access programming at Minnesota Children’s Museum-Rochester 2. Creativity Jam Exhibit; and 3. Storyland Tour of Greater Minnesota.
Ampers is partnering with the Minnesota Humanities Center to expand the “Veterans’ Voices” project. Focused on widening the narrative surrounding Minnesota’s service members, this series will feature 25 different Veterans and will explore their knowledge, experience and leadership, from their perspectives, and in their own voices. Ampers will produce and distribute 25 different 90-second segments.
This project is a documentary and includes working in partnership with East Side Freedom Library (ESFL) and Vietnamese Social Services (VSS) and with Cambodian American Partnership (CAP) as a program partner with the collaborative aim to provide a platform for Southeast Asian women to share their experiences preserving history, honoring more inclusively the lives impacted, and building awareness of these stories in Minnesota, of particular relevance for our state where Cambodian, Hmong, Laotian, and Vietnamese American communities established post-Vietnam War and continue to grow.
This project is a new initiative propelled from current programming. Twin Cities Film Fest will launch MNmicro Cultural Film Festivals. Instead of just celebrating national diverse voices with some Minnesota (40%) connected films during the 10-day festival, the new program will put a spotlight on diverse voices and cultures specifically through Minnesota exclusive films during their respective nationally recognized cultural heritage celebration months.
Minnesota Legislative Society will expand the Model Legislature program to Central Minnesota through St. Cloud State University by bringing in local elected officials to participate as legislators in the process. It will incorporate caucus meetings and involve students as lobbyists. The Model Legislature event engages students directly by: working in committees that mirror standing committees of the Minnesota legislature; debating, amending, and voting on bills in committee; debating and sending to the governor for the program.
Monkeybear's Harmolodic Workshop (Est. 2016) supports Native, Black, IPOC in developing creative and technical skills in contemporary puppetry. Their projects include puppetry workshops, new theater pieces, stop motion puppetry, open studio work and sessions.
ESHARA will promote cross-cultural learning and dispel misconceptions by creating spaces for cross-cultural arts expression and community building: 1) plan and host Iftar Celebration in partnership with all ESHARA Partners, Moorhead Mosque, Inclusive Moorhead partners, elected officials, and community leaders; 2) plan and host four community gatherings that incorporate and celebrate cross-cultural heritage, arts (primary dancing and singing), traditions, and food; 3) support community education on cross-cultural heritage.
The Great Northern will commission Mother Tongue, a new multimedia work from interdisciplinary Minnesota artist Mary Prescott. In fall 2024, The Great Northern and Prescott will invite six local matriarchs from cultural communities represented in the Twin Cities (Hmong, Somalian, Indigenous, Mexican, Indian, Ethiopian, etc.) to a potluck meal. Each guest will bring a dish to share with the group that represents their heritage, telling the story of why it holds meaning for them personally.
?Movement as Language' explores how dance can become a common language through community workshops and choreographic processes. The workshops are for people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, particularly Latinx, LGBTQ+, and disabled community members. The project will culminate in a unique performance by workshop participants and reflects the work of the leaders' Carmen Lucia 'Meli' Lincoln and Erika Martin in activism, art, and dance education.
The city of Pelican Rapids has an International Friendship Festival nearly every year. They invite musicians and dancers from many of the nationalities that make up the town. The Festival is an opportunity for all the diverse peoples in this town to share their own cultures and their art. We would like to hire the Somali Cultural Museum’s Dance Troupe to perform at the 2020 Festival. We also plan to run a Somali dance workshop the day after the Festival.
Asian Media Access will create a new cultural destination at the former St. Paul Sears parking lot, with a weekly Multicultural Night Market in Summer 2024.
Multilingual research, oral history collection, print publications, video documentary and community round tables regarding the history of culturally-diverse Latin American immigrant diaspora festive traditions held at 27th Ave. and E. Lake St. in south Minneapolis, when it was the Mexican music venues El Nuevo Rodeo and previously Vannandy?s, that was a vibrant social context for culturally-diverse festive ritual traditions and socialization in a South Side cultural and commercial crossroads.
We seek planning resources to bring together a collective of young people who have localized and brought to life traditional Norte'o, Ranchera, Tejano, and Banda music. This collective will be comprised by the young Latinx leaders of the Dos Coronas, Elegancia LR, and Alto Designo bands to design and develop a Mexican music education program to engage Latinx elementary and high school students in learning, practicing, and reimagining Mexican traditional music.
Since 2016, RISE has been reclaiming the Muslim woman's narrative through Muslim Sheroes of Minnesota. After featuring 35 Sheroes on our digital platform, we heard from our community that our stories must be told through the traditional medium of a book in order to preserve our cultural heritage and identity as Minnesota Muslim women. By collecting these stories in a book, we will showcase a narrative about a collective of Muslim women changing our state for the better.
Ragamala requests support to develop and present Mythology Makes Us: The Kannagi Festival. This project is a celebration of Tamil (Southeastern Indian) culture an aspect of Indian culture not often featured in the U.S. Through dance, dialogue, film, and food, we connect past and present, and explore how immigrants can draw on our cultural archetypes to inform a better, more just, and more inclusive future.
Storytelling is central to contemporary Native American life-ways, yet, there is an extremely limited number of published works by Native authors. By amplifying Native authors, all Minnesotans will have access to literary works that connect the public to the vital and thriving Native American culture that Minnesota is rooted in. AMRA's Native Authors Program creates opportunity and placemaking for Native authors who are not given access to other workshops at more established writing programs.
The purpose of the AMRA Native Authors Program is to support a cohort of Native American authors, working in different literary genres, with the end goal of creating a path to publishing new literary works. This program allows Native authors the support and public platform to tell our stories rather than having our stories be told by non-Natives.
The M requests funding to create a Native Arts Partnership Council that will guide the expansion of our Native Arts Initiatives. Consisting of key Indigenous artists, elders, and educators, the group of 7-10 individuals will represent the diverse tribes and tribal demographics of the region. Members of the council will be invited to engage in a process of co-creation that will work to deepen our focus on Native Arts and launch an ongoing Native Arts Council that is Native- and community-led.
Founded on the centennial of the Mexican Muralist movement, (Neo)Muralismos de México (NMM) aims to revitalize and reclaim our Mexican cultural heritage through culturally-specific, socially-informed, historically-grounded, and community-engaged public art. To this end, NMM will lead and coordinate 5 community-engaged muralism and public art projects that will uplift our cultural heritage around the state, including projects in the Twin Cities, Duluth, Red Wing, and Austin, MN.
New Arab American Theater Works is requesting funds for a community project exploring the impact of immigration from historic Syria (including modern day Lebanon) to the Americas over the last 100 years through an exploratory multi-disciplinary work of art and the input of community members. This will culminate in a 3 week production and 9 community dialogues exploring the complex subject of Lebanese and Syrian migration to the Americas.
MN Film Collective will create a new program, the New Works! Lab, a season of new films created, produced, directed, and starring Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA) filmmaking artists from Minnesota. We will showcase these films for our community to watch in the Twin Cities, Duluth, Rochester, and Fergus Falls to include: 1) the production of 8 new film works by Asian Minnesotan filmmaking artists; 2) five screenings throughout the Metro and greater Minnesota; 3) hosting workshops led by filmmaking artists on writing screenplays, how to generate film ideas, and more.
The Threads Youth Dance Project is a pre-professional dance training program for youth ages 12-16. It seeks to innovate dance education by welcoming aspiring BIPOC dancers who struggle to find affirming and culturally sustaining spaces to study dance.
The Niibi Center and White Earth Land Recovery Project (WELRP) will collaborate to establish a Medicine and Three Sisters Garden teaching and learning space on land owned and managed by WELRP located on White Earth Reservation. They will engage community members, especially young people and families, in the planting and cultivation of the gardens and offer and host year long teaching, learning and cultural immersion activities aligned with our existing mission and goals.
(Neo)Muralismos de Mexico will 1) develop internal capacity as they develop a "Mexican & Latino Museum of Minnesota". Key objectives include: 1) hire a consultant to support strategic planning; 2) hire an HR consultant; 3) hire a legal consultant; 4) website development.
NATIFS is launching the Indigenous Food Lab in Minneapolis. By providing education and training that give Native people access to healthy, local, indigenous food, we can address serious issues of malnutrition, food-related illness, and economic impoverishment on tribal lands. We are requesting funding to launch virtual programming now, including how-to videos and podcast conversations with Native chefs and other relevant Native health experts.
This archive will be a central resource for accessible Indigenous knowledge around Indigenous foods systems and will include documentation of local traditional ecological knowledge on wild plants, animals, Native agriculture, seed saving, recipes, language, crafting, medicinals, places, histories, health, sports and games, stories, and more.
This project is a direct artistic response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In fall of 2024, Theatre Novi Most will work with playwright Andrei Kureichik, dramaturg Wendy Weckwerth, director Vladimir Rovinsky and three community advisors to create a new play based on stories we have gathered in Story Circles across Minnesota. After the play is written the project will produce professional public readings of it at three sites in Minneapolis with supertitles in Ukrainian.
The Duluth Children’s Museum continues to grow dramatically, in large part from the investments of the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Legacy funding support over the last three years.
Otter Cove Children's Museum will be a state-of-the-art educational and cultural center in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, providing a much-needed accessible, indoor play space for the children of Otter Tail County and beyond. Otter Cove was started and driven by a group of moms but the actual place, Otter Cove, is for children and the "critters" who live there; the otter in the Otter Romp Playground, the fox at the cafe, the beaver at the dentist office, the raccoon at the grocery store, the swan on the stage, the mice at the bookstore, and the skunk at the veterinarian.
Thanks to the support of the Minnesota Humanities Center in 2019, Otter Cove Children's Museum was able to complete the design, building, and installation of a variety of exhibits and interactive art features prior to our grand opening. Despite a delayed opening and months of limited operations due to the pandemic, Otter Cove's first year has been nothing short of incredible, attracting 17,299 children and families from 289 unique zip codes (179 of them in MN), 27 states, and 4 countries!
Thanks to the support of the Minnesota Humanities Center in 2019, Otter Cove Children's Museum was able to complete the design, building, and installation of a variety of exhibits and interactive art features prior to our grand opening. Despite a delayed opening and months of limited operations due to the pandemic, Otter Cove's first year has been nothing short of incredible, attracting 17,299 children and families from 289 unique zip codes (179 of them in MN), 27 states, and 4 countries! Our guests have been so impressed that we have such a a high-quality facility in a rural region.
