Digital/Multimedia
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…
Duaba Unenra: Black People Exist In The Past, Present AND Future
Duaba Unenra comes from a family of creators. He can trace his own career path back to teachers, architects, musicians and entrepreneurs. He attributes many of his creative impulses to his mother,…
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’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…
DejaJoelle brings forth prayers for healing
Webbed in DejaJoelle’s full-bodied silhouette is the ancestral story of a Black woman’s ability to transmute pain into purpose through healing, love and resilience. Just as all colors of the rainbow…
Community Heroes
Through Creative Exchange, we are always excited to share toolkits from creative community projects – especially ones created by artists, and using resources from Springboard for the Arts like the…
Amoke Kubat is Still Exploring
An Artist Inhabits Her Identity Amoke Kubat begins at the very beginning. “I always loved making art as a child,” she says. In her formative years, after Kubat saw the Beatles movie “A Hard Day’s…
Ayolanda Mack Builds Up Black Families
Ayolanda Mack is a rebel and an idea generator. She didn’t always see herself that way. Mack comes from a long matrilineal line of artists, and art is one way she reveals her rebellious side. It’s a…
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…
From Words to Web, Meet Anika Fajardo
One of the coolest things about Anika Fajardo is her attitude toward learning. Not only is she a mentor at Augsburg University’s MFA in Creative Writing and an Artist Career Consultant at…
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…
Aaron Fiskradatz Brings Zoom Expertise to In-Person Creativity
Aaron Fiskradatz is a theater artist, an educator, and, most recently, a “Zoom consultant” – a technical consultant for livestreamed productions, which we all need these days. A longtime advocate of…
Don't get spooked! Dominic Facio is here for you
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…
Hello? It's Andy Sturdevant!
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…
Alison Bergblom Johnson's career builds on fruitful partnerships
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…
Amplifier supports artists and communities in creative social activism
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…
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…
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…
Baltimore gallerist and fashion historian Joy Davis on Black spaces and Black stories
Joy Davis attributes her love of "old stuff" to her father, who worked as an antique buyer in the Baltimore area when she was growing up. "Through him I learned the value of material culture, but at…
Mural Map & Community History Toolkit
Springboard for the Arts and Art of the Rural were inspired to commission a toolkit from an artist living and working in a rural place, as a way to bridge the Rural Generation Summit in May 2019,…
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…
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…
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…