Film
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Warren Montoya has created something that Rezonates
Santa Ana Pueblo/Santa Clara Pueblo artist Warren Montoya knows a little something about resilience. Though he has been an artist since childhood, drawn to the art of comic books and surrealism – he…
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…
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…
Dylan Yellowlees is creating an LGBT arts festival for everyone in Akron
Dylan Yellowlees moved to Akron two years ago to work at the Akron Civic Theatre. Having come from Atlanta, where there is a strong LGBT presence with a huge pride festival, an LGBT film festival,…
Imagining New Futures: Artists & Aging Pilot
What is the future for our artists? What is the future for our aging communities? What is the role of arts in aging and policy? In The American Prospect, author Jeff Chang writes, “When artists…
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…
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,…
Ivar Zeile has seen the future of public art, and it's on 25' x 60' screens
Before launching Denver Digerati and becoming a national leader in digital placemaking, Ivar Zeile founded the contemporary arts gallery Plus Gallery in Denver in 2001. He had previously worked in…
ArtsWave Cincinnati is the oldest and largest united arts fund in the country
Funding sources for many arts organizations tends to be a hodgepodge of foundation, government, corporate, and patron support, which makes ArtsWave Cincinnati remarkably unique – it is the Greater…
Haleem Rasul is teaching the world to Jit
Haleem "Stringz" Rasul is a dancer, designer, and filmmaker born and raised in Detroit. The dancers in his family were on his father's side, and Rasul was inspired by his late cousin who, he says,…
100 Words Film Festival is a democratizing film fest for the Twitter generation
In today's 140-character cultural climate, it can be quite a challenge to hold an audience's attention. The 100 Words Film Festival in Charlotte, which made its debut last November, is a film…
The Nix Bros. are weaving web of laughter in Denver
By their own admission, and even though they're three years apart in age, brothers Evan and Adam Nix -- the imaginative forces behind Nix Bros. Films -- became movie nerds at roughly the same time.…
PAR Projects is building a home for arts education and programming in Cincinnati's Northside
Things don't always work out the way you plan, but they do tend to work out the way they're supposed to. Jonathan Sears is the co-founder of Professional Artistic Research (PAR) Projects, though he…
April Denée is the mother of BUSK!
"Busking" refers to artists performing in public places for tips. Unfortunately, "busking" all too often gets mistaken for begging, and buskers are treated by the police and public alike as…