Mu Performing Arts will produce Mu Daiko with Hanayui in its first official taiko tour, bringing Mu's distinct Midwest expression of taiko alongside the best from Japan to greater Minnesota audiences.
Professional theater artists will work for and with the West Side neighborhood of St. Paul to create a community-engaged theater production in which community stories inspire the script and score, and professional and community actors share the stage.
Given Minnesota students choose the arts and science as electives instead of having them as core curriculum, the purpose of this grant is to engage and enrich the lives of lifelong learners through effectively integrating the arts and sciences in our program.
To make theater accessible to the non-English speaking Hmong community, we will mount the play "Confessions of a Lazy Hmong Woman"in Hmong and nurture the talents of nontraditional Hmong actors.
Koom Siab United Hearts--a year-round Pan-Asian dance learning project--provides diverse Asian dance classes to disadvantaged Asian American youth to acquire knowledge/skills, and participate at Koom Siab Pan Asian dance performance.
The Minnesota Music Coalition will produce and promote a statewide tour of performances and workshops featuring established and emerging musicians and bands working in fine arts presenting venues.
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.
We will assess the environmental quality of prairies across Minnesota. On-the-ground surveys and contaminant risk assessments will help inform partner management actions, endangered species recovery plans, and pollinator reintroduction efforts.
The Rice Creek Watershed District (RCWD) is proposing to improve the water quality of stormwater runoff to Bald Eagle Lake through installation of a new wet pond and iron-enhanced sand filter (IESF) on Ramsey County Ditch #11. In partnership with White Bear Township, this project will remove approximately 43 pounds of phosphorus from runoff annually and builds upon the extensive work undertaken by the RCWD to improve water quality in Bald Eagle Lake.
This project will support updates to the Draft Bald Eagle Lake TMDL. The updates will address comments received during the public comment period. The comments resulted in the development of individual Wasteload Allocations for stormwater sources in the Bald Eagle Lake watershed.
During Phase 1, further engagement led to refocusing this project to build a destination playground. This phase will complete construction. The new playground includes traditional play equipment for toddlers and youth, plus other features, including a nature play area with water feature. Work will include site prep, infrastructure, grading, trail relocation, signage, landscaping, picnic tables, installation of play area pods, safety surfacing, and part of play equipment purchase
Perform aesthetic upgrades to the Phalen Beach House focused on improved bathroom and changing rooms, concessions, staff space, storage, and seating areas.
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.
The Berger Fountain, known as the dandelion fountain to most, was installed in 1975 by Benjamin Berger and has been a beloved neighborhood landmark in Loring Park and a favorite location for wedding photographers and children ever since. Ben Berger was a park board commissioner and, after seeing a dandelion fountain in Australia, fundraised to build a sister fountain right here in Minnesota.
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.
This study will leverage our current bioacoustics monitoring framework to assess avian diversity at the statewide scale through a citizen science acoustic monitoring program, with a focus on private lands.
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.
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.
