CMSM opened its new permanent site with increased capacity to serve as an informal learning center that playfully engages children, families, and school groups in interactive experiences with the art and cultural heritage of southern Minnesota. With its current appropriation, CMSM is poised to strengthen its core as an institution that promotes arts and cultural heritage learning through continued
CMSM will build upon the work that began with its 2015-16 appropriation by (1) Remediation and further development of exhibit areas that promote Arts & Cultural Heritage (ACH) learning (2) Expanding ACH learning opportunities for new audiences at off-site locations; (3) Engaging an outside Evaluation Consultant to help plan/implement strategies that meaningfully assess ACH learning outcomes and impacts; (4) Boosting the Museum’s capacity to serve more school/early learning groups.
African Economic Development Solutions will sustain and expand funding development team skills, this funding would support training, coaching, and overall support. The project has the following key objectives: 1) hire expertise to train staff on fund development planning; 2) grant writing training and support; 3) grant research; 4) grants management and reporting; 5) sponsorship fundraising; 6) grant application writing for humanities programs.
The Givens Foundation will host a African American Literary Conference, slated for April 2025, to explore emerging themes, trends, and issues in Black American literature. Our collaboration with the Archie Givens Sr. Collection of African American Literature will elevate the discourse, fostering critical engagement. 1) Public Forum: Engaging the general public, as well as emerging and established writers, scholars, critics, agents, publishers, booksellers, educators, and students.
As an organization of African American visual artists, our purpose is to use the art inspired by our lived experiences to engage residents of traditionally white suburban communities in transformative conversations and activities that heal the breach and create mutual understanding. This project seeks funds to support AHHA! artists through a planning process that will empower them to present their creative visions of racial justice as a pedagogy that enriches the secondary school curriculum.
America is polarized around cultural and racial identity. AmercaTV.me will offer a vision where people can discover common roots across diverse cultural identities.Two videos and virtual tours will be produced - "Rhythms" and "Flavors". For example, Rhythms - An Asian Indian playing the ?tabla , an African American playing the Saxophone, an Irish American playing the piano, Each plays the same beat in their unique way. Videos will be produced in multiple languages.
A group of 16 Latino youth ages 10-12 will meet bi-weekly to explore a cultural curriculum developed in collaboration with educators, artists, community members, and the youth themselves. We will investigate and celebrate our culture, traditions, music, and art, as well as improve our Spanish reading and writing in a safe place out of the home. Youth who attend will feel more confident about themselves, their identity and feel closer to their roots and family members.
1) We will teach the tradition of Arabic drumming to community members, and present this music to the Twin Cities in a series of outdoor concerts open to all. This will include audience talkbacks by local SWANA Humanities scholars.
2) We will recruit 6 local SWANA (Southwest Asian/North African) community members to work together to develop their writing in a safe and supportive community setting. The product will be presented as staged readings with talkbacks by local SWANA Humanities scholars.
We Are is a collaborative arts project that captures in literary reflections and visual art the Northside community's experiences of recent socially-impacting events. The primary output is a series of art posters that contain text and visual art. Each poster will be designed by a collaborative team, with a minimum of 20 posters produced. Posters will be displayed in public venues throughout the city. A corresponding photo book of the posters will be printed and distributed to community venues.
Art from the Inside elevates the voices of incarcerated artists in Minnesota and amplifies their stories through their art and community-centered exhibitions of their art, providing the public a space to explore the complexities of identity, incarceration, and our shared humanity. AFTI will expand its reach and impact into more state correctional facilities and incorporate culturally-sustaining arts programming both inside and outside the walls of confinement.
AC3 will create two art-building workshops for indigenous youth and their families. The work itself will focus on the lives and stories of missing or murdered indigenous women (MMIW) in Minnesota. The workshops will be co-hosted with Anishinaabe Academy (AA) and the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center (MIWRC). At both events, students, their parents, and their siblings will be trained in silk screening production, will manufacture printed fabric and paper arts together, and will be educated in Native American history, culture, and contemporary experiences.
The Council on Asian-Pacific Minnesotans and the Humanities Center’s “Arts & Cultural Legacy” program will educate, highlight, and promote understanding of the arts and cultural heritage of Asian American and Pacific Islanders for all Minnesotans. The Program consists of 3 elements 1) capacity building via the Artists Fellowship Program and the Asian Pacific Youth Council; 2) print and media via the creation of books for young readers; and 3) arts programming.
The Children's Museum of Rochester, Inc. will be implementing a program called Passport To Play aiming to increase the number of children and families of all ages, ethnicities, abilities and incomes to participate in hands-on arts and cultural programming and educational exhibits at the museum. Passport To Play would reach over 1,500 children and families a year from underserved communities in Southeastern Minnesota. The Children's Museum of Rochester, Inc.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This project will expand the Truth Telling Series that collected, preserved, and shared suppressed Dakota and Anishinaabe histories through community oral narratives. The project will document untold and silenced narratives from Black Minnesotans in urban and rural communities to develop new and easily accessible curriculum for grades Pre-K-6, in partnership with numerous BIPOC scholars, elders, and community partners. The project includes a collaborative story collection. The stories will be collected, documented, and written.
Bois Forte Tribal Leaders have acknowledged the potential loss of our Native Language and unique Ojibwe dialect. With a mere 6 fluent speaker's remaining, it is critical that we utilize creative methods to preserve the language. This project will provide funds to purchase appropriate equipment that will be used to record elders as they tell the history of Bois Forte and teach of the clan system and identify families. The recordings will preserve their knowledge for future generation.
St. Paul Civic Symphony will help to develop a multidisciplinary arts project for its free 2025 Children's Concert inspired by a recent publication, The Rhythm of Somalia: A Collection of Songs, Stories, and Traditions by Qorsho Hassan, Minnesota Teacher of the Year (2020), and music specialist Becca Buck, both educators at Gideon Pond Elementary, Burnsville.
With our emerging initiative, Buffalo Weavers: Connecting Land and People through Dakota Thought for Climate Rescue, we plan to engage in a range of programming activities aimed at healing climate grief and working toward climate justice. We are creating a movement through art to awaken the world to climate change and its impact.
The Chicano Latino Affairs Council and the Humanities Center will build on the grant received last year, which was intended to identify the elements of success in programs for Latino high school students and ways to replicate them. Applying the findings of CLAC's and HACER's research, CLAC will integrate its biennium goal of improving levels of educational achievement for Latino youth with the Legacy goal of enriching Minnesota’s cultural legacy by piloting the program in two Minnesota schools.
Through the construction of new interactive exhibits and the creation of educational programming, the Duluth Children's Museum will highlight the community and culture of Duluth and the surrounding region. A climbable, playable model of Duluth's iconic canal lighthouses and an educational Ojibwe waaginogaan are among the planned new elements being added to the museum experience.
Move for America is a new initiative designed to preserve and celebrate the diverse cultural heritage of Minnesota by fostering intercultural exchange and education. It will consist of a direct exchange program involving students from community and technical colleges in Minneapolis and Saint Paul (urban centers) and two rural counties: Otter Tail County and Lyon County. This project includes two full exchanges, each with 30-40 participants over two weekends.
Asian Media Access (AMA) will embark on a capacity-building project aimed at cultivating individual donors from Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) and the public, and encompasses a multifaceted approach to enhance grant writing, reporting, nonprofit management, and fundraising capabilities. Key activities include: 1) train and assist board/staff on grant writing and reporting; 2) build internal expertise in grant writing and reporting by obtaining consultation and training from experts in Donor Solicitation.
Funding to support rehearsals, five outreach performances, and a concert entitled "We Are a Family", to be held on Saturday February 6, 2021 at the CCS auditorium.
Crossing Mountains is a highly collaborative effort by a coalition of Hmong artists to create a sweeping story of two generations of Hmong women who escape Laos to Minnesota. Their story is one of sacrifice and hardship and ultimately hope and redemption. Inspired by the real story of an amazing Hmong woman from Minneapolis, this Hmong opus will use ballet to share the Hmong story of escape from Laos to acclimating in a strange new land.
The Center for Hmong Studies is seeking a $20,000 grant form the Hmong Cultural Grant program to acquire the Jason Schoonover Collection, to provide stipend for students to digitize and catalog the collection, and to organize a Hmong Textile exhibit to show the collection.
The Center for Leadership and Neighborhood Engagement works to organize and mobilize the faith community to affect positive systems change. Our intercultural work aims at communicating culture across racial divides. Through this project we will celebrate and honor creative cultural communication with youth through counter-storytelling, educating joint learning communities, and training cultural heritage organizers to educate and rejuvenate cultural identity in the community.
The Children's Discovery Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota aims to strengthen its highly successful School Service Program by retaining a Program development coordinator, changing core interactive exhibits and creating new curriculum for pre-school and K - 5 students in ten northern Minnesota counties.
The Children's Discovery Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota will strengthen its acclaimed school service program by: (1) continued leadership of a new Program Director retained on January 1, 2016 (2) creating a new (Minnesota built) core interactive exhibit; (3) developing new curriculum for pre-school through 3rd grade students in ten northern Minnesota counties.
The Children’s Museum of Southern Minnesota (CMSM) will build upon a strong foundation of Minnesota Arts, Culture and Heritage (ACH) learning experiences made possible with prior MN Legacy funding support to:
As an established Children's Museum, it is time to re-evaluate our policies, programs, displays, & activities. There will be financial support (scholarships) for classroom/community field trips and bussing which will allow children of all abilities and ethnicities to have a museum experience. Data and suggestions collected from the teachers or adult chaperones will be shared with the Grant Committee and Advisory Board for their work.
This project will support new exhibit components and enhancements, provide admissions and transportation to underserved and diverse communities, and teacher-led programs for children that are sensory sensitive, in relationship with Autism Society of Minnesota.
