Digital/Multimedia
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…
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…
Lightning Rod Toolkit
"Honestly? I hope people will steal Lightning Rod, make it their own and takes lots of pictures and notes and then send them to us," says Lightning Rod co-creator Kat Purcell. Lightning Rod is a…
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…
YES! Magazine is new media for a new economy
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…
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 to more than…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
The Center for Media Justice addresses inequality in our media-saturated digital world
At a time when legitimate news sources are decried as "fake news" by our country's political leadership and fear-mongering partisan websites that specialize is sensational stories with no basis in…
Building Democracy in 'Trump Country'
This post first appeared on BillMoyers.com. A lot of people don’t believe me when I tell them Letcher County, Kentucky, is one of the most open-minded places I’ve ever lived. I might not have…
Roots of Rondo honors a neighborhood, looks to the future
America’s network of interstate highways is considered to be one of the most impressive infrastructure achievements of all time, a lasting symbol of the country’s postwar prosperity. But the…
Join us in Denver for IdeaLab 2017!
Are you an artist, social entrepreneur or organizer? Do you want to connect to others to organize around racial equity and social justice? Do you believe in the power of creative storytelling? Join…
Announcing the 2017 Rural Arts and Culture Summit
The 2017 Rural Arts and Culture Summit will take place Tuesday, June 6, through Thursday, June 8, at the University of Minnesota, Morris. Organized by Springboard for the Arts and the Center for…
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…
Where to get your rural news
In the current media climate, there is a lot of conversation about urban-rural divide, and plenty of thinkpieces published and pundits willing to go on air and talk about what it means. We're…
Wanderway
Wanderway is a free online course in seven parts, designed to walk users through the steps needed for creative and sustainable digital engagement. The goals of the course are to provide…
Wanderway teaches how to use digital media creatively and ethically
Dance company Wonderbound filmed a behind-the-scenes video about how the sets were made for one of their shows. Theater community organization HowlRound created an online space for Latina/o theater…
Public Transformation hits the road
Two months ago, I had no idea that I was going to buy a school bus and travel across the country interviewing rural-based artists - I had no idea that I would need to learn how to insure a converted…
Let's Get To Work
Creative Exchange is the national program of Springboard for the Arts, based in Fergus Falls & Saint Paul, MN. This piece is adapted from the main Springboard website here. Springboard for the…
Advances in neurotech combines with classical music in filmmaker Jonathan David Kane's Corpus Callosum
Miami-based filmmaker Jonathan David Kane has had a camera in his hand for as long as he can remember, despite growing up in the 1980s at a time when video recording equipment wasn't something people…
Special Sauce & Agency: Evaluating Work of Art
"I feel like I just got a million dollars worth of guidance!" That's what one artist commented after downloading the Work of Art toolkit. Since the Work of Art toolkit launched as a free resource in…
Dread Scott is a revolutionary artist whose work takes an unflinching look at Black lives in America
In 1857, Dred Scott, an enslaved Black man, unsuccessfully sued for his freedom on the grounds that he, along with his wife and daughters, had lived in free territories for four years. In the…
Fran Ilich believes another world is possible
Fran Ilich grew up in Tijuana next to the San Diego border. As a "border kid" in Mexico, Ilich has spent his life existing in a space somewhere in between – not quite Latin enough for Mexico,…
New toolkits from the Leading Organizations!
Creative Exchange is driven by a principle that more is more - the more stories we can tell, the more resources we can share, the more connections we can make, the more we can show how important art…