Project grants to support the artistic traditions and customs practiced within community and/or cultural groups by identifying, documenting, preserving, presenting, and honoring Minnesota's folk arts and traditions.
| Grantee, City |
Grant Amount |
Karen A. Aakre, Underwood | $ 6,150 | | Aakre will exhibit and teach Skinfeller classes to students in Grand Marais, Minneapolis, Milan, Lanesboro, Bemidji, and Moorhead. |
Martha F. Brummitt, Minneapolis | $ 10,518 | | Brummitt will construct a Norwegian pram and weave and sew a wool sail using traditional techniques. Brummitt will then display the boat and offer presentations for boaters, textile artists, and boatbuilders to learn about these Scandinavian art forms. |
Dakota Wicohan, Morton |
$ 46,159 | | Dakota Wicohan's Tawokaga program will pass on knowledge from master artists to adults and youth in southwest Minnesota. |
Ethnic Dance Theatre, Minneapolis | $ 15,000 | | Ethnic Dance Theatre will produce a dance concert series featuring traditional dance, music, and costumes from the cultures of the Balkan Peninsula of Eastern Europe. |
Gao Hong, Northfield | $ 34,071 | | Hong will record the ten most important Pudong style pipa pieces on video to help pass on Pudong to future generations. She will present two concerts, ten lectures, and ten workshops for schools, senior centers, and community music groups. |
Karen E. Jenson, Milan | $ 18,711 | | Master rosemaling artist Jenson, of Milan, will work with Kristi Fernholz to document her life's work and make documentation available to the public using online resources. Jenson will offer a culminating presentation at the American Swedish Institute. |
Karen Organization of Minnesota, Roseville | $ 60,000 | | The Karen Weaving Circle will revive and share the traditional art of Karen weaving through workshops, apprenticeships for youth, and public events. |
Sarah B. Larsson, Minneapolis | $ 16,900 | | Larsson and collaborators will study piyutim, traditional Jewish song poetry, with master singer Arielle Lekach-Rosenberg. The project will result in a monthly public workshop and a one-day festival of workshops and performance. |
Sara Mehalick, Minneapolis | $ 24,645 | | Mehalick will apprentice with Scogin Zimmermann in the traditional art of bark tanning leather. They will lead two public workshops where participants will actively learn traditional bark tanning. |
Minnesota Discovery Center, Chisholm | $ 20,306 | | The Minnesota Discovery Center will create a program to celebrate and share Scandinavian blacksmith traditions. |
Minnesota Tamil Sangam, Oakdale | $ 34,280 | | The Tamil Association of Minnesota will impart training to community members in South Indian traditional instruments (Nadhaswaram, Thawil, and Parai) and well as traditonal folksongs. Training will culminate in a performance at the Muthamizh Vizha festival in July 2019. |
Nisswa-stämman, Scandinavian Folk Music and Cultural Festival, Brainerd |
$ 19,931 |
| Nisswa-stämman will present its 20th annual gathering in June 2019, celebrating Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish traditional music and dance. In addition to presenting Nordic artists from the Midwest and Scandinavia, Nisswa-stämman will document the impact the festival has had on Nordic traditions in Minnesota over the last 20 years. |
Pooja Pavan, Minneapolis | $ 15,850 | | Pavan will present two concerts, each with a lecture demonstration, featuring the Ghazal poetry of iconic Urdu language poets of North India, Ghalib, and Faiz. |
Nirmala Rajasekar, Plymouth | $ 18,000 | | Rajasekar and percussion master Muruga Boopathi will conduct workshops and lectures on special compositions in Indian Carnatic music known as varnams and thillanas. They will perform two concerts that will feature these compositions. |
William L. Reser, Minneapolis | $ 24,692 | | Reser will apprentice with blacksmith Mike Fasold in the making of traditional woodworking hand tools, under the guidance of master blacksmith Tom Latane. They will create three complete sets of tools to be used in a series of workshops. |
Riverside Plaza Tenant Association, Minneapolis | $ 70,000 | | Riverside Plaza Tenant Association will form the Somali Minnesota Poets Corner, a program that will record traditional poetry from master Somali poet Jirde Abdullahi, teach traditional Somali poetry to Somali youth, and host three poetry readings. |
The Somali Museum of Minnesota, Minneapolis | $ 44,850 | | The Somali Museum of Minnesota will build the capacity of Somali artists in the Twin Cities and Willmar to advance Somali traditional art forms in their communities. |
TaikoArts Midwest, Minneapolis | $ 5,000 | | TaikoArts Midwest will host Yuichi Kimura and Daichi No Kai from Kobe, Japan, for workshops in traditional taiko performance that will culminate in a collaborative concert with local taiko artists. |
Urban Arts Academy, Minneapolis | $ 16,432 | | Urban Arts Academy will partner with COMPAS to engage twenty south Minneapolis Latinx high school youth in a ten session, twenty hour workshop series in Aztec/Nahuatl dance and culture led by Kalpulli Ketzal Coatlicue. The workshops will culminate in two community events. |
