All Projects

Technology/Equipment Grant for Individual Artist

IX and TQH will collaborate to support the immigrant members of IX who are also part of the queer community. We want to focus on this intersection because IX has a handful of members who embrace this identity and struggle for recognition within their Latinx community. IX will work with TQH to support the intersectional identities of IX members through their claiming of their narratives. This will be done at a December storytelling event of TQH, through IX members (and adding a cross-cultural element) as well as queer Hmong and Somali individuals sharing their stories publicly.

To hire a qualified firm to transcribe 217 interviews and programs from Tellstar News, founded in St. Paul by Readus Fletcher in 1986.

To provide better storage conditions, allowing for greater public access to objects in the collection.

To hire qualified professionals to produce an edited manuscript on the history of the Seward Neighborhood.

To hire a qualified historian to complete production of a heritage tourism bike tour.

Arts and Cultural Heritage funding will allow us to pursue three major initiatives between July 1, 2020 and June 30, 2021:

The Minnesota Urban Debate League is an independent program of Augsburg University. We serve over 1,200 students and provide academic debate programming to 40+ Twin Cities high school and middle schools. Two of our programs are designed to specifically address the needs of immigrant communities in Minnesota: The Spanish Debate League and the East African Debate Initiative. Both programs build students’ positive cultural identity while sharpening their academic skills.

The DIAL will collaborate with Hmong artist Tou SaiKo Lee to develop “Ntiajteb Koomtes” (“Unified Worldwide” in English) – a Hmong language program based on Hmong traditional music infused with poetry and hip hop. Project activities include piloting the curriculum, developing media, and evaluating and revising the curriculum through feedback from students, teachers and linguists.

Our project will expand our successful storytelling program to 1) offer more pathways for community engagement with Southeast Asian diaspora stories and cultural arts; 2) increase the number of people we are able to engage through our storytelling program; 3) increase public dialog and engagement with Southeast Asian stories and cultural arts. Our work will bring Southeast Asian diaspora communities together to share cultural arts and stories and to increase accessibility of community stories.