Stage Play with Duluth Playhouse. A collaborative program where children with autism are able to enjoy theater arts while at the same time learning new communication and social interaction skills.
The Duluth Children’s Museum has initiated three major programs with the support of the Arts and Cultural Heritage Legacy Funds. This program continues and expands these successful programs to ensure continuity in cultural experiences for the youngest audiences in rural Minnesota. The programs are organized under two major headings: Museum on the Move and Passport to Culture. Passport to Culture is an access program designed to give constituents admission to the museum.
This project entailed the reconstruction and resurfacing of 5.3 miles of segments of the Paul Bunyan State Trail from Pine River to Merrifield to Brainerd.
Paul & Babe’s GeoHunt is a summer-long geocaching event that features unique sites along the 54-mile Paul Bunyan Scenic Byway driving route. The sport of geocaching involves hiding camouflage containers (which are called caches) so that people can look for and find the containers using GPS technology. Once they find the containers, participants collect special cards (found in the caches/containers). After collecting a series of 10 cards, participants can earn a GeoCoin.
The Perpich Arts Integration Network of Teachers (PAINT) fosters collaborative arts integration in Minnesota through K-12 teacher professional development and funding to schools. With Perpich Center facilitation, teacher teams develop and implement arts-integrated lessons and units. PAINT program components include:
Mille Lacs Lake is recognized as one of the premier walleye producing lakes in the world. The current water quality of the lake is good, however recent monitoring of the lake and its watershed indicates the potential to develop problems. Since 1997, the Mille Lacs Lake Watershed Management Group has worked to preserve the water quality of Mille Lacs Lake. Five priority projects were identified by the Group partners in an effort to preserve water quality. Support for these projects was provided by a grant from the Clean Water Fund.
The 400-mile stretch of the Mississippi River from its headwaters at Lake Itasca to Morrison County near Little Falls is the focus of this project. Working in cooperation with the eight member counties, this project will develop implementation plans and strategies geared specifically for the Mississippi River and incorporate them into the individual County Comprehensive Local Water Plans. These recommendations will be for specific strategies, often crossing county boundaries for implementation.
The SWCD initiated Project Recharge to create and apply a protection strategy to address declining water quality trend reported in a 2008 large lakes analysis. The report contained watershed and trend analysis for lakes over 1,000 acres in size and led to targeting of lands located within lakesheds containing the highest ratio of impervious to pervious surfaces. These included the Cities of Breezy Point, Crosslake, and Fifty Lakes.
Landowner-donated conservation easements in Aitkin, Cass, and Crow Wing counties permanently conserved 260 acres and 3.6 miles of critical shorelands for the protection and enhancement of fish and wildlife habitat and continued public recreational enjoyment of these aquatic resources.