Film

Sharon Mansur

A Whole Life: A Portrait of Sharon Mansur

Sharon Mansur describes her childhood home as a place of collaborative creativity. “My dad used to draw,” she says. “We’d look at the Sunday comics, and if there was one strip we liked, he drew it on…


Ricky Collins

Ricky Collins builds from parties to profit-sharing

Ricky Collins’ entrepreneurial mindset took hold when he was just 15, while growing up in Minneapolis’ Northside. As a young rapper, he and his brother Nino were known for throwing outrageous…


Za'Nia Coleman

Za’Nia Coleman’s Tangible Collective, Tangible Impact

A community baby turned community organizer, Za’Nia Coleman is creating space for cultural expression in a way unlike what is typically reflected at the center of the Twin Cities arts scene. The…


Mai'a Williams' Sister Projects Connect Place & Identity

The Rural Regenerator Fellowship brings together individual artists, makers, and culture bearers, grassroots organizers, community development workers, public sector workers and other rural…


Minnesota Through the Eyes of Joseph J. Allen

When the photographer Joseph J. Allen talks about his work, even when he’s talking about photographs of landscapes, he often talks about people. Allen describes himself as an introvert, and nothing…


Cecilia Cornejo embroiders community connections

Cecilia Cornejo is an educator, filmmaker, and artist who engages with different communities in order to create meaningful art. Originally from Chile, Cecilia focuses on the immigrant experience as…


Jes Reyes, a woman with short brown hair, paints a colorful grid

Jes Reyes, Artist We Admire

Editor’s note: As the national platform for Springboard for the Arts, Creative Exchange has long been a platform to highlight the artists, resources, and efforts in our national network. In this…


Work of Art: Business Skills for Artists

Developed by Springboard for the Arts, Work of Art: Business Skills for Artists is based on a series of professional development and entrepreneurship workshops that have been taught at arts…


People sit at outdoor tables with art supplies in front of a blue trailer that says Tiny School of Arts & Design

Looking back to the Rural Arts & Culture Summit

The 2019 Rural Arts & Culture Summit was held in Grand Rapids, MN, October 3-5, 2019. With over 350 attendees coming together to share ideas and opportunities around rural-based creative and…


Patrick Scully Contains Multitudes

Editor’s note: As the national platform for Springboard for the Arts, Creative Exchange has long been a platform to highlight the artists, resources, and efforts in our national network. In this…


A row of actors reading from music stands

Adia Morris Swanger connects artists & nurtures family

Editor's note: As the national platform for Springboard for the Arts, Creative Exchange has long been a platform to highlight the artists, resources, and efforts in our national network. In this…


Razi Jafri documents the Muslim experience in America

Razi Jafri is pretty new to the world of filmmaking. After working as an engineer for 10 years, the Detroit resident quit his job in 2015 to pursue work that was more meaningful to him. He just…


Sioux Falls' Zach DeBoer loves to paint street lines

When Zach DeBoer graduated from the University of South Dakota with a degree in art education and an emphasis in print making, he just assumed he would be a teacher. Even when he worked at the…


Two women in hijabs talking and holding camping lamps.

Connecting Community in Cedar-Riverside

Jamie Schumacher is the Executive Director of the West Bank Business Association, a partner with Springboard for the Arts and People’s Center Health Services on connecting and celebrating the…


Michelle Angela Ortiz uses public art to address detention and deportation issues

Michelle Angela Ortiz is a child of immigrants, born and raised in South Philadelphia—a community she describes as one that has benefited tremendously from the immigrant communities that have…


Indie Grits Labs is nurturing a filmmaking community in Columbia, South Carolina

Seth Gadsden went to grad school to study painting and left a filmmaker. At that time, the South Carolina native and another art school friend of his decided “this whole grad school painting thing at…


Growing Up in the Arts Toolkit

“We are excited about the potential to use the toolkit for preparing other communities to host their own “Growing Up in the Arts” activities. We have found a method that facilitates collaboration…


New toolkits from the 2018 Toolkit Cohort

Creative Exchange is based on the idea that artists are everywhere, that artists are shaping their communities in all sorts of ways, and by sharing stories and tools from those artists, we can build…


Creative People Power

Springboard for the Arts and Helicon Collaborative are excited to launch Creative People Power, a new report and framework for combining creativity-centered and people-centered development to build…


Toolkit Toolkit

Yes, this is what you think it is. Since the launch of Creative Exchange in 2014, over 6,000 toolkits have been downloaded from the site, facilitating artist-led projects, business skills…


One year of women, talking to each other, about something other than a man

January 20, 2018 marked the first full year of Donald Trump in the White House, and what a year it has been for women. An ideological sea change, led by women, has manifested in countless ways…


5 Questions with Creative Exchange: What we have learned from our artists

Since August 2016, Creative Exchange has been asking each of our Artists With Impact a series of five questions, which appear at the end of every profile. We did this to create a thread of continuity…


Public Transformation celebrates & contemplates art in rural America

Artifacts line the wall of Outpost Winona: handmade art and everyday objects, each labeled with the name of a place: railroad spikes from Lake City, South Carolina; a cookbook from Alliance,…


Ryan Romer tells visual stories of where the modern world collides with traditional culture in the Alaskan bush

Ryan Romer considers himself a "late bloomer" as an artist, not having delved into the professional art world until he was already in his 30s. Prior to that, he was "one of those artists who would…


Honoring Inuit culture through traditional tattoos

Holly Mititquq Nordlum is an Inupiaq artist born in Kotzebue, an Inuit village in the Northwest Arctic Borough of Alaska. As an artist, she has followed a lifelong call that has led her to painting,…


Heidi Brandow documents definitions of "home" for Native peoples, refugees, and normalized residents

Santa Fe artist Heidi K. Brandow came by her creative practice somewhat naturally – on her mother's side, she comes from a long line of Native Hawaiian singers, musicians, and performers; and on her…


Rural Arts & Culture Summit Videos

The Rural Arts & Culture Summit was held from June 6-8 in Morris, MN, and it was magical. 400 artists, community development professionals, leaders, and advocates from 22 states came to the town of…


Prairie Dreamers: Reflecting on Springboard’s 5 years in Fergus Falls

As a child growing up in Dundas, Minnesota, I learned more in school about the rainforest or the oceans than I did about the prairie and lakes that were in my backyard. I had t-shirts pleading to…


Springboard for the Arts announces new national Train-the-Trainer Intensive

Springboard for the Arts is excited to announce the first Train-the-Trainer Intensive for their Work of Art: Business Skills for Artists curriculum and award-winning artist-led community development…


Six takeaways from IdeaLab

Need a little inspiration? There was plenty of it at IdeaLab 2017, which brought together creative minds from across the U.S. Here are a half-dozen useful pieces of advice that came out of the day's…