Machine artist Carl Zachmann mobilizes studio in the fight against COVID-19
Over the coming weeks, Creative Exchange will be highlighting artists responding practically to the COVID-19 pandemic with creative solutions to this unprecedented problem. If you know of an artist or organization doing creative work in direct response to this crisis, drop us a line at creativeexchange@springboardforthearts.org. You can also view all of our COVID-19-related coverage here.…
Counting Toe Tags: Hostile Terrain 94 documents the humanitarian crisis of migrant deaths
As the 2020 presidential election bears down on us and we find ourselves looking ahead at what is going to most assuredly be a very long, frustrating, emotionally exhausting campaign season, some of us may find the fortitude to endure by keeping in mind what this November's presidential election is really about.
This year, more than any other year in living memory, basic human rights are on…
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 college's art gallery and became interested in gallery work, or would put on art shows in local venues around Sioux Falls with his art club, he still assumed he would be a teacher.
And he did become a…
Michael Dantzler maps the interconnectedness of Eastover, South Carolina
Michael Dantzler is a full-time photographer, creative, and budding community organizer living in his rural hometown of Eastover, South Carolina, a town of only about 800 people that is predominantly African American.
He has been working on projects related to community development in his hometown for several years now. One of his main creative projects is producing a community newsletter for…
Delina White designs apparel and produces fashion shows celebrating and perpetuating Native cultural heritage
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 celebrates and expands the field of rural arts-based community development. The 2019 Summit will take place October 3 – 5, 2019 at the Reif Center for Performing Arts in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. Learn…
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 Cedar-Riverside community on the West Bank, Minneapolis. The creative activities featured in this article are part of a larger project to promote cross-cultural connection and understanding between neighbors…
From Trenton, New Jersey to rural Vermont, Will “Kasso” Condry uses art as a catalyst for activism and revitalization
Will "Kasso" Condry, Jr. is a pioneer of the street art movement in New Jersey, and made national headlines in 2014 when he painted a mural of Michael Brown, the Ferguson teenager who was shot and killed by police despite being unarmed and whose murder sparked several weeks of widely publicized protests. The mural, which included the words "Sagging pants is not probable cause," was covered up by…
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 migrated into the area.
"I live a block away from one of the oldest outdoor markets in the country that has been thriving on the work, sweat, and investment from immigrant families from over 100 years,…
Queer and Undocumented: The Art and Activism of Coming Out, and Coming Out
June is Immigrant Heritage Month as well as Refugee Awareness Month. In solidarity and support, we will run a series of artist profiles and features this month about the experiences of undocumented artists, from a first-of-its-kind fellowship for undocumented artists to LGBTQ artists whose experiences coming out as queer gave them the language to then also “come out” as undocumented. Read the…
Define American is supporting undocumented artists through a first-of-its-kind fellowship
June is Immigrant Heritage Month as well as Refugee Awareness Month. In solidarity and support, we will run a series of artist profiles and features this month about the experiences of undocumented artists, from a first-of-its-kind fellowship for undocumented artists to LGBTQ artists whose experiences coming out as queer gave them the language to then also “come out” as undocumented. Read the…
Maria de Los Angeles tells “Migration Stories”
June is Immigrant Heritage Month as well as Refugee Awareness Month. In solidarity and support, we will run a series of artist profiles and features this month about the experiences of undocumented artists, from a first-of-its-kind fellowship for undocumented artists to LGBTQ artists whose experiences coming out as queer gave them the language to then also “come out” as undocumented. Read the…
Honoring Immigrant Heritage and Refugee Awareness Month
For the past five and a half years, Creative Exchange has been a vehicle for highlighting artists of all different types, from all different backgrounds, and from all corners of America. During this time, we have made a conscious effort to focus on artists from marginalized communities who might struggle to have their voices heard otherwise. And in the past three years especially, we have made…
Al-Bustan plants the seeds of Arab culture and community in Philadelphia
Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture started in Philadelphia in 2002 when founder and executive director Hazami Sayed wanted a place for her two young sons to go where they would learn and apply the Arabic language.
“It was certainly driven by self-interest,” she says. “My husband and I grew up in the Middle East and came to the United States for our college studies. We wanted our boys to be bilingual…
Jer Thorp creates data-based public art to engage and empower communities
Jer Thorp is an accomplished public speaker—check out some of his selected talks here—and an artist based in New York who has participated in highly visible public art projects, like designing the algorithm for the placement of the nearly 3,000 names on the 9/11 Memorial. But he describes himself as a “data artist,” which begs the question…what exactly is a “data artist?”
“It's a term that I…
Maamoul Press prints comics by Middle Eastern women, for Middle Eastern women (and everyone else, too)
Leila Abdelrazaq is a Palestinian author and illustrator living in Detroit. As an author and artist, she has tabled at zine and comics shows, but felt that there was room at her table—both literally and figuratively, as it were—for more than just her own work.
She launched Bigmouth Press & Comix in 2016 with that in mind: first starting as a blog profiling different Middle Eastern women…
Five Years of Creative Exchange!
Give your feedback and take our survey here!
February 20, 2014 was the day that we launched Creative Exchange. I had just become a father, and here was another baby about to go out into the world. We launched the site with a handful of artist profiles, six toolkits to download, and some big hopes for the platform. Would people be interested in stories about artists and their work in community?…
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 "very blue collar;" an area without much in the way of cultural or artistic outlets or diversity.
"People always ask me, 'Did you grow up in a really creative household or community?' There's this…
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 just knew I loved to move and express myself through movement and dance,” she laughs.
Her practice involves dance, movement, and choreography, specifically in the realm of storytelling, and…
Ujima Theatre Company uses theatre to foster self-determined communities
The work of Springboard for the Arts is rooted in arts-based economic and community development. We believe artists are critical assets in that work, and support them by offering a variety of resources that enable them to make both a living and a life. This is why Springboard is a member of the New Economy Coalition (NEC): because we believe in the vision of a new economy, one that is just,…
Wesley Fawcett Creigh asks people what makes them feel like they belong
Wesley Fawcett Creigh grew up in rural Vermont in what she describes as a "very homogenous zone." In high school she got excited about the arts, but she couldn't figure out how to apply that to "real life." So right after graduating she moved to Mexico to take part in a coral reef conservation program because she thought she wanted to be a biologist.
"I was this total country bumpkin dropped…
Meet Loriann Hernandez, Riverside’s “Art Hustling Roller Skating Ninja”
Loriann Hernandez – also known as "Elle Seven" – describes herself as an "Art Hustling Roller Skating Ninja." While the overlap between street art and skating culture is nothing new, the way Hernandez's skating converged with her art is a bit of a different "spin" on a familiar narrative.
Hernandez is based in Riverside, California, where her family has roots that stretch back over 100 years.…
Graffiti Camp for Girls is breaking up the boys’ club of street art
"I was a disgruntled teenager. My mom moved us out to the country while I was still in high school and there was nothing to do. I basically just wanted to get into trouble," says Nina Wright, aka Girl Mobb, on how she first got into graffiti painting on barns in rural Ohio.
Though her initial interest in street art was because it offered her a way to "get into trouble," she found she was…
It’s not enough to just Get Artists Paid; it’s time to stage an Art.Exit
The work of Springboard for the Arts is rooted in arts-based economic and community development. We believe artists are critical assets in that work, and support them by offering a variety of resources that enable them to make both a living and a life. This is why Springboard is a member of the New Economy Coalition (NEC): because we believe in the vision of a new economy, one that is just,…
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 from one profile to the next: whether we're interviewing the head of a multi-million-dollar arts organization in a major city or a solo artist from the Alaskan Bush, we want our readers – which…
Connecting Americans to Healthcare
I’ve said it on this platform before, but artists need access to healthcare. In fact, everyone needs access to healthcare, but artists, who often work non-traditional jobs and have sporadic income, especially need the protections of the Affordable Care Act. I know that the ACA is not perfect, and we need to take steps to fix its flaws, but this is important for our creative communities. Just like…
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, sculpture, graphic design, photography, printmaking, jewelry making, and now filmmaking.
"I blame my mom," she laughs. "She was an artist herself. I blame her for giving me permission to follow…
Art for healing the military-civilian divide
This is the first of a two-part feature on art and veterans. Read second story here.
The challenges facing military service members, veterans, and their families and caregivers today are “more than the traditional medical model can solve.”
That’s a quote from a 2016 briefing published by the National Initiative for Arts & Health in the Military, and it sums up a complex confluence of…
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 plans that address issues in specific areas of the city. While every city has several sitting on their shelves, they aren't exactly known for being engaging reading material, nor do they see many…
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 which has only just begun, the Trump administration's initial budget proposal raises important questions that are relevant to address. In particular for organizations and individuals working in the…
New Haven’s Elm City Mosaic
This story is supported by a National Endowment for the Arts Our Town Knowledge Building grant supporting a partnership between Springboard for the Arts and the International Downtown Association. See more stories from the partnership here.
When the city of New Haven, CT, began construction on Route 34 in the 1960s, the idea was that it would connect the city to its suburbs in the Lower…