St. Paul
TruArtSpeaks the power of poetry for youth empowerment
Tish Jones has been a poet for as long as she can remember. The performer, organizer, and educator from St. Paul is also the founder and executive director of TruArtSpeaks, an organization that uses…
Creating space for Somali artists to thrive
As hundreds of thousands of refugees fled Somalia over the last 30 years, Minnesota, and the Twin Cities in particular, was quickly established as a welcoming place with ample work opportunities for…
The Life of an ARTrepreneur
Some people know Felicia Perry from her time as a dancer with Ananya Dance Theatre. Others know her as an economic activist who served on the inaugural executive committee and board of the…
Find Creative People Power on Creative Exchange
"I honestly feel so inspired by the work that these artists have created that represents a life, challenges the status quo, or brings in communities. I feel so incredibly lucky to have the…
Reflections on Springboard's intensive trainings
For over a decade, Springboard for the Arts has been offering business skills workshops to artists to help them build a living and a life. Since 2017, we have offered an annual series of intensive…
How Grand Rapids, Minnesota Thrives Through Creative People Power
This article is part of a series highlighting artists and leaders featured at the Rural Arts and Culture Summit, a biennial, practitioner-driven gathering hosted by Springboard for the Arts that…
Rachel Breen sews in support of garment industry workers
Minneapolis-based artist Rachel Breen is probably best known for her work with textiles, which she finds funny, since her connection to her sewing machine was purely accidental. "Three days before…
Dana Sikkila takes Project Bike all over the state of Minnesota
Visual artist Dana Sikkila grew up in Litchfield, a farm town in West Central Minnesota with a population of a little over 6,000 people. She describes her family and the area she grew up as being…
Photographer Xavier Tavera documents the Latinx community from one border to the other
Xavier Tavera remembers picking up a camera when he was 11 or 12 years old and fell in love with photography immediately. To this day, he says, that “magical feeling” he gets from photography still…
Leila Awadallah dances stories of Palestine
Leila Awadallah, a 2018-2019 Springboard for the Arts 20/20 Artist Fellow, moved to Minneapolis from Sioux Falls, South Dakota to study dance before she had a sense of the kind of artist she is. “I…
Jose Alvillar is preserving ancient dance traditions in paint
Jose Alvillar is a Minneapolis-based dancer and painter, but rarely have those two parts of his life his met. Now, as a 2018-2019 Springboard for the Arts 20/20 Fellow, he plans to make those…
Of art and baseball: Rachel Wacker brings art to the community by working with some unlikely partners
Rachel Wacker hasn't had what might be called a "traditional" experience working in the art world. Based in Saint Paul's Lowertown neighborhood, Wacker has eschewed more "traditional" arts…
Saying “Yes” to 4th Street
In a downtown core experiencing change, the 4th Street Market District partnership leads creative experiments & looks to the future It was a summer Sunday afternoon in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and…
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…
Ifrah Mansour finds light in the darkness of civil war
Ifrah Mansour bubbles over with energy when she talks. She is so cheerful and positive, it's all too easy to forget the nature of her work as a mixed media artist and theatre maker. Confronting…
Tana Hargest's wide-ranging work addresses issues of surveillance, policing, and public policy
As a long-time arts organization leader and cultural producer based in the Twin Cities, Tana Hargest says now that she is "mid-career" she has made a shift to focus on three different, yet…
Lucas Koski sees lawn art as a vehicle to diversifying funding sources
Lucas Koski, Asset Manager at Minneapolis-based Artspace, has always enjoyed a good spectacle. In high school he got into event production because he wanted to see bigger and better events than those…
"Miss Neighbor Lady" Kathy Mouacheupao hosts "Gatherings" in her St. Paul neighborhood
Kathy Mouacheupao has worked in arts-based nonprofits her entire professional career, working as the Executive Director for the Center for Hmong Arts and Talent in Saint Paul for ten years and as…
A small area plan with big ambitions: Frogtown's illustrated SMAPL is a document of tactical urbanism
A "small area plan" is a very common development document for individual districts within a city. Typically the stuff of purely esoteric urban planner interest, these are documents containing focused…
Leon Wang designs posters with impact
It was the Philando Castile shooting in July 2016 that ultimately drove Leon Wang to action. "It happened in my community, on the streets I drive on, in the area my kids are growing up in," Wang…
Connecting creative practice to healthcare through Ready Go tools at the People's Center Health Services
Amid all the uncertainty around health insurance, the fact remains that people need access to healthcare. Clinics and healthcare systems around the country have been seeking new and innovative ways…
What would happen if the NEA were defunded, and why should we care?
It has been a little over six months since Donald Trump took office, and a lot has happened during that time. Although the budgeting process for the federal government is a long and arduous process…
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…
Soundset & Possibility
“This is possible,” Black Liquid, the Richmond, Virginia-based emcee, writer, instructor, and radio personality, told me at this year's Soundset festival. “Not only getting on the stage, but building…
Artist Hassan Nor draws old world vision of Somalia for new generation
In a high-rise tower located on Portland Avenue lives Hassan Nor, a Somali immigrant. Most of the residents in the building, like Nor, are seniors. He lives in a one-bedroom apartment by himself and…
Singer-songwriter Mayyadda explores new sound and shows Black musicians ‘are not a monolith’
Two years ago, if you had told Mayyadda Munkunjae that she would be performing at Minneapolis’ Dakota Jazz Club, where the likes of Prince, Esperanza Spalding and Vusi Mahlesela have graced the…
Artist Chamindika Wanduragala takes on motherhood and race through puppets
I. Rebirth When Sri Lankan artist Chamindika Wanduragala returned to the Twin Cities arts scene after almost a decade away, it was a much needed rebirth. A visual artist by training (having earned a…
Artists & Aging: Access, Storytelling & Change
The Artists & Aging pilot project was created by a partnership between the Citizens League and Springboard for the Arts in Minnesota, and supported by The Pluribus Project through their Narrative…
Place-based art project Water Bar addresses disparities in drinking water access
“Welcome to Water Bar, water is all we have.” These are the words that greeted me as I walked through the door. Immediately, Shanai Matteson, co-owner of Water Bar & Public Studio, offered me a…
Women-led Community Artists Leadership Initiative brings arts funding to the 99 percent
When Desdamona, Julia Nekessa Opoti, May Lee-Yang and Saymoukda Vongsay, co-founders of the Twin Cities-based Community Artists Leadership Initiative (CALI), are sitting at the same table, ideas fly…