The Somali Museum of Minnesota will curate and present two new monthly series of public programs designed to amplify, celebrate, and preserve Somali culture. The first series will be gallery-based and draw from the museum’s collection to offer Somali language, cultural and history instruction targeted to Somali families and school age youth. The second series, designed for a broader audience, will present artist talks and demonstrations, dance performances, exhibitions, and poetry readings.
We would use this grant money to help pay for the free entertainment for the fairgoers at our county fair with the Doug Ohman. He is a wonderful Minnesota native that has a wide variety of art and history in his ways of storytelling, as well as making it interesting and a learning experience for all ages to learn about the history and art of their home state.
We are proposing to rent bleachers for our "park" area. We have had the same bleachers for 65-plus years and it's time to upgrade them. At this time we do not have the funding to replace them all. We would like to rent this year and see where to place new permanent ones. The bleachers we rent will also be better for the public attending the concerts we offer the fairgoers.
Provide educational demonstrations and displays of Minnesota history, ag and arts with a dog sledding exhibit, farm feud trivia, a butter churning demonstration, and art demonstrations.
Our Legacy project includes having the Red Letter Band perform and having Clueless the Balloon Twister come and entertain the children again this year.
The grant funds will help pay for local folk, Americana, country and western musicians or bands. We will seek musicians that perform original music and showcase musicians and bands from local (northern Minnesota) that often don't get the opportunity to perform in front of a large crowd. We will also contract professional sound engineers to produce the sound at the mini stage through all performances.
We want to invite back to our fair:
- Doug Ohman who is a History Teller, he brings different content for the different sessions he does at the fair.
- Kevin Lindh is a balloon twisting artist. In the past he's had a continuous line of children to get their unique balloon figures. He does animals, characters, shapes, etc.
- Jeremy DeWall (and band) is a local Minnesota singer. He will bring his hometown music to our stage during the fair.
This project includes artist workshops for the Hispanic Community Outreach program. Workshops include: 1) puppet making; 2) paper Mache classes; 3) Guatemalan weaving classes; 4) mural and painting classes by Gustavo Lira, Mexican muralist/painter/sculptor/mosaic artist/ceramicist/art educator; 5) an Alebrijes workshop, with Aaron Johnson-Ortiz/Gustavo Boada. Johnson-Ortiz is a Latino cultural arts worker/organizer/public artist/muralist focused on workers' struggles, immigrant rights, and Latino culture.
